I froze. “Oh, um, gee. I’ve got plans….”
“You do not!”
“I do.” I turned around. “I’m going to my mom’s.”
“The reading’s late,” he said. “Doesn’t start until nine. You’ll be done by then.”
I had long since accepted Tim’s fake American Indian gig, but accepting it and witnessing it-aside from when he stood in full regalia in my kitchen-were two entirely different things.
“I’ve even written new material,” he added when he saw that he wasn’t making much progress.
“I’m not sure that’s a selling point.”
He held up the bowl of brownie mix. “I’ll make them with walnuts.”
I sighed and turned back toward my bedroom. “You don’t play fair.”
He whooped with joy. “You’ll love it, Eug. I promise.”
I fell asleep pretty easily and woke to two pleasant surprises. One was the scent of freshly baked brownies wafting in the air. The other was Kiyo sitting in a chair in my room, eating one of the aforementioned brownies. With the way he’d been in and out lately, I never really knew when to expect him.
“Nice surprise,” I said, sitting up.
“Likewise,” he said, eyeing my bare legs. I’d gone to sleep in a T-shirt.
“Anything new in the Otherworld?”
“Not much. Maiwenn’s getting nervous about the delivery, but I kind of figured that would happen.”
“She’s got good healers,” I said, wanting to reassure him in spite of all the troubled feelings Maiwenn generated in me. I noticed then that he wore his white coat. “You going into work?”
“Just got out.” Damn. It was later than I’d realized if he’d hung out with Maiwenn and pulled a shift at work.
“Do you want to go see my parents with me?”
Kiyo made a face. “Roland hates me.”
“Hate is a strong word.”
But it wasn’t an entirely inaccurate one. Roland, my shaman stepfather, made no secret of the fact that he didn’t like me spending as much time as I did in the Otherworld. Bringing home an Otherworldly boyfriend hadn’t earned his approval either, even though Kiyo was half-human like me. Still, Roland was always more or less polite. My mother, who didn’t know about Kiyo’s heritage, couldn’t gush over him enough. I think she’d nearly given up on me ever dating anyone, so me landing a veterinarian was quite a coup as far as she was concerned. She was a fantastic cook and so even though Roland made him uneasy, Kiyo still consented to go.
“Are you sure you got enough to eat?” she asked after we finished dinner with them later that night. She operated under the assumption that I was on the verge of malnutrition and that Kiyo was incapable of feeding himself if someone else didn’t cook for him. In truth, Kiyo was a much better cook than me.
“It was great,” he assured her. “Believe me, I had more than enough.”
“Well, don’t be afraid to go back for more. Or take home leftovers.”
“Geez, Mom. He had three helpings. Are you fattening him up for the kill?” I asked.
“There are worse fates,” mused Kiyo good-naturedly.
My mom beamed. I thought she was exceptionally pretty, but maybe I was just biased. People said we had similar looks, and we did as far as build and facial features went. It was the coloring we differed in. Her eyes were just plain blue, and her dark hair was graying. My reddish hair and violet-blue eyes were Storm King’s legacy.
After dinner, I stole Roland away to the den to talk shop and left Kiyo to entertain my mother. She knew what it was we did, but after her own experiences in the Otherworld, she preferred to avoid our shamanic discussions.
“Still with him, huh?” asked Roland, relaxing back in an easy chair.
“He’s nice, and you know it. He’s the same as me.”
Roland scratched his head thoughtfully. His hair had gone gray, and he seemed to have new wrinkles every year. He was still more than a match for most Otherworldly foes (even though he’d ostensibly retired), and the crosses, whorls, fish, and other Christian tattoos on his arms could summon the same power my goddess-based ones could.
“He is like you,” he agreed. “He’s not entirely Otherworldly-but he’s tied to it. He’s spent more of his life there than you, let it become more a part of him. And you being with someone like that means that you’ll just be that much more tied to it in return. With everything that’s going on over there, it’s really better if you stay away.”
“Everything,” of course, meant the prophecy about me bearing the Otherworld’s savior. While I usually recapped a lot of my shamanic business to Roland, I had neglected to mention a few of my recent activities-say, like inadvertently conquering a kingdom and becoming a queen. Call me crazy, but I just had to think our relationship would be better if he remained in ignorance about that.
“Well, I’ve kind of gotten involved with something over there. And don’t give me that look,” I warned, seeing his frown. “I’m helping out some people who need it, and it’s too late to back out. But the other day, I saw fire demons.”
That got his attention. “You do mean in the Otherworld, right?”
“God, yes.” Demons in our world would be pretty horrible. “There were five of them.”
He let out a low whistle. “That’s substantial even for them. It’d take a powerful summoner to do that.”
“I was with, uh, some others, and they managed to do some damage, but for the most part, we were useless. I banished one, and that just about wiped me out.”
“Yeah, it can be done, but it’s not easy. You could do it with a couple of other shamans, but on your own…” He shook his head. “I really don’t like you getting involved with that.”
“I know, I know, but like I said, it’s too late. Do you know how to get rid of them? Aside from assembling a shaman posse?”
“The easiest way-and I use that term loosely-would be to find a gentry who could summon water demons. Put them with fire demons, and they’ll all turn on each other.”
“Somehow I’m not optimistic about finding someone like that.” Yet, even as I said that, I wondered if I could do it. As far as I knew, that wasn’t part of my storm magic. I could summon water and had once controlled air, bending those forces to my will. Summoning elemental creatures was out of my range. Storm King had allegedly been able to do it. Jasmine had commanded water creatures as well, though I didn’t know if that would include demons. It irked me that I couldn’t do what the rest of my family could.
“True,” Roland agreed. “In that case, brute force may be the only way to go. Let them assemble their own forces to get rid of the demons. It’s not your problem. It’s the gentry’s and their leaders’ responsibility.”
“Right,” I said uneasily. “Well, we’ll see what happens.” The look he gave me showed that he didn’t believe I’d leave this alone. It also said he knew nothing he could say would convince me. “I’ve got another question. Ever heard of Otherworldly towns called Ley and Skye?” Shamans generally avoided crossing over to that world, but Roland had been there many times and knew a lot about the land.
“Ley sounds familiar…it’s in the Alder Land, isn’t it? Or is it Rowan?” In addition to not knowing about my queenly status, Rowan also didn’t know there’d been a complete upheaval in the Alder Land.
“Rowan,” I said. “But very close to, um, Alder. There’s supposedly a crossroads near there. Do you know where it comes out?”
“No…nowhere around here, I’m sure.”
“Any way you could find out?”
“Is this tied in to the demons?”
I hesitated a moment and opted for the truth. “No, it’s something else. A different thing I’m helping them out with.”
“Eugenie!” Roland rarely lost his temper, but I could see the anger in his eyes now. “What are you doing? You can’t do this. You can’t get entangled in their affairs. Your job is to protect this world, to keep them and the other monsters and ghosts out of here.”
“They’re not all bad,” I said, surprised as the words came out of my mouth.
“Do I need to remind you about your mother’s abduction and the assorted attempts to rape you?”