Awakenings (20 page)

Cat had rescued Cal from an orphan’s existence … a man with no beginnings. But he had rescued her as well, from an endless line of flawed, unintriguing men; a parade of players and insecure minds threatened by a strong will and a sharp psyche, or worse, ready to surrender their authority completely. Cal was the balance—the strongest man she’d ever met, not just in body, but also in his virtue. Chivalry became palatable through his sincerity. With Cal, it was possible to enjoy the comforts of feminine vulnerability and not surrender her self-respect. For that, she’d give him the world.

Bree’s birth had marked a new beginning for Cal. Through nine months of pregnancy, and six hours of labor, Cat inaugurated her husband into the simple experience that many took for granted—a blood relative. And she’d do it again if they had the chance. They were on course for a happy life. A brother or sister for Bree, a promotion to ESU for Cal, her MBA and reentry in the workforce, and eventually a home in Westchester. Cal would retire at fifty with full benefits. When the kids were in college, they could travel while still relatively young. Lelani’s failure would have left them content. Her husband would still be hers alone. No one would have known … not even Cal’s tortured family in Aandor. Cat was embarrassed to have such selfish thoughts.

That damned guilt boomeranged and settled in the nape of her neck again. Previously, she’d have moved heaven and earth to discover his origins; it was the only thing missing from his life. Cat realized she wasn’t thinking clearly. If Lelani had not come, Cal may not have survived Dorn’s attack. She’d be a widow right now; another cop’s wife filling out benefits forms. Sweeping Cal’s history under the carpet as it threatened to unravel everything they’d built was not the solution. She wanted to protect him from the dangers his past brought with it. How far could she bend under the weight of his past before she broke, she wondered. Cat studied his profile like an art student replicating a sculpture. Cal kept his eyes on the road.

Cat hadn’t said a word since leaving the Bronx. The man she’d shared a bed with for six years was holding something back. He’d answered a dozen questions all with the response of a child who’d successfully pilfered the cookie jar and gladly confessed only to not having brushed his teeth yet. Cat was certain Cal would answer a million more questions so long as she avoided one important one.

“Penny for your thoughts,” he asked. He kept his eyes on the road.

“I’m having ten-dollar thoughts.”

“Hmm.”

“And you? What’s on your mind?”

“You have to bend a little lower,” Cal said.

“Excuse me?”

“When you curtsy.” Cal smiled. “Legs bent and torso and head bent forward as well. And it’s not so slow. It’s a quick motion. Your superiors don’t want to be staring at the top of your head all day.”

Cat smiled. “I’ll try to remember that … in case I ever meet a superior.”

Cal put his hand on her knee and stroked it. She laced her fingers on top of his and turned her attention to the road.

“Stop the carriage!” Lelani shouted.

“Shit, Mommy!” Seth screamed, rudely awakened. “What? What?”

They pulled onto the shoulder. Lelani bolted out the back and ran toward a dilapidated billboard.

“Christ! I thought we had an accident,” Seth said.

Cal activated the hazards and backed the Explorer until they reached Lelani. She had a horrified expression on her face. They joined her.

The ad on the billboard was torn and faded, but there was enough to see that it had been for an old carnie freak show in the area. It read,
Real Live Man-Horse! See the Eighth Wonder of The World at the Rogers’ Farm, off Route 33.
The illustration was of a centaur rearing on his hind legs in all his glory.

“He looks familiar,” Cal said.

“So what?” Seth said. “Carnies have been running crap like this for years. It’s a guy in a harness. It’s a con.”

“The centaur in this drawing is Fronik,” Lelani said. “He’s from my clan and was one of the members of your party.”

“Yeah,” Cal confirmed. “I vaguely remember. Why aren’t all my memories clear? They don’t feel a part of me. More like old television shows I remember watching.”

“The memory spell is still active. It transferred your memory anagrams to inactive neural tissue, and is rearranging them as it rewrites them back to the cerebrum in proper order.”

“Huh?”

“She’s defragmenting your hard drive,” Seth said. “Haven’t you ever used Norton’s speed disk?”

“His memory will be complete by morning,” Lelani answered.

“Should he be driving?” Cat asked.

“Probably not.”

“Now she tells us,” Seth snapped.

“You are inebriated, her ladyship is emotionally distraught, and I am incapable of operating this vehicle,” Lelani stated. “There wasn’t any other choice.”

“We could have waited until tomorrow,” Cat said.

“No. We have already wasted too much time,” she replied.

“Why are we out here?” Cal asked. He was the least concerned with his mind’s precarious state out of the group. “We should find the transfer site. Find Rosencrantz.”

“Fronik’s aid would be invaluable,” Lelani said.

“This poster is ancient,” Seth noted.

“He might know where to find Rosencrantz.”

“It’s a drawing. We don’t even know for sure that it’s him,” Cal said.

“What happened to time not being a luxury?” Seth asked.

“This could shorten our investigation,” Lelani said. It was almost a plea.

It occurred to Cat that until Cal’s brain had caught up with his life, until he got a handle on everything that went wrong, he relied heavily on Lelani’s judgment. She could hear his gears turning, trying to decide if this was a good idea or merely indulging her personal cause.

“Cal, she hasn’t let us down so far,” Cat said. “If my vote matters…”

“So much for the captain being leader of the pack,” Seth said. “‘I’ll follow his orders,’ yadda, yadda, yadda.”

Lelani looked ready to drop-kick Seth. Cal stepped between them. “We’ll go to this farm,” he said. “It’s only a few miles away. This Rogers could be Rosencrantz for all we know. Maybe Fronik got lucky.”

“I’m driving,” Cat said.

2

The dirt road ran for three miles before it came to the farmhouse—if one could even call it a house. Wooden slats barely held up a corrugated tin roof. The windows were caked with dust. The termite-infested porch was missing every other board. Ramshackle, broken, dilapidated, and deserted was what came to mind. Cal regretted the detour already. Cat pulled the vehicle around the gravel driveway and everyone spilled out.

Cal surveyed the scene, not sure what he was looking for. On a field between the house and the barn, pieces of an old canvas tent, flat and weathered with age, sporadically protruded from the snow. The poles leaned inward toward center, rusted at the bottom where they met the ground. Some had fallen over completely and turned the snow orange with oxidation. It hadn’t been used in years.

“Don’t stray,” Cal said. “Lelani, you have twenty minutes to find something relevant.”

She bolted toward the barn, which looked even worse than the house. Lelani looked like any coed running, but her tracks in the snow beyond the periphery of her spell betrayed her equestrian half.

Much to their surprise, the screen door creaked open soon after. A small Cabbage Patch–like woman with gray frizzled hair and a broom in one hand came onto the porch. Her puffy face had the texture of a walnut.

“You folks from the County?”

Cat looked less threatening, so Cal prodded her to speak.

“No, we’re not,” Cat said. “We are looking for an old friend. He looks like the actor who played the horse-man in the billboard on the road.”

The woman eyed them suspiciously. “You friends of Fred?”

“Our friend grew up with him. She’s by the barn right now.” Cat said pointing to Lelani. “Would it be okay if we talked to Fred?”

The old woman studied Lelani with a squint that doubled the creases in her face. She considered the request for a moment, then told them, “You can’t talk to Fred.”

“It’s important. His family is really worried…”

“You can’t talk to Fred on account’a he’s dead. Been dead nine years.” She pointed to a small dirty grave marker next to an old tree.

“I’m sorry,” Cat said. She looked to her husband for suggestions. Cal checked his watch, looked at the waning sun, and watched Lelani pick things out of the snow. His impatience might be an effect of his impeded brain, so he suppressed an urge to scream. He turned back to the woman.

“Did you know him well, ma’am?” he asked.

“Well enough. He was my husband.”

The three caught each other with odd expressions. The side trip was a bust as far as Cal was concerned. They ought to be heading to the lay line; they should be looking for the boy. Everyone else in the party was secondary.

“I think we may have made a mistake,” he said. “We’re sorry to bother you, ma’am.”

“T’ain’t no bother none.” She scrutinized Lelani as best as she could from the distance, shutting one eye and squinting with the other. “You saying that filly is Fred’s kin?”

“We thought so, but we were mistaken.”

“Oh. That’s too bad. Fred weren’t no actor, you know. I was wondering if she could tell me which side of the family gave him that dang horse’s ass.”

They froze in their steps and exchanged looks again.

“Excuse me, but, you said Fred was your
husband
?” Cat asked.

“Got kids?” Seth cut in.

“You folks come in, and I’ll make some tea.”

Cal looked toward the barn, but Lelani was gone. The porch creaked under his weight. The house smelled of must and rot. Prominently displayed on the mantel was a blue ribbon from the county fair eleven years prior for best chili recipe. A wooden cross hung on the far wall. Coils stuck out of the couch and recliner. A steel and canvas wheelchair was folded in the corner behind a door. Yellowed lace doilies were draped over most of the furniture in a delusive attempt to cover the junkyard couture of the decor. The place reminded Cal of the living room on
Sanford and Son
. All that was missing was a toothless, old curmudgeon.

“That’s my brother, Eustace, in the corner there,” the woman said. The spot was badly lit. A man with no teeth, a week’s worth of facial growth, and at least twenty years on his sister, grunted and raised his cane in a collective greeting and threat to knock someone’s head.

“My name’s Enid,” she said. “Take a seat, now. I’ll be right out.”

Cal checked his watch. The twenty minutes were almost up and he wished they were on their way to the lay line. According to Lelani, this Rosencrantz might be able to cast a global memory enchantment. Not only could the events of the night they transferred to this world be revealed in one fell swoop, but every member of the original party would recall their true identities regardless of where they were. It could triple their numbers overnight. Lelani had tried it herself on her arrival, but it had proved too much. Global enchantments, she said, were considered high-end mojo that even the best wizards had trouble with. All she had managed was to trigger Cal’s nightmares.

Cal noticed a Polaroid picture of Enid and her groom on the end table. It was Fronik for sure. Fronik only came up to Enid’s chest, as though he were a man proposing. Perhaps he was just being cautious about allowing his bottom half to be photographed. Cal looked out of a grime-covered window and wondered what Lelani was up to.

“Got any beer?” Seth shouted into the kitchen.

“Got any manners?” Cat scolded. “We apologize for Seth’s behavior,” she told Eustace.

The old geezer wore a stupid grin and bounced on the chair, excited. “Fursd prize. Heh. Fursd prize, heh,” he repeated. A cloudy gray stream snaked from his nose and dropped from his grizzled chin.

“You won first prize at the fair,” Cat said, politely. Cal marveled at his wife’s patience with the old and the feebleminded. No one else received the benefit of such patience from her. Catherine MacDonnell did not suffer fools well. “I’m a sucker for a good chili recipe.”

“See gret.”

“Sea grete? Is that a spice?”

“See gret.”

“Don’t mind Eustace none,” Enid said, bringing a plastic tray with a steaming pot and cups. “He ain’t had a whole thought in years. Not since the stroke.”

“I’m sorry,” Cat said.

“Oh, he’s more manageable this way. Fred and him never got on, you know. Eustace loved the hooch. I don’t keep the snake water in my home no more,” she told Seth.

Enid poured four cups and stretched two tea bags between them. She took hers with cream. Cat opted for the lemon. Seth and Cal declined. Enid sat in a padded rocking chair, which made her look even more like a Cabbage Patch doll.

“How did you meet Fred?” Cal asked.

“Well … it was late October, we was having some mighty big weather if I remember rightly. Eustace was out in the barn when Fred just stumbled in. He weren’t feeling right and just passed out.”

“Did you attack him?”

“No, sir. He passed out all on his own. Eustace came into the house and got the shotgun on account of Fred looking so strange. I followed him back. Fred had a bad fever. We pulled him into a stall, got him a blanket, water, and set up a kerosene heater. I tended him ’til the fever broke. When he come to, he had no idea who he was. Couldn’t even tell why he had a horse’s ass ’stead of two legs like normal folks.”

“And the carnie poster?” Seth asked.

“That was Eustace’s idea. Had some problems with locusts that year. Crop was a bust. Thought it might bring in some extra money. But few people come. Too remote. Not like it is now, all hustle and bustle. We got a traffic light in town now. Most folks thought Fred was a trick. Even folks that did come din’ believe it.”

“And Fred was okay with this?” Cal asked.

“Would you like some more tea, hon?” Enid asked.

“Enid?”

“Fred cost us in fixins and medicine. Eustace put him to work. He had to earn his keep. Idle hands is the devil’s tool. We ain’t like you city folk with extra money hidden in the couch. What you see is what we got. Fred didn’t have nowhere to go anyways.”