The word “prison” brought Gregory’s mind back to his reason for being there. “Magdalena Owens—”
“Will you stop calling me that? I’m not my mother!” Gwen shouted, smacking him in the chest with one of the gauntlets.
He stared at her. Could it be true? Or was she lying to him again? “Your mother?”
Her gaze skittered to the side. “Yes. That’s my mom. I’m Gwen Owens.”
“You said that your name was Gwenhwyfar Byron.” She sounded like she was telling the truth. Did he dare believe her?
“It is. It’s Gwen Byron Owens.”
“You lied to me.” He gave her his sternest look. It was necessary in order to keep from grabbing her and kissing her as she deserved. The very fact that she was ashamed of herself lent truth to her statement. She wasn’t the Owens they were looking for! She wasn’t a criminal!
“Kind of. Not really.” At last her gaze met his. “All right, I did, but it was more a lie of omission than anything else.”
“Again, I must point out that this conversation is not appropriate at this time,” Douglas said, gesturing toward the tents behind them. “The battle must commence now, or you will forfeit the fight.”
“I forfeit,” Gwen said, spreading her hands in a gesture of apology. “Sorry about gabbing away at you for so long, but I really am not trained for this sort of thing.”
“A pity,” Douglas said, then turned and put his fingers to his mouth, blowing a loud, piercing whistle. “But perhaps we can change that. You are under arrest. Both of you. Please come with me of your respective free wills, because otherwise I will have to bind your arms and legs, and I understand that being trussed up in that fashion is not at all comfortable.”
“Arrest?” Gregory said, moving to stand protectively in front of Gwen. He held the sword that she had handed to him, and although he was unused to wielding such a weapon, he felt that given the need, he could find it in him to do so. “I am a member of the Watch—”
“Which has no authority here,” Douglas interrupted. “You are clearly in cahoots with this lady, and since she has forfeited the fight and shamed herself before her lord—”
“Hey!” Gwen protested.
“—thereby making her my prisoner, you also are in my charge.”
A thin man in a long black and gold tunic and black leggings arrived in response to Douglas’s whistle. “Ah, Tallyrand. I believe the king would like to meet these two. Can you arrange transport for Lady Gwen and Sir Cover Model?”
“My name is Gregory Faa, not Cover Model,” Gregory snapped. “And if you think I’m going to let you take me prisoner, let alone Gwen-who-isn’t-her-mother, then you’re madder than Gwen’s mother.”
“Oh, you did not just say that,” Gwen said, jerking him around so he faced her. That she was furious was clearly evident in both the dangerous glint in her eyes and the stubborn set to her jaw.
“You have a very nice nose,” he told her. “I even like it when you’re incensed and your nostrils flare, as they are doing now.”
“My mothers are not mad! You take that back.”
“Mothers?”
“Yes. I have two. My mom and her partner, who is my second mom. And I don’t tolerate anyone saying anything bad about either of them.”
“Your mother, or mothers, have kidnapped a mortal woman.”
“Yes, well—”
“They have also attempted to sell magic to another mortal via the lawyer who we met on the cliff outside of Snails-on-the-Half-Shell.”
Her nostrils flared again. It was utterly adorable. “The name of that town was Malwod-Upon-Ooze. I don’t know why you have such a hard time remembering it!”
“You cannot deny that to do such acts, especially given the history of Magdalena Owens, indicates a lack of mental stability.”
She hit him. Right on the chest, the same place she’d smacked him with the gauntlet. “Look, I never said what they’ve done is right. Lord knows I’ve had to spend much of my adult life cleaning up after them and keeping them on the straight and narrow—but they are not insane! They’re simply . . . forgetful.”
He looked at her.
She looked away, a flush darkening her cheeks.
“Even you don’t believe that,” he pointed out.
“I know.” She sighed and met his gaze again. He was pleased to see that her expression had lost its hard, angry edge. “One of the problems with being raised Wiccan is that it’s very hard to lie to anyone, but especially to yourself.”
“You had no problem lying to me.”
“Oh, I had a problem with it. I just figured it was more important to protect my mothers than to shield myself from karmic repercussions. If you had arrested me, I wouldn’t have been able to extricate them from the situation. Which, I’ll have you know, I was doing just fine.”
“My definition of doing fine doesn’t include dying in the act.”
She stared at him with stark amazement. “How do you know I died?”
He hesitated, glancing to the side, a bit startled to find that except for the thin young man in the tunic, they were now alone. Evidently Douglas had gone off to his camp, leaving a guard set to watch them. He smiled to himself. He would have no trouble taking care of the young man when it came time for Gwen and him to leave. But first he had to dance around the delicate subject of the events on the cliff a few days past. “I was there.”
“I know you were there. I saw you. You stopped that lawyer from throwing me over the edge. But how did you know he’d done it before?”
“I was there when you were killed the first time.”
“You were?” She clutched his wrist, her eyes searching his. “So it was the lawyer who did it? Did you see who resurrected me? How come you weren’t there when I came back to life?”
“Yes, in a way, and I was. Just not where you expected me.”
She stared at him in incomprehension.
“I’m a Traveller, Gwen. Do you know what that is?”
“No. At least . . . no. The word seems like it is familiar, but I guess not. Wait . . . yes, I know it. There’s a family who visits the town my moms live in. They’re Travellers. Mom says they used to have a horse and one of those wooden trailers all painted up, but now they just bring camping equipment and hang out on the edges of the town.”
“I suspect they are Romany, not actual Travellers. The Rom frequently use the same word to describe themselves, but I assure you that despite superficial appearances, we are very different from them.”
She eyed his hair. “I suppose you don’t see many blond-haired, blue-eyed Gypsies. So what is the Otherworld version of Travellers?”
“Most of the people in the Otherworld think of us as time thieves.”
Her lips pursed for a moment before relaxing. He had the worst urge to taste those lips. “How do you steal time?”
“Travellers see time as a physical possession. You have so much time. I can take it if I so desire. But we always pay for it.”
“That’s not really stealing, then, if you pay for it.”
He shrugged. “It’s a matter of perception.”
“What does this have to do with me dying? If you stole my time, then I’d have less of it, not more in terms of being reborn.”
He glanced again at the young man next to them, but he appeared occupied with drawing something in the dirt at their feet. “I didn’t take your time. I took someone else’s, and . . .”
“And?”
He didn’t want to tell her, but he’d turned over a new leaf when he joined the Watch, and that meant taking responsibility for his actions. It would be so much easier to lie to Gwen, or rather, to hide the truth from her, but he knew instinctively that she would much prefer the harsh truth than comfortable lies.