The Dragon Guard (12 page)

“Hold on, everyone,” Jason said. “Aunt Freyah, I hope we didn't bother you too much. Things have been . . . well, a bit . . . unusual.”

She snapped him a sharp-eyed look, then her face softened into a smile. “Lad, get along with you. There is adventure waiting for you elsewhere.”

Actually, that was something he'd rather
not
have heard, he thought, as he closed his hand about his crystal and sent them all tumbling after Gavan.

They fell out of nowhere, hard, as though someone had opened a sack and dumped them out, like potatoes rolling onto a kitchen floor. Appropriate, he thought, since they seemed to be in a kitchen, and Eleanora had been shuffled around like a hot potato no one wanted to hold.

He sat up, after removing Trent's elbow from his rib cage, and looked around.

“FireAnn!” Bailey blurted out, half a second before he recognized the camp kitchen as well. Of course, Bailey had spent far more time here than he had when they were at Ravenwyng together, but they'd all taken their turn helping the fiery-haired cook. He got to his feet and put a hand down to help Ting. Bailey had already bounded up, and Trent just stayed on his hands and knees, practicing some deep breathing it looked like.

He could hear muted voices around the corner of the kitchen, near the pantry. They all trailed after the sound as if following a delicious scent.

FireAnn already had Eleanora in a cushiony chair, with her feet up on a well-stuffed ottoman, and was tucking an afghan about her still form, as they finally caught up. FireAnn looked like a gypsy in a sweeping long skirt and peasant blouse, with a kelly green kerchief binding back her intensely red hair, as though anything could tame those boundless curls. She looked up and smiled at them all, and Jason jolted to a stop.

She'd always had laugh lines about her eyes and mouth, but in the less than a year he'd known her, those lines had become sharp and drawn. He closed his mouth, about to say something in surprise, and managing to halt the words in his throat. FireAnn mistook the look on his face.

“Now, lad, dinna be worrying. I'll take good care of Eleanora. Gavan will get things righted around, and she'll be up in no time at all!” FireAnn stood and patted Eleanora's limp hand as she settled her arm across her lap.

“No herbs, then?”

FireAnn turned her smile upon Bailey. “No lass, as you've already been guessin'. Herbs willna do it. Only Magick and time, and we've both.”

Jason stared at Gavan's back. The Magicker stood at the door to FireAnn's tiny home, which shared a common wall with the mess hall, but little else, and they could only guess that something about Lake Wannameecha held Rainwater's intense attention.

But did they have both time and Magick? The only thing sure in life was that, sooner or later, they were all going to run out of it.

FireAnn smoothed her apron out. “Best get home with you all. I'd invite you to supper, but all I have is mushroom pie, and younguns need more than that!”

“I'll say,” muttered Trent. His stomach made a noise as if emphasizing it.

Ting nudged him. “It's hours past dinner.”

“Ten o'clock snack.” Trent sighed wistfully.

“Right, then.” FireAnn smiled brightly. “Along with you, or do you need a boost.”

“No,” said Jason. “I've got it.” The lavender crystal in his hand still burned with an unexpected warmth. “Good night, Gavan. And to you, FireAnn.”

“Night my lads and lassies,” the Magicker called back, even as Jason sent them stepping into doorways to take them home. Gavan said nothing, and Jason felt that was possibly the most despairing part of the whole evening.

When even Gavan did not know where to go or what to do, the Magickers were troubled indeed.

J
ASON sat down hard on the edge of his bed, his body shaking a little from the night's activities, and his mind reeling a bit from the time changes. Could he get jet lag from Crystaling back and forth? He wasn't sure, but he did know something. He was suddenly, incredibly, ravenously hungry. He listened a moment. The McIntire household seemed very quiet, as if everyone had settled down to sleep, so he got up and lowered his trapdoor silently to make his way down to the kitchen. He crept as softly as he could, and used what little he knew of Magickal stealth to keep the floorboards and doors from squeaking as he passed by.

Once in the kitchen, he breathed a little easier, as he rounded up a sandwich of baked turkey slices and provolone cheese, on fresh crusty shepherd's bread. He wrapped it in a thick paper napkin to take back upstairs, and was making his way back again, when he heard the soft murmur of voices from the Dozer's office study. He had no curiosity at all, his only intent was to get back up the stairs before he was heard, but then they said his name.

He stopped on the first step of the landing, his whole body poised to listen in spite of his intentions. He found his crystal with his free hand, and heard the noises around him sharpen a bit.

“He keeps secrets.”

“Anyone that age has secrets, Joanna. He's a good boy. You need to relax and accept that. It would do you both good if you did.”

A sigh. Even if he hadn't recognized his stepmother's voice, he'd know the long-suffering sigh. Part of him quailed. He really didn't want to know what he'd done lately that failed some impossible expectation she had of him that he didn't even understand! But part of him dug his heels in stubbornly.

“I just . . . I can't handle his sneaking out. What if he becomes like his father?”

“Jason's father had an enormous burden he didn't know how to carry. The boy is fine. Trust me.”

Jason felt his face crease. What was that all about? What was Joanna talking about? All the times he'd wanted her to talk about his dad, and nothing, and now, in the shadows . . . what? What was she
saying?

He fought to stay where he was, quiet, unseen, unheard, but his heart thumped as loudly as a drum in protest. Surely they'd hear that! And then he could demand to know what she was talking about. His hands tightened.

“As for sneaking out, do you even know if he's back yet? I should think that would be your first concern.”

Movement in the study.

“You're right, of course.”

Jason unfroze and took the stairs as quickly as he could, both landings, then sprinted up his trapdoor ladder. The sandwich, crumpled now in his fist, he shoved into his desk drawer. Then he shed his clothes as quickly as he could before diving into bed and had time to draw about four steadying breaths before; a knock sounded downstairs in the hallway.

“Jason?”

“Mmmphf?”

“May I come up?”

He rustled around in his blankets, trying to sound warm and sleepy. “Sure.”

The trapdoor lowered and Joanna's face appeared as she climbed the first few steps. “Were you sleeping?”

“Yeah. Something wrong?” He scrubbed a hand over his face, trying to smudge his expression. He wasn't a good liar, never had been, and didn't want to try to get better if he could help it.

“In bed early.”

“Oh.” He made a noncommittal noise. “I fell asleep in the closet earlier, looking at . . . you know. Stuff.”

He had a box, small, of a few of his father's things. Not much to remember anyone by, really, but she'd been careful to give it to him. He kept it in his closet. It had been years since he had slept next to the box, but he'd done it quite a lot in those first horribly empty months after his father had died. He hadn't done it but one other time, that he could remember, since moving into this house.

“In your closet, Jason?”

He nodded and stifled a yawn, a real one this time, and felt his face warm.

“Oh, hon.” Joanna looked as if she wanted to say something more, but instead closed her mouth.

“I must have been really tired,” he added, by way of explanation, sounding as embarrassed as he felt. “I haven't done that in years, you know? I was just looking at some things, and next thing I knew, I was all stiff and curled up on the closet floor.”

“It's all the stress,” Joanna said gently. “School, soccer, getting ready for high school.” The trapdoor stair creaked and part of her face submerged as she took a step downward. “Jason, if you need to talk about anything, you know you can.”

Actually, he couldn't, but it was nice to hear her say that. He took a deep breath. “Someday, I'd like to talk about my dad a little.”

“How he died?”

Jason shook his head. “Nah, I know most of that. I want to know how he lived. You know, the day-to-day stuff. I'm forgetting.”

She smiled sadly. “We all do, don't we? He was a good man to both of us. Someday, we'll talk.” She disappeared entirely then, and the bedroom ladder swung back into place. Jason watched it for a long moment, before getting his sandwich out of the desk drawer, and wolfing it down. The crumpling hadn't hurt the flavor at all, although it seemed a bit chewier. Then, he scrunched down into his bed, and tried to find a way to sleep. He didn't know how he could bother Gavan now about Tomaz with Eleanora so ill, but it seemed to him that the longer things went, the worse they got.

Tomorrow he'd have to do something.

Consequently, it took him a long time to fall asleep as if tomorrow were determined never to arrive.

 

She'd returned about the time she left, Bailey noted on her watch, as she stepped out of the crystal at her front door. She gave a grin and let out an impish cheer. She had tried to imagine arriving just that way, and she had . . . given that time seemed to flow like an unpredictable river through crystal doorways. Of course, arriving outside her apartment instead of inside, was not a good idea. So the experiment hadn't been as successful as she'd hoped. Still, there were possibilities to consider.

She put her crystal bracelet back on and fumbled in her pocket for her apartment key. Behind her, she could hear someone moving in the corridor. Lacey chittered nervously from her pocket as she tried to fit the key in smoothly. A duplicate key, it hadn't been cut quite right and she always had to do a certain amount of jangling around to get the key in and turned. It stuck stubbornly.

The steps drew closer. Bailey looked over her shoulder. A dark-clothed man stood, watching her. He stepped back when he saw her spot him.

Cripes! She was being followed. No doubt about it now. She shoved her key in, hard, and turned it, praying it wouldn't snap off in the lock. The door opened and she flung herself inside, and quickly secured all the dead bolts. Nothing else happened. She waited a very long moment before looking out the peephole to an empty hallway.

A moan from her mother's bedroom answered her outburst, and Bailey tiptoed to the threshold.

“Mom?”

The room light was dimmed to barely on, and she could see her mother lying on the bed, a folded washrag across her eyes. “Mom? You've got a headache?” ‘Cause if it wasn't a headache, and something bad had happened—Bailey's blood felt as though it could boil!

“Yes, hon, I'm sorry. One of my migraines. How is Ting?”

“She's fine, mostly. Really worried about her grandmother.”

Her mother smiled wearily. “If you're hungry, there's some tuna casserole left. I'm sorry, I need to get over this headache, and I've got to go in to work tomorrow.”

“Overtime!” said Bailey brightly. “That's always good.” She entered the room quietly, lifted the washrag, and took it to the bathroom where she ran water as hot as she could stand it and wrung it out a few times before bringing it back steaming, and replacing it across her mother's forehead. “There, that should help.”

“Thanks, baby,” her mother said faintly, and then lapsed back into a limp heap on the bed, as if she could will the headache away by not really existing. Bailey closed the door nearly shut on her way out. Now was not the time to worry her mother further.

Tuna casserole was, like spaghetti, one of those refrigerator items that often tasted better a day or two later. She crunched up a few stray potato chips from a bag in the bread box, and sat down to eat, mulling over the day's events. From a magickal point of view, it hadn't been a good week, so maybe it was just as well it was Friday and nearly over. She thought a moment, then left a note to her mom that Trent's father had been laid off, just in case there were any openings where she worked. It couldn't hurt.

She checked her watch. She couldn't talk to Ting because . . . if her watch was right . . . Ting and she were in Jennifer Logan's backyard saying good-bye.
If
her watch was right. It couldn't be, of course, because how could she be in two places at once? Or want to be, with someone stalking her.

Unsettled, Bailey paced around her bedroom a bit before grabbing up the dullest book she could find. She read ahead in her classic novel assigned for English, found the dreary book putting her to sleep, and decided to settle Lacey in her cage and herself down for the night when the phone began to ring. She grabbed it up before it could rouse her mother.

“Little girl!” someone said at the other end. “Happy Birthday.”

Just when she thought Friday couldn't have gotten much worse. She hadn't heard that voice in nearly a year and a half, and in a few ways, had hoped she never would again, even if that made her a really awful daughter.

“Daddy,” said Bailey flatly. “It's not my birthday, and you're drunk.”

“Is that any way to talk to me, punkin?”

“Maybe not, but it's true. It's late, and I don't want to talk to you.”