Time Thief: A Time Thief Novel (8 page)

“Yes, we’re leaving now,” Peter said, and suited action to word, listening to Dalton continue to speak in his earpiece.

“Guardian savants showed extraordinary abilities, and were able to do things that were beyond the means of ordinary Guardians. It holds that such abilities, were they applied to another type of being, could also be shown by those who are deemed of the savant level of proficiency.”

Peter contemplated turning on the radio to drown out his boss’s voice, but he was too much of a professional to do that.

Besides, the radio was sure to get nothing but evangelical channels and pass reports this far deep into the mountains, and the pain in his head was bad enough as it was.

“One might almost be willing to speculate that savants of all types of beings would be able to recognize their fellows without even being near to them,” Dalton commented blithely. “I wonder how one would go about verifying that?”

“I’ll be in Rose Hill before dark,” Peter said, ignoring the line of speculation altogether.

“Excellent. Call me when you get to town, and I’ll arrange to meet you and pick up the DNA.”

“All right. I want to check out the address first. It may be nothing but a red herring, but it’s worth looking at.”

“I enjoy herrings,” Sunil said, apropos of nothing. “When I was visiting my distant cousin in England, where you killed me, Rajesh gave me both herrings and kippers to eat. To be factually honest, I enjoyed the kippers more.”

Peter sighed.

“Agreed. Later, perhaps, we can discuss just how it is that you knew those two men were Travellers—”

Peter clicked a button on the Bluetooth device, hanging up the phone, and relishing the cessation of pain in his head.

“Dalton really is the limit,” he muttered under his breath.

“I am wondering, the limit of what?”

“It’s just an expression,” Peter explained.

“Ah. A colloquialism.” Sunil pronounced the last word very carefully, his pleasure at learning something new evident in his voice. “He is the limit. I am the limit. You are most respectfully the limit. Yes, I see it now. It is a very good colloquialism, is it not?”

Peter felt the weight of his sins pressing down on him despite the fact that Sunil was apparently happy. “Yes, it is a good expression. However, Dalton is mad if he thinks that I’m going to discuss my talents, such as they are. I haven’t spent my entire life trying to get away from the time-thief label to have a lengthy discussion about what it is to be a Traveller.”

“And yet, that is exactly what you are, is it?” Sunil said. “For if you were not a Traveller, then I would not be
here, and we would not be having this grand adventure together! We really are most fortunate.”

Peter sighed again, feeling the Eeyore cloud grow a couple of sizes larger. “You are the only man I know who is happier dead than you were alive.”

“That is because my distant cousin Rajesh was a very great man, a Vaishya Vani, you understand, and did not have time for one such as me. Although it is true that he gave me a job at one of his very successful restaurants, for which I was most grateful.”

“Sunil, what did I tell you?”

“You have told me a great many things, Peter-ji, all of which I value highly.”

“One of those things was that I don’t hold with the caste system. No one in the Otherworld does. It doesn’t matter that you were born to a lower caste than your snobbish cousin who couldn’t be bothered to give his own flesh and blood a better job than dishwasher. You’re a valuable person on your own.”

“Yes, yes, you have told me this, and I am agreeing,” Sunil said quickly, his light bobbing earnestly.

“Good. See that you remember it. I don’t want to hear any more about you being unworthy of anything but the utmost respect and honor. There is no such thing as the untouchable caste anymore.”

“No, there is not, there is most certainly not, and we Dalits are most extremely grateful about this.”

Peter gave up trying to make the Indian understand the idea of self-worth. He had centuries ahead of him in which he could instill that.

The tiny ball of light buzzed around quietly in the seat as they drove.

“I am thinking that I have angered you with my reference
to my death. For that, I am most entirely sorry,” Sunil said a few minutes later, his voice contrite and subdued. Peter hated the fact that the man whose death he had caused felt obligated to apologize to him.

“There’s nothing to be sorry about,” he said brusquely. “I’m the one who was responsible.”

“It was an accident,” Sunil said, and as penance, didn’t even comment on the petting zoo sign that loomed up on the horizon. Peter knew that the animus—what mortals would describe as a cross between a soul and a spirit—desperately wanted to see the petting zoo just as he had desperately wanted to see every other point of interest that they’d come across during their stay on the West Coast. To be honest, Sunil’s joie de vivre was one of his most endearing traits, if at times somewhat wearing.

“At least you’ve been saddled with a cheerful person,” Dalton had told him when he announced three years ago that thereafter he would be accompanied by a tiny ball of light that had once been a teenage illegal alien in England. “Count your blessings. You could have been stuck with someone much less pleasant.”

And for that reason Peter pulled off at the next sign indicating the route to the petting zoo. Instantly, Sunil’s light began blinking very fast, a sign he was filled with excitement. “We are going to the zoo of petting animals?”

Peter shook his head. “We can’t stay long. And if there are others around—”

“I will stay close to the ground so that no one sees me,” Sunil promised, chattering away happily. “The sign informs us that the petting zoo has alpacas! I’ve never seen an alpaca. Do you think they will try to eat me like that buffalo who tried to do so a few weeks ago when
you kindly let me visit the ranch? Its tongue was most amazing. Ah, another sign, what a happy circumstance. Perhaps it warns us that alpacas eat shiny things?
‘Please keep your children at your side. Unattended children will be given a shot of espresso and a puppy.’
What a very most amazing sign that is. I wonder what sort of puppy they are giving?”

The sun was setting behind the mountain peaks when Peter arrived back at the small town of Rose Hill. He drove slowly down the street, this time noticing the composition of the town. When he had been here earlier, he hadn’t paid much attention, intent as he was on surveillance on his family. That had all gone bust when, while Sunil was off ecstatically chasing a butterfly in the woods, he ran into that redhead with the dogs.

What a bizarre woman she was. Not at all to his taste, with her breezy, flippant way of speaking, and her attempts to pull the wool over his eyes by acting like he was the crazy one, when clearly she was playing some game with him. One that involved populating his person with annoying little balls of fur that had faces only their mothers could love.

A horrible thought struck him. What if she was one of his cousins’ wives? He was annoyed by that thought, and then he was annoyed by the fact that it annoyed him. “It doesn’t matter who she is,” he told himself as he cruised down the main street, idly noting that it contained the usual mom-and-pop businesses, ranging from country diner to a thrift shop, a grocery store, and a motel that was located in what appeared to be a small, renovated church. “She’s nothing to me. No, she’s something—she’s dangerous. She belongs to them.”

“Who is dangerous? Who belongs to someone? It is a
woman in the forest you are speaking of? The popsy you said you saw?”

“Yes, the pretty woman in the woods.”

“Ah,” Sunil said, his light flickering in a manner that indicated great wisdom. “You fancy her, do you not? This is a good thing. You are without a woman, and men such as you should not be without a woman. My mother always said that women bring us much happiness.”

“I don’t fancy her, and even if I did, it wouldn’t matter. She’s obviously connected with one of the family.”

Which was a pity, because he felt something inside him ease a little when he had run into her in the woods, a sense of something lightening, as if the burden he carried wasn’t quite as heavy as it had been.

“Ridiculous,” he snorted, then remembered the way she had spoken the same word. She had a lovely voice, light and bubbling like a spring. Just like her personality. He could tell she was one of those light-and-bubbly-personality people like Sunil. He disliked light and bubbly. He had no time for it. His life was one of grim responsibility and darkness.

She did amuse him, though. How long had it been since a woman had genuinely wanted to make him laugh?

“I do not laugh,” he told his reflection in the rearview mirror. It looked rather surprised, to be honest. He didn’t like that, either, and added it to his list of annoyances. “I am a man who hunts down murderers, even if they are in his own family. I have killed an innocent man, and have had his animus bound to me forever because of my sins. I have nothing to laugh about. I scoff at laughter, and light, happy women with beautiful eyes and breasts and bellies. They are as nothing to me.”

“You noticed the popsy’s eyes and breasts and belly? This is good,” Sunil said, his light nodding with the full wisdom of his twenty years. “It is the way of women that they tempt us with such things, although we must not touch unless so invited. This I have learned.”

“I wonder what she was doing with Lenore Faa’s pugs,” Peter mused, half to himself.

“I do not know the answer to that, not having seen the woman. Or the pugs.”

“She must be one of my cousins’ wives. There was no sign of a wedding ring on her finger, though. Hmm.”

“That is a highly most excellent piece of news. I consider it a sign of good fortune. You can pursue the popsy knowing that you will not be disturbing the happy home life of another.”

The honk of a horn behind them ended Peter’s musings on the pugged woman. He waved a hand at the truck behind him, obviously impatient because he had stopped in the middle of the street, and pulled over into the parking lot of the church motel. It bore the same address that the Californian police had traced from the gas receipt.

“Right,” he told Sunil, pocketing his cell phone, and making sure his gun was tucked into its holster. “Enough mulling over women who thrust pugs on people, and time to focus on the job at hand. You stay in the car until I’ve seen the lie of the land.”

“I am certain that I could be of much help to you,” Sunil said hopefully. “Should you need the assistance of one such as me, that is.”

It was on the tip of his tongue to refuse the offer of help, but he just didn’t have the heart to do so.

“You can come with me, but you have to stay out of
sight, and not speak until I tell you it’s safe. Do you understand?”

“Most accurately do I understand!” Sunil bounced happily up and down in the seat until Peter held open the pocket of his jeans. The light flitted over to it and inserted itself, leaving Peter with a slight tingling sensation on his hip bone.

He exited the car, quickly scanning the immediate surroundings. It looked as innocent as could be. The building had clearly seen better days, bearing the usual small-town church shape—steeple up front, a couple of (mildewed) stone steps, and a few pieces of somewhat dismal stained glass visible on either side of double doors from which paint peeled in long, dingy strips.

A sign that alerted potential customers to the joyous possibilities of vacancies lay on the ground, half-covered by a round bush covered in yellow flowers. Peter walked carefully up the slippery steps, and pushed open one of the doors, blinking a couple of times as his eyes accustomed themselves to the sudden gloomy interior.

“Silence now, Sunil.”

“I will be the most silent you have ever heard,” came the muffled reply from his hip.

In the distance, he heard the faint sound of a buzzer. The interior of the church—now motel—had been divided up into a main passage down what was once the center aisle that led to the altar, with rooms opening off it on either side. At the far end of the passage, an archway opened into a dark, dismal space, above which an equally dark balcony had been added. Peter was about to explore the former when the sound of quick footsteps had him pausing midway down the aisle.

A woman with a halo of curly brown hair restrained by
a brilliant lime green headband suddenly appeared at the balcony, leaning over it to yell, “Hi! You looking for a room? I sure hope you are, because man alive, are you a long drink of water for sore eyes. Or something like that. I never was really good with similes. Or metaphors. Whichever that is. I’m Alison. You
do
want a room, don’t you?”

She was nothing like what he expected. She also wasn’t a Traveller, which relieved his mind on that regard. “Actually, I’m looking for a friend of mine. He recommended this motel to me, and I wondered if he was here. His name is”—covertly he slid a glance to the slip of paper upon which he’d written down the information from the California police—“Alan Renfrew.”

“Really?” Alison’s eyes opened wide for a few seconds before she jumped back and scampered along the balcony until it met a circular metal staircase, down which she thundered.

“He is here?” Peter asked, somewhat confused by her response.

“No, the ‘really?’ was about someone actually recommending this place. Oh, don’t get me wrong, it’s home and everything, and I’m grateful to have it because the alternative is staying with my mom and stepdad, but it’s not quite the Hilton, you know what I mean? And we never, ever get guys like you here.”

Peter stiffened, eyeing the woman warily. She reminded him of a friendly puppy, bouncing around with happy abandon. “I don’t know whether you expect me to apologize for something, but it appears you do.”

“No,” she said with a surprisingly wolfish grin. “I was being wildly inappropriate to a potential customer, though, and that’s something that Vic would have a hissy over.”

“Vic?” Peter ceased being annoyed, and threw himself wholeheartedly into confused. He was tired of being annoyed by everything. Confusion might not be the ideal state to find oneself, but there were worse things that could befall him. Besides, he’d always been rather good at untangling chaos, and this young woman’s verbal acrobatics offered him an opportunity to do just that. “Vic is the owner of the motel?”