Part 23 (1/2)

In the kitchen, Amy and Lorenz were dropping lumps of cookie dough onto baking sheets. Or at least Amy was while Lorenz sat on a stool looking gorgeous.

”Ha!” Amy said to Lorenz when she saw me. ”I told you this would work!” She grinned, picked up a still-warm cookie, and tossed it to me. It was Anne's favorite, a cookie made with tofu and almonds and sesame seeds, but it actually tasted really good, and since it was ”healthy” I ate about twelve of them for linner.

Lorenz came and kissed both my cheeks, Italian-style.

”Very nice haircut,” he said approvingly. ”Very chic.”

”Thank you.” And that was that. These folks were so d.a.m.n evolved and generous and forgiving, they just took me back into the fold as if I hadn't oh-so-recently been involved in a horrible, deadly, self-induced tragedy. It was hard to bear.

But I couldn't stay here eating cookies forever. In an ideal world, yada yada yada.... So I left the kitchen and saw River in the hallway, in front of the job chart.

”Hi,” she said cheerfully. ”I'm just adding your name back in. You're up for egg-gathering tomorrow morning!”

”Oh jeezum,” I murmured, and she laughed. ”Um... do you maybe know where... uh, Reyn is?” I said the last three words really fast, because that would make it totally impossible for her to put two and two together.

”Let's see.” River, completely unfazed, checked the accursed ch.o.r.e chart. ”He should be in the barn about now.”

Yes, because the barn is my favorite freaking place, where I feel the most comfortable, where I'm not tormented by a hundred memories of horses I've loved and lost. Or didn't save.

I sighed.

”Go on,” said River.

Reyn was just putting t.i.tus back in his stall. He heard me come in and stood for a second, looking at me. When t.i.tus was in, Reyn murmured something to him, then shut the stall gate. t.i.tus whuffed at him.

”You do have a way with horses,” I said, trying to be casual, but my voice cracked and I sounded like a scared little kid, so, c.r.a.p.

Reyn came closer, looking at me intently as if to make sure I was all right, or real, or something.

”How are you?” he asked.

I almost gave a nervous giggle. Because that's how cool I am. ”I'm... actually I don't know,” I said. ”I'm... glad to be here. But it's hard.” I pushed some hair back behind one ear. ”It's hard being me. I guess. I know that surprises you.”

Reyn nodded-he wasn't even going to pretend to dispute that-then said, ”It's no picnic being me, either.”

That was number 6,237 of the things that had never occurred to me. ”Oh. No, I guess not.” I'd never considered how he might feel about himself, his past. I guess that goes with the whole ”self-absorbed” territory. But yeah, it must be hard to be him, too. Or-here's a thought-no doubt everyone has hard times, feels overwhelmed or filled with self-doubt. I'd spent more than four hundred years bemoaning the agony of being immortal, not taking a moment to realize that, immortal or no, life could be a real b.i.t.c.h.

This was a mind-blowing breakthrough that I would examine in greater detail later. For right now, I had questions.

”How did you and River know where I was?”

Reyn pushed open a stall gate to reveal a clean, empty s.p.a.ce with several fresh bales of hay in it. The hay reminded me of the night Reyn and I first kissed, up in the hayloft. The night we'd realized our horrible shared history. It seemed a decade ago. Reyn dropped his barn coat on the ground and sat down on the floor. I sat on a bale next to him so I would be taller. A pale shaft of late-afternoon sunlight slanted through the window onto him, throwing his cheekbones into sharper relief, making the lighter streaks in his hair s.h.i.+ne. He looked tired. Still a handsome G.o.d of a twenty-year-old, maybe twenty-two, but tired.

”We looked for you,” he said. ”That night. But we felt there was something off, as if you were close by, but we couldn't see you.”

”I wasn't actually that far away. I wonder if Incy put a glamour around me or something.” It was hard for me to say his name.

Reyn nodded, his jaw tightening with anger at the thought of Incy. ”I'm thinking he probably did. Anyway, you were gone, and eventually we couldn't feel you anymore. River and the others, Anne and Solis and Asher, tried scrying spells to find you. With no luck.” Reyn let out a deep breath. I regretted again that I had put them all through that.

”We tried every day. River contacted people she knew, but no one had seen you, no one had heard anything. Then, finally, a friend of River's called. He'd seen Innocencio in Boston. River had met him, so she knew what he looked like, in general,” Reyn explained. Incy had been with me that night in France, in 1929, when I'd met River. ”We figured you had to be with him.” Reyn had been sounding more and more distant, and now he looked up at me, his eyes cool. ”Is he your lover?”

”Incy? No,” I said, shaking my head. ”Holy moly. Never.” Holy moly is something cool people say. Along with jeezum.

”Is he gay?” Reyn's gaze was very direct, and he just looked so... I don't know-beautiful? He looked like home to me. Like my neighbors and friends that I'd known so long ago. I thought about him searching the woods the night I'd left, coming to Boston to find me.

”Not really,” I said. ”He... plays for both teams. But we've never had that between us.” And, everyone? This is an example of the old adage ”dodging a bullet.” You can see how one might be thankful about dodging this particular bullet.

”You're just friends.”

”Yes. Good friends. Best friends.” I sighed and felt very old, resting my head on one hand.

”Anyway, so we went to Boston,” Reyn went on. ”On the way there-it was already night-we suddenly felt you, felt you very alive. Just... big emotion. River was able to follow that.”

That had probably been when I was at Miss Edna's, or maybe right after, when I was arguing with Incy in his car.

”Then you suddenly felt dead.” Reyn swallowed and picked at some threads on the worn knee of his jeans. What that man did for a pair of jeans should be bottled and sold. I blinked and focused on what he was saying. ”We saw your scarf by the road, soaked with rain. I knew you would never have let it go, not while you were breathing. So we thought the worst. But River said, 'Let's go get her body at least.' So we kept following whatever sense of you we could get.”

”You went to all that trouble just for my body,” I said, amazed and so grateful.

Reyn looked up, irritation on his face. ”Yeah. We were going to have you stuffed, as an example to future students.”

I grinned. ”You could put me on wheels, move me from room to room.”

Reyn nodded drily. ”We ended up outside that warehouse-we'd driven past it a couple times. River thought it had probably been cloaked in a concealment spell. We finally saw flickering lights in the upstairs windows and started trying to open the loading-dock door. Then we felt this huge blast of magick, really strong, big power.” He shook his head, remembering. ”We knew it was you. It felt like you. It was amazing.”

My cheeks heated at the wonder and admiration in his voice. I remembered the mingled ecstasy and pain, the lightning-strike feeling of setting my white dove free. I wanted to feel that again. But with more training and less nosebleed.

He shrugged. ”And we went in to get you.”

I swallowed. Getting the next words out would be like eating nails. ”I... appreciate it so much, your coming to find me. To save me, if necessary. Or to retrieve what was left.”

Reyn looked at me evenly. ”Of course. We had no choice. You were one of River's students.”

”Ew,” I said, hurt. ”That feels great. Thanks.”

Reyn pushed his hand through his hair. ”That's not what I meant.”

”No? Then what did you mean?” I decided to s.h.i.+ne a flashlight on this skeleton. ”Okay, River had to come after one of her students. Fine. But what about you? Why were you there? Just because you're big and tough and could take someone out?” There. Pinned him like a bug.

”No,” he said, frowning. ”Quit being so p.r.i.c.kly. I went because what there is between me and you is not finished yet.” The honesty that I'd demanded disarmed me. I looked into his eyes, so deeply golden and slightly slanted and so smart, so knowledgeable, so experienced.

I nodded. I didn't have time to pretend I didn't know what he meant. I held my breath; this was where he would sweep me up into his arms and we would make out like crazed high schoolers. I started to feel a delicious Reyn + hay = happiness antic.i.p.ation.

”Wait here,” he said, and suddenly got up and left the stall. I stared after him. Was he chickening out now? But he was back in less than a minute with something in his hands. Something kind of white and larval. He knelt in the hay and showed me: It was the runt puppy from Molly's litter.

”Hmm,” I said unenthusiastically.

The puppy moved in his hands, turning over and yawning, stretching its long, straight legs out. I hadn't seen it since the night it had been born, and it was just as uncute and unchunky as before.

”She's mine,” Reyn said, and my eyes widened at his look of pride and love. I'd never seen that on him before, and it was incredible to see him seem younger and happier. It was like taking the perfect man and making him inexplicably even perfecter. Fine-more perfect. My jaw almost dropped open, and I sat there, mesmerized.