Epilogue
T erkel walked through the big patio doors out onto the deck of his own apartment, just seeking a few minutes of peace and quiet, something that was hard to come by in his household. He sat down in a comfy deck chair with a scotch and tilted his glass to the sky above.
“Not sure what you had in mind when you set this all in motion,” he muttered to the world at random, “but good job.” At a soft laugh behind him, he turned to see Celia. She wore a long soft gown and appeared to be floating, as she walked toward Terk. Her body was slim now, after only six weeks since the twins were born, mostly back to normal, but riper. The births of their twins, when it finally happened, had been an experience Terk would never forget. Celia had come through it like a trouper.
“What are you doing out here all alone?” she asked him.
“Well, it’s the all-alone part I was looking forward to.” When she stopped next to him to grab his outstretched hand, he added, “Except for you.”
She chuckled. “Of course, but, hey, if you need alone time, that’s totally okay, you know?”
“Nope. Alone is one thing, but alone without you ? That’s not what I meant at all.”
“And yet it would still be okay.”
“That’s fine.… It can be okay but some other day.”
She just smiled, and he opened his arms. Instead of sitting down beside him, she sat in his lap and curled up against him. “It’s been a hell of a ride,” she murmured.
“Are you kidding?” he asked, then burst into laughter. “That doesn’t do it justice. I mean, a hell of a ride can entail all kinds of things,” he clarified, “including the way you got pregnant.”
“It sure as hell doesn’t even begin to equate to the happy chaos that our world is now.” She raised her head to see his face and smiled. “Any regrets?”
“None,” he stated instantly, “no regrets, just a few little concerns. You know, some money issues, a little worry about the bills, all that stuff,” he shared, “but definitely no regrets.”
“Don’t worry about the money issues either,” she countered, with a chuckle. “We’re making do.”
“Yeah, making do won’t cut it,” he noted. “I am responsible for an awful lot of people now.”
She traced his lips with her finger and whispered, “It’s not just your responsibility. You’re not alone in this,” she said. “It’s all of us together, and that makes a whole lot of difference.”
He smiled, held her close, and whispered, “It sure as shit has been a ride. We’ve expanded way more than I even thought we could.”
“And yet I don’t think we’re done, are we?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” he said, with a heartfelt sigh. “The world’s such a mess. Sometimes it seems as if we might never be done.”
“We may not,” she acknowledged, “but you have created a special place, and… I hate to say, a rescue , but—”
“Oh, yeah, rescue fits,” Terk agreed. “Jesus, we’re creating a rescue for psychics.” Then he burst into laughter again. “Who knew?”
“Who knew what?” she asked.
“Who knew that so many psychics were in need, that so many psychics were out there? Who knew there were so many jobs out there that everybody desperately needed us psychics to do them?”
She smiled at him and added, “I think everybody but you.” He rolled his eyes at that, and she giggled. “You’re very special.”
“ Right ,” he muttered, but it was hard to argue with her. If ever somebody could turn his ugly day into something beautiful, it was Celia. “I presume the babies are fed and asleep?”
“They are,” she replied, with a happy sigh. “Something else I never expected to happen, and, boom , there it is. Motherhood .”
“Right. None of us expected that.”
“And yet,” she added, staring at him, “I can’t help but feel that we’re blessed.”
He held her close and nodded. “Absolutely.”
“What are we doing about Riff?” she asked.
“Yeah, I’m not sure what we’re doing about Riff,” he shared in a somber tone. “We still haven’t had any news, and yet I feel as if we’ve been blocked time and time again. Then there is Angela, who just keeps coming back.”
“Like a homing pigeon,” Celia added.
“I don’t know if either one of them are prepared to realize that the homing pigeon keeps returning because of Riff.”
“I don’t know that even she’s ready to accept that yet,” Celia agreed, “and the kids make her excuses all too real. Good excuses for her to keep showing up, you know?”
“Exactly,” Terk noted, “though I was hoping maybe some of that would slow down.”
“It will soon,” Celia pointed out. “Several more births will come, and then we shouldn’t have any more pregnancies.” She wiggled in his lap. “Unless you want one.”
“God, no.” He stared at her in shock, and now she burst out laughing. “You were joking, right?” he asked in horror. “Please say it.”
“I was joking—or maybe I was just testing the waters.”
“You mean, two isn’t enough?”
She gave him a brilliant smile and shook her head. “ Hmm , no. I don’t think two is enough,” she whispered, “but we don’t need any more right away.”
“Thank God for that,” he declared, facing her. “We have lots more headaches to deal with before I want to go down that road.”
“I don’t disagree. I would like you to be a little bit more set up, a little bit less stressed, and a little bit more capable of taking some downtime with the babies.”
“Babies?” he asked slowly.
“Yeah, babies,” she repeated. “Another set of twins awaits us.”
He sucked in his breath and winced, but almost instantly two tiny red-haired cherubs popped into his mind. “Good God, red-haired twins?”
Celia chuckled. “Red-haired girls ,” she clarified, almost too excited. “Yep, and I can’t wait.”
“Maybe,” he said cautiously, “but we do have jobs to do.”
“I thought you were out here, thinking about Jonas’s latest MI6 op.”
He sighed. “I came here to try not to think.”
“What is it about and where?”
“Somebody in Iceland,” he began. “I’m just not sure who to send yet.”
“If it’s somebody Jonas already knows, that would be an even bigger draw for him.”
“Possibly, but I’m pressured on this because I’m pretty sure Jonas will be calling anytime now, looking for an answer.”
“Well, if somebody’s hurt and injured, there isn’t much time to decide anyway.”
“True, and he had somebody on the job, but apparently that fell through.”
“When you say, fell through …”
“Yeah, they were killed,” Terk stated, his tone grim, “which is why I’ve been holding off.”
“And yet?”
“And yet nothing,” he replied. “I’m not sure that we want to get into something like that. I don’t want anybody here risking their lives anymore. Everybody’s got families now, and somehow, it just seems different.”
“Sure, but that also needs to be their decision,” she noted calmly. “Everybody here has been affected by a case, one way or another.”
“That’s true,” he conceded, “but at least it doesn’t involve trafficking kids this time.”
“What is this one about, though?”
“I think someone is marrying and then killing their spouse and then marrying and killing again,” he said.
“So, why is MI6 concerned?”
“Because they think it’s one of their diplomats, and nobody can touch him.”
“Ah, so diplomatic immunity means he can travel the world, can keep committing all kinds of crimes, and nobody gives a crap?”
“Well, we give a crap, but it’s hard to do anything about it when someone has diplomatic immunity all around the globe.”
“So, Iceland, really?”
“Well, it’s not as if he’s an Islandic minister, if that’s what you mean. He’s from Iran, but he’s currently in Iceland, and his fourth wife just died.”
“But is Iran where the husband owes the wife a dowry after marriage, yet there is no rule about when to pay it? Oh, don’t tell me that this was about not paying the dowry?”
“She did have a dowry due to her, and the problem is, he’s now taken his wife’s younger sister captive. The sister wasn’t even raised anywhere close to his world, and, from what I am told, she’s English. She reached out and asked for help to get away. That call went out two days ago, and nobody’s heard from her since.”
“Oh shit,” Celia murmured, twisting in his arms to face him.
He nodded grimly, then picked up his drink and tossed it back. “So, we need somebody who can handle all kinds of BS. There is also a chance that the sister might have abilities. Apparently she kept her married sister entertained over her last months by reading tarot cards, thinking she could hide her gifts that way.”
At that, Celia sucked in her breath. “That’s dangerous,” she muttered.
“Very dangerous, and nobody wants to acknowledge that she’s gone missing. The diplomat has absolutely no ideas, of course, and says he’s completely innocent. It’s got nothing to do with him, blah, blah, blah , and he’s heading home.”
“So, we have two separate issues here. We have the sister missing, and we have a diplomat who’s killing off his wives.” Then she frowned at Terk and asked, “Do you know that for sure?”
“No, not for sure I don’t,” he admitted. “However, with every marriage, he didn’t have to pay a massive dowry debt, plus he gained an inheritance. So, my take would be an absolute flat-out yes on killing his wives. On an energy level, I can’t read him,” Terk added. “And whenever I can’t read someone’s aura or energy, I get very suspicious.”
“Well, crap,” Celia muttered. “I thought maybe things would calm down a little bit now.”
“No, that won’t happen. The real questions become, who do I send, and what abilities can we utilize in a situation like this to stack the deck in our favor?”
“I don’t think there are any,” she muttered. “Almost all of us know enough to hide our gifts from the world, so it’s interesting that the sister was openly using tarot cards. That just makes her an easy victim for con men who want to use her gifts for their own selfish advantage.”
Terk shook his head. “They had a Ouija board first, but it was removed from their possession.”
“Well, I’m not against removing that as well,” Celia agreed. “That can be dangerous too.”
“Absolutely. We must actively protect ourselves.”
She then asked, “What about Elena? She and her brother were involved in something similar,” she reminded Terk. “They were part of one of the groups that I started up since we moved over here.”
“Yeah, but I’m not sure that she’s exactly what I would call operative material .”
“I wasn’t so much thinking of her as of her brother. He’s ex-navy.”
“His name?”
“Royce, I think.”
“Royce,” Terk repeated. “Seems as if I might know that name. Have you mentioned it to me before?”
“I think I did, but honestly, we’ve not had two seconds to even talk to each other,” she muttered. “So who knows?”
“I feel as if I know that name.”
“And you might. He had done a mission in Iceland and was stationed over there for quite a while, so he would know the area to some degree, and he might even know the players.”
“I’m not sure that’s a good thing though, is it?” he asked her.
“In this case it’s hard to say, but it feels as if a connection is there.”
Terk groaned.
“So, what’s this sister’s name? The one who’s gone missing?” Celia asked suddenly.
He frowned at her and sighed. “Heather.”
“Okay, Heather,” she repeated slowly. “And we’re helping because she’s calling, or we’re helping because Jonas is calling?”
“Jonas brought up the issue of the diplomat and the wives who he keeps murdering. I guess this diplomat has been on the MI6 watch list for quite a while, but they haven’t done anything about him yet. However, now after the contact from the sister herself, it’s more of a humanitarian mission. So at least we could dive in and see what we can do to help both cases.”
“Right,” Celia muttered. “So you need to contact Royce and Heather in whatever way you can. It definitely feels as if some connection is there.”
Terk pondered that for a moment and then agreed. “I’m not exactly sure what that connection is at the moment, but yeah. It’s there.” He smiled, then reached for his phone and added, “Boy, did I ever luck out when I got you.”
“You sure did,” she declared, with a fat smile. “You need to remember that. You make your phone calls, and I’ll go check on the girls.” After giving him a big smacking kiss, she walked out, leaving him feeling as if he were the luckiest man alive.