Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter
Twenty-Five
While I was waiting for Lara to decide, December came to see us, and with it came the old man.
He was built like a bulldog, stocky and strong, wearing overalls and a heavy flannel insulated jacket against the cold.
He was about five six, his hair was white, cut in a short buzz that was awfully thin on top, and I knew his forearms still looked ropy and well-muscled despite his age.
He was near or over three hundred years old, he was the official clandestine killer of the White Council of Wizardry, and he was my grandfather.
We hadn’t really spoken since the battle. Since just after he’d shown me he was willing to kill me.
When the Knights of the Bean showed him into the great hall, I felt Bear tighten up as if a rabid, starving saber-toothed tiger had come to visit. No, check that. She wouldn’t have gotten nervous about the sabertooth.
My grandfather was the sort of man who could pull objects out of space down onto the heads of his enemies. And who had done so. There’d never been a natural predator as dangerous as Ebenezar McCoy.
“Bear,” he said, first thing, with a wary smile touching his grave expression. “What the hell are you doing here?”
“Working,” Bear replied. “Standard contract.”
“Huh,” Ebenezar said. “One-Eye let you into the field? Last time that happened there was a world war, as I recall.”
“I don’t plan them,” Bear said. “I just show up for them.”
“Does seem to be going that direction.” Ebenezar sighed. “Only question is if the mortals are following us or if we’re following them.”
“I don’t get paid for the big questions,” Bear said. “Just for keeping hearts beating.”
Ebenezar looked from her to me and back again. “I feel better knowing you’re on the job,” he said. “Obliged to you.”
“Thank Lara Raith,” Bear said. “She’s paying my contract.”
“That’ll be the day,” Ebenezar snorted. “Hoss.”
“Sir,” I said. “This gonna be a walk and talk?”
“If you don’t mind,” he said.
“Sure,” I said laconically. “Bear, Wizard McCoy and I are going for a walk. Mind the store while I’m gone.”
“The city isn’t safe,” Bear cautioned us. “Especially after dark.”
I picked up my wizard’s staff from its resting place beside the door. “We’ll manage. Don’t follow us.”
“I won’t,” she lied.
Bear took her job seriously. She’d be somewhere out of sight behind us. I felt vaguely like a child whose mother was too determined to protect him to give him any freedom. “Bear,” I said reproachfully.
She looked back guilelessly.
“This is personal,” Ebenezar told her firmly. “I need you to be discreet.”
“I will,” she promised.
He nodded acceptance and then the old man and I did something we hadn’t for a good long while.
We went out for a walk.
—
We went out of the castle, turned left, and walked down the sidewalks.
Some of them were still covered in snow—places where people weren’t living at the moment, I supposed.
I wondered if the city would ticket them.
All things considered, a little snow on the sidewalk seemed like the kind of thing no one would think was important.
On the other hand, it might be something over which the city felt it could actually exercise some feeble amount of control, in the face of everything that had happened.
The neighborhoods were quiet, lights of some kind burning in many homes.
The old man and I made very little noise as we walked.
I waited for him to speak. I wasn’t the one who had acted shamefully.
It took him a quarter of an hour to find words.
“There’s history you don’t know,” he said quietly.
“Hngh,” I said, wittily.
“Your mother. And Raith.” He spat into the snow after he said the word. “I tried to get her away from him. She wouldn’t hear it. She was already…”
“Addicted?” I suggested.
He shrugged a shoulder. “Your mother liked to live dangerously. Lord Raith gave her plenty of that.”
“Maybe she liked him.”
“Maybe it would be hard to tell,” he said after several steps. “Even for her. Sometimes you just find your poison. The one that goes right past your reason. Your logic. Your morals. I’ve seen it plenty, over the years. Sex. Opium. Heroin. Alcohol.”
“This is a world that hurts,” I said. “Sometimes you get tired of that. You’ll take whatever you can get to get away from it for a while.”
Ebenezar bowed his head and nodded. “That’s true enough. God knows.”
“You think my mom found her poison in Lord Raith,” I said.
“Yes,” he said. “And I’m afraid for you.”
I held up a hand and said, “You don’t get to talk to me about the future. Not until we’ve gone over the past.”
The old man squinted against the night. It was cold, cold enough that I knew he’d have been settled in his chair by the fire with a book and a mug of hot chocolate if we’d been back at his cabin in Hog Hollow. I barely felt the cold. And when I did, it was pleasant.
“You killed me,” I said quietly.
“Not exactly,” the old man said. “You were already a step ahead.”
“Yeah,” I said. “But you didn’t know that at the time.”
He grimaced. “You’re right,” he said. “You’ve gotten stronger and better a lot faster than anyone expected.
Even me. I have contingency defenses I never thought you’d push me hard enough to activate.
I’ve been dealing with cornerhounds for several years now.
They like to come when I’m asleep. I need reflex-level spells to even the field. ”
I grunted. “You’re saying that the spell that would have killed me was a compliment.”
He shrugged a shoulder. “I wouldn’t expect to need it for anything but a war-level threat,” he admitted. “You fought that duel better than I would have thought possible.”
“I’m all grown up, I suppose,” I said.
“You’re getting there.” The old man sighed. “Damn the Merlin.”
I frowned. “Why do you say that?”
“For kicking you off the Council,” he said irritably. “For leaving you vulnerable to creatures like Mab. Like Lara Raith.”
I caught a whiff of lie by omission. He wasn’t saying everything.
“Why did you do it?” I asked. “Why’d you come at me like that?”
“I was trying to stop you from throwing everything away for a goddamned vampire,” he said. “And…some things came back up for me. Ugly things. I don’t know if I can explain it to you.”
I thought about what I had felt fighting ghouls.
“You don’t need to,” I said. “You hate the White Court that much?”
“I’ve had three wives, over the centuries,” Ebenezar said. “Three dozen apprentices. A hundred friends.” He winced, and his voice creaked. “But just the one child.”
I thought of Maggie. I thought of what I would do to protect her. What I had done.
I thought of what I would have become if I’d failed.
“She was an adult,” I said. “Making her own choices.”
“Maybe,” he said. “Maybe she wasn’t in charge of all of her choices by the time Raith got to her. It’s not like there’s a test to run.”
I thought about what it would feel like, not to know. Never to know. Never to know if he’d failed her, if she’d needed his help, or if he’d been betraying her, ignoring her, disbelieving her.
That would have been one hell of a heavy burden.
“So,” I asked him, “if you hated Raith so much, why is he still alive?”
“Because I found out what she did to him before the end,” he said listlessly. “Because I wanted him to die slow. Humiliated. Because I wanted him to suffer. Because he had favors he used to buy off the Council’s wrath.”
I grunted.
“Why not ask him?” I said.
The old man stopped in his tracks.
“What?”
“Lara doesn’t exactly feel overwhelming loyalty to her paterfamilias,” I said. “Maybe we get him in a room and ask him. A room with good drains.”
He closed his eyes. “I…I never spoke to him. I knew that if I stood in front of him, one stray thought and…” He flexed his hands into fists and relaxed them again slowly.
I thought about Rudolph.
I thought about him standing in front of me. About what I might do. Had already tried to do.
I clenched my hands into slow fists, too.
“Hoss,” Ebenezar said. “All this is…Look. I’m sorry.
I was trying to stop you from making a mistake and you told me he sired a child on her and I…
things broke loose.” He turned to face me.
“I lost control. And if you hadn’t been one hell of a wizard, I’d have gotten you killed because of it. I’m sorry. It will never happen again.”
I faced him squarely and said, “It might.”
He tilted his head.
“Thomas is my brother,” I said. “My friend. I know you hate the idea of him. But if you raise your hand against him, I swear to God Almighty and by my own power that I will break it off at the wrist. Sir.”
He studied my face carefully and then nodded. “I hear you.” His jaw clenched a few times and he said, “I got out of line at Etri’s place, too. I worry. For Maggie. You lose a child, it…it does bad things to you. Maybe my judgment is compromised in that arena.”
I was quiet for a long moment.
That had cost him something to say.
I put my hand on his arm and said, “Hell. Maybe you’re right, sir. Sometimes I feel like I’m just staying six inches ahead of an avalanche. Guess time will tell.”
“Always does,” he agreed. His voice was tight. “It always does, Hoss.”
“But she’s my girl,” I said quietly. “And I’ll make the calls. Not you. Not anyone else, either.”
“That’s as it should be,” he said. “I’m just…accustomed to meddling.”
“Well,” I said, more lightly. “If you do it again, I’ll just have to beat you in another duel.”
“Is that what you think happened?”
“Someone once taught me,” I said slowly, “that winning a fight and surviving a fight were the same thing.”
He snorted. “Suppose I did,” he said. He stared out at the night for a moment. “My God, grandson. When you went down, and I thought I’d…” He swallowed. Then he looked up at me. “Are we okay?”
“I’m not okay,” I said firmly. “I’m more not okay than I’ve ever been. But you and I. We will be. I’m working on it.”
“Ms. Murphy,” he said quietly.
It was my turn to fall silent.
“Oh, Hoss,” Ebenezar said. “I’m sorry. I know how it feels.”
I believed him. I tightened my hand on his arm and bowed my head.
“You’re going to be all right,” he told me, his rough voice firm. “It takes time. But you’ll heal. You’ll sleep right again. Food will taste right again.”
I huffed out a little laugh.
He did know how it felt.
Standing there in the cold and the darkness, I felt my grandfather stand before me and understand me. As I had begun to understand him.
I could feel the bridge being built between us by that understanding. I could feel something easing out of my shoulders and my belly.
“She was pretty great, wasn’t she?” I said quietly.
“Brave as hell,” he agreed.
The candlelight in the nearest house blurred.
“I miss her,” I said. “So much.”
“Oh boy,” he said, his voice compassionate.
And at some point, he had his arms around me and I had bent over to hug him back. The damned stubborn old fool.
“Christmas morning,” I said. “I need you. Maggie needs you.”
“I’ll be there,” he said. His arms tightened. “I should have been there. So many times.”
I’d spent a lot of Christmas mornings alone, after my dad had died.
“You were trying to protect me,” I said quietly. “Keep me at a distance from your enemies. I get that.”
Get it?
I was doing it.
Oh, I could excuse myself, since the Carpenters had her and were superlative parents whose children had all thrived, in one way or another, and were good friends who would treat her with kindness and patience and love.
But they weren’t Maggie’s father.
I was.
I had talked pretty big to Blackstaff McCoy about that very subject.
Maybe it was time to start living like it was the truth. Now. Not tomorrow, not at the new semester.
Right now.
I looked up at him and said, “Come with me.”
“Where?” he asked.
“The Carpenters’ place,” I said. “We’re going to go get Maggie and move her in.”
He peered up at me in the glow of fallen snow and distant light.
“I think you’re wrong. But if you’ve made your call, Hoss,” he said, “I’ll back your play.”
“Thank you, sir,” I said gravely.