I could have sworn he rolled his eyes. “A warrior of King Aaron cannot be vanquished unless his name is known to his enemies.”
“Really? So if I guessed your name, I’d win?” I considered him, trying to think of as many male Welsh names as I could.
Up went the sword. Down went the visor. “That is so. Are you ready to begin? We have wasted much time in conversation.”
“Hold on just a second,” I said, lifting a hand. “I’d like to have a few shots at guessing your name.”
“Why?” he asked, his voice muffled behind the visor.
“Because I’m not a fighter. I’m a . . . well, a scholar, I guess. And besides, I can’t fight someone whose name I don’t know.”
“Why?” he asked again, but he lowered his sword once more and lifted the visor so I could see the annoyed look on his face.
“I can’t think of you as ‘the knight dude’ in my mental narrative, now can I? Daffyd?”
This time I saw him clearly roll his eyes. “No, that is not my name.”
“Herbert.”
“No.”
“Owen?” It was my own surname, but there was a chance it was also his first name.
“That is not my name, no. Now, shall we fight?”
“I’m not going to fight you until I have a name that I can think of you by. Darryl?”
His shoulders slumped for a moment before he straightened up and said, “You may pick a name to use for me.”
I really didn’t want to fight him. He looked strong and immovable, and that sword was much larger than mine. “Fine. But if you hurt me, my moms will come after you. They’re very protective.”
He lowered his visor for the umpteenth time. “We shall begin. What name do you choose for me?”
I thought of whatever was the least threatening and the least likely to harm me. “When I was a child, I had a soft, fuzzy purple bunny named Douglas. I guess I can call you that.”
This time he didn’t just lift the visor—he took off the entire helm, pulling with it the soft cotton cap that was worn under it. His hair was close-cropped, and spiky with sweat. “Are you insulting me?” he asked, pointing the helm at me.
“Me? No!”
“You named me after a child’s toy! A rabbit toy! I am a warrior of Aaron! I am feared by all! The very ground itself trembles beneath my feet! I am not a soft, fuzzy Douglas!”
“Sorry. I can try to think of something else if you like.”
“You do that!”
I considered him, trying to formulate a vision of who he looked like. Maybe a Simon? An Alex? A Cadwallader?
“I’m sorry,” I said, slumping just a little. “Now that I’ve thought of Douglas the bunny, that’s what is stuck in my brain.”
He looked like he was about to explode, but he simply slapped the cloth hat and helm back onto his head, hefting his sword and waving it in a menacing manner. “It matters not what you call me, servant of Ethan. Commence the battle.”
“You know, I think I need a little coffee break. How about I go get us a little light refreshment?”
“You’re not going anywhere. Not again.”
The voice that spoke didn’t come from Douglas. He pulled up his visor, his frown being sent over my shoulder. I turned to see who it was that had joined us in our battle.
It was Gregory. And he looked angry as hell.
FIVE
The gentle glow of the Krispy Kreme sign lit Gregory Faa’s face. He was not happy, and he didn’t have one iota of trouble letting the man who stood with him know that fact. “I am not happy.”
“It’s hard luck that your girlfriend duped you again, but we need to focus on what’s important,” Peter said, without the slightest shred of sympathy.
“That just makes me want to punch you, you know,” Gregory answered, tired and cranky and utterly unable to keep from telling his cousin what was on his mind. Another day he might have been more circumspect, but tonight, as the two of them stood outside the Krispy Kreme shop in the Cardiff Shopping Centre, he lacked the verbal check needed to keep his emotions to himself.
Peter looked up from his notebook, wherein he was recording information on the chase that they had just undertaken across Cardiff to the shopping center. The fruitless chase. Gregory ground his teeth again at the thought of how Gwen had fooled him. Wantonly and brazenly.
“Why, because you don’t like me pointing out that she misled you?”
“Because you aren’t the least bit sympathetic with my plight. And she’s not my girlfriend.”
“You’re interested in her,” Peter insisted.
“I’ve never once said that,” he protested, wondering how Peter could tell that he was, in fact, quite interested in the delicious—if wicked—Gwen.
“You don’t have to. You saved her life. Twice, according to the account you gave of what happened after you stole time.”
Gregory looked into the distance, ignoring the flashing lights of the police cars as the officers continued to mill in and around the shop, interviewing workers and customers alike about the events of twenty minutes before. “I thought we weren’t going to speak of that again.”
Peter laughed. “We aren’t. Why do you need sympathy if she’s not someone you’d like to have a personal relationship with?”
He found it difficult to answer that question, and decided instead to answer another one, despite the fact that it hadn’t actually been asked. “I don’t think she escaped by means of a spell.”
Peter returned to making notes. “You interviewed the security guard. Didn’t he say that Gwen and her abductees ran into the doughnut place?”
“Yes. And I’m not so sure they were abductees.”
“Look, I know your pride is still stinging over this betrayal,” Peter said, giving him a sympathetic look that he found he didn’t like or want after all. “But you’ve got to face the facts that this woman is not someone you should be lusting after.”
“I never said—”
“You didn’t have to. Anyone who uses the terms ‘lush’ and ‘delicious’ when describing a woman lusts after her. She’s a bad egg, Gregory. She’s rotten to the core, and she’s not above using you to get what she wants.”
Gregory fought back the urge to argue with his cousin about Gwen’s character. He didn’t, but not because he realized that arguing at that moment would be futile—surrounded as they were with the mortal police, who, by means of some false identification cards, they believed were members of Scotland Yard—but because he had better things to do with his time and energy. “The guard said that Gwen helped the women out of the car. He said that the women, in turn, helped the kidnap victim very carefully and that Gwen and one of the others more or less carried the woman into the shop. Would you do that if you had the cops right on your heels?”
“I might,” Peter said, thinking about it. “If I didn’t have a weapon, and needed to use the victim as a hostage to secure my own safety. As for the other two women—they’re clearly her accomplices. The nursing home said that there were two of them who abducted the old lady.”
It didn’t make sense to Gregory. Despite what Peter claimed, he didn’t think Gwen was a cold, callous woman who cared nothing about the people around her. Yes, the facts were irrefutable in that she had kidnapped an elderly woman, but according to the security man, she’d been very careful to make sure the victim wasn’t harmed in the act of escape.
“I’m going to talk to the police again,” he said, coming to a decision. “I want a look at that storeroom they went into.”
“The police scoured it already. It’s empty,” Peter said without looking up from his notebook. “The only way she could have gotten out is by using an escape spell of some sort.”
“If that was so, then why didn’t she use one earlier, when the police were chasing her? Or even earlier still, when she abducted the victim?”