Chapter 41
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
I was left alone with a pile of books that I couldn’t focus on.
Apparently, the digital age hadn’t reached the cottage I was in.
They’d housed me in a building that wasn’t the manor house.
I’d bargained to get out of the bed and was now in a high-back wing chair by the window, feet up on a matching ottoman, with a striped wool blanket over the top in shades of lilac and cream.
The garden was lush and green, the beds dotted with a rainbow of flower colors.
Soda’s pain medicine had worked wonders. I was lucid, and the pain had been buffered back to bearable. According to Victoria, the fever was gone as well. I was dying comfortably.
Wald had made excuses to leave I didn’t believe, though I’d begged him to stay. I knew he was going to go make love to Soda all night in the bed we’d shared.
It wasn’t fair.
Life wasn’t fair. I fricking knew that. You had to bite and scratch your way to what you wanted. Soda had better keep awake for a long time because she wasn’t standing between me and Wald. I could almost taste him, bourbon and cloves and the essence that was him alone.
I shifted and groaned, sick of waiting.
The door creaked open. A waft of incense and garden greenery with turned dirt. Agatha’s particular scent. As if she was having mass in a graveyard.
“Hello, you must be Harlan,” she said, clicking across the floor with three-inch platforms, which matched the rose color of her two-piece Jackie Onassis suit. The pillbox hat matched.
“Yes, Harlan, nice to see you Aga—I mean, meet you, Agatha,” I said, holding out a hand.
She ignored it and sat on the ottoman. “I understand the Klyngore has injured you?”
I patted my side. “Yup.”
“And you don’t know how?” she adjusted one of the four pink Lucite bangles on her wrists.
I paused, unsure of what the hell to say. I could probably get away with fuzzy since no one appeared to know any of the details. “It’s all murky. Sorry, the pain was intense. I remember the blade and the blood, and that’s it. I woke up here.” I winced at the memory.
She looked at me as if I were lying, which of course I was, and snapped her clutch purse open. Her fingernails were the same rose pink of her suit.
The Tarot deck she pulled out was the same one from my jacket. “The cards never lie, my dear,” she said with an emphasis on the lie. “Let’s see what they have to say.”
She offered me the deck. I shuffled it and handed it back. She fanned it, and I drew a card.
“Take two more,” she said, pushing the fanned deck at me. I took two more and handed them to her .
She laid the three cards down on the throw covering my lap.
I sucked in a breath. The Lovers, Death, and The Wheel. What was the big surprise?
“These have significance to you?” she asked, but it wasn’t quite a question. Her false eyelash-framed amber eyes were watching my every move.
I nodded. She put her hand on my leg. It tingled a little, then pulsed and warmed, as if I recognized her touch. Weird.
“Oh honey, I think you’d better tell me the whole story before Devlyn gets here.” She pointed at the door with her other hand, and it slammed shut on its own.
I spilled my guts while she sat silently, nodding where appropriate. Her fingers rubbed across the faces on the cards as I spoke, as if she were recording every word.
When I’d told her the whole alternate history, she placed the three cards I’d pulled out on top of the deck, then put the deck back into her clutch, closing it with a snap.
“Well, that’s it then. You’ll have to be sure not to tell anyone else what you’ve done.
If Devlyn wishes to save you, then he can.
The Klyngore is his. Only he can undo the curse of the wound. ”
“Curse? The sword is his? I thought it was Wald’s? I thought the curse was on Wald?” My voice had risen to a broken glass edge.
“Oh, the Klyngore is Wald’s now. They fought over it.
Wald didn’t want Sert to have access to it.
He’s been watching over Devlyn ever since they got together.
Sert has a reputation for being rather manipulative and very unpredictable.
Dangerous traits with a blend of power from mixed Eim.
Not to say Devlyn’s mixed blood doesn’t cause concern.
The curse from using the blade is a different one from being wounded.
They stem from the same darkness, though. ”
“Jeezus, well that’s not ominous.” I laughed and then groaned as my side spasmed.
“Everyone has different gifts. Passing on their gifts in offspring often creates unexpected results. In Sert, it’s a kind of insanity mixed with a power to raise the dead.”
“Necromancy?” That made clear sense now. The memory of the zombie-dead things from the painting would haunt my nightmares forever.
“Well, not the classic kind, honey, but yes. His focus isn’t on raising them so much as having them functional when they’re up and running, and that takes more finesse. But he’s been studying his father’s texts, and I think he’s come to some new levels of understanding.”
“So, his father is a raise-the-dead guy too?” I was making mental notes to avoid necromancers in general.
“No, his father is an Eim.”
“That’s impossible. Wald said Eim existed before humans.”
“They did, but they don’t die.”
“Wouldn’t that make Sert centuries old?”
Agatha patted my knee. “Yes, which doesn’t help with the insanity.”
“Oh perfect.” My ticket to a long life was in the hands of a madman who hated me more than Devlyn. Maybe he wouldn’t remember me but with my luck? “Well, he can stay outside while Devlyn fixes this up,” I patted my side, attempting optimism.
“Uh huh,” Agatha said, rising and smoothing her cheek with a perfect manicure. Her bracelets clacked together. Every finger had a silver ring. “I’ll see you again in the mirror room. Good luck, and remember, don’t say anything about the ring.”
I swallowed, remembering Victoria’s caution. But if Agatha was asking, then she knew something outside of this timeline. “Why?”
“Because if Sert finds out you could use it, he’ll want to know how, and that will go very badly for me.”
“I owe you. We’re good.” Inside, I glowed. Agatha of my old time was the same one here. At least I had a link to the old me.
She smiled and got up. I threw the blanket back and settled my feet onto the floor. I got up with virtually no pain. Weird, as I knew I was still hurting, but I couldn’t feel it eating away at me from the inside.
By the time I’d made it to the bed, Victoria had returned with a white pantsuit folded over one arm.
“Nothing in black, huh?” I asked.
“Black? No, I don’t own black things. This will be a bit snug, but we had to cut off your other clothing.”
Victoria set a silver brooch on the side table, then left me to dress.
The lacy white bra and panties were not her size.
I tried not to consider where she’d got them and failed.
Britannia was my size, so that meant Caledonia likely was too, though with an unnaturally small waist and huge tits, but that explained the padded bra.
The front of the pantsuit gaped. Now I knew what the brooch was for.
I only stuck myself twice trying to latch it.
I sucked the iron-y blood off my finger, dreaming of sucking other things that weren’t mine. Salty and musky… As if summoned, there was a knock on the door, and Mason entered.
“All ready, miss?”
“Yes, Mason, all ready,” I replied, following him through the panel in the wall like it was business as usual.