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“Put him out. He won’t come back. I have his promise upon pain of chasing him down and making a meal of him. But he wants to be let out near the edge of the forest. He doesn’t trust me not to make a dash for him.” She shook her head, still staring at the rat with curiosity.
“Fine, I’ll put the rat outside. Kitten, you stay in here.” I headed for the door.
“While you’re at it, see if you can find Morio. He was in a playful mood and I guess the rat set off his hunting instincts, too.” Camille looked over her shoulder from where she was mopping up the floor.
As I headed for the door, Delilah said, “Oh, by the way, the rat’s name is…well, to pronounce it in English, it would be Chaka.”
“Chaka…Okay, come on, Chaka, let’s go give you a second chance.” I opened the door and, still clutching the rat, exited to the back porch, then out the door to the yard. Clattering down the steps, I held Chaka to my chest and jogged over to the edge of the woods leading to Birchwater Pond. As I knelt down, Chaka looked up at me with his beady little eyes and twitched his nose.
“You go. You go—do whatever it is rats do and don’t come back to the house. I can’t vouch for Iris and Delilah’s self-control. Get it?” I waited, but the rat just twitched his ears. “You don’t understand a thing I’m saying, do you? Maybe you understood Delilah, though. Either way, go on. Have a good life. Eat lots of…garbage.” I set him down and he paused, looking back at me, then raced off into the undergrowth. For some reason I felt a little sad to see him go.
As I stood and dusted my hands on my jeans, I glanced around. Now to find Morio. Where would a fox go? A sentient demonic fox, at that?
I was due at Roman’s in a little over an hour, and I still needed to find out what the others had discovered while I was sleeping. The last thing I wanted to do was find Morio, alone, out here in the dark. I knew he’d be down with me breaking the bond between us, but I didn’t want to chance anything going wrong.
After a few minutes, I decided to hell with it and headed back inside. The kitchen was back to normal and Iris was sorting through some cookies to provide an extra dessert. The guys ate like bulldozers, and my sisters weren’t shy around food either. The Fae needed extra food—we all had higher metabolisms, even the half-Fae. While I no longer required the hearty meals my sisters did, the food bill around here was massive.
“I don’t know where Morio is. Chaka is, however, off and pursuing all things ratty.” I looked around. None of the men were in the kitchen, and usually at least one or two of them were helping Iris and Hanna. “Where are the guys?”
“Morio’s outside playing fox. Vanzir and Roz are down at the studio, mending a leak in the roof. Shamas is at work—he’s on duty the next few nights. Shade’s over at Wilbur’s, helping Marion and Douglas settle in because Wilbur’s coming back home tomorrow. He took Martin with him and apparently was able to corral him into behaving. They’re leaving Snickers here until they get their own house because they don’t trust Martin not to eat the cat. Smoky and Trillian are off getting takeout for dinner. Iris made dessert but we decided to forgo a big family dinner tonight in favor of Chinese.” Camille set the plates on the table and Delilah put out the pies and cookies.
Iris added silverware, chopsticks, and a bag of paper napkins, while Hanna carried the laundry over to the rocking chair. Maggie was in her playpen, playing with her Yobie doll—it had Yoda’s head and Barbie’s body and was pretty beat up by now with plenty of teeth marks, but she loved the thing with a passion and we didn’t dare take it away from her.
I looked around for something to do. Motioning to Hanna, I said, “I’ll fold the towels. You go ahead and take a break. Make some tea or something.”
“I will take my break when it’s time to eat. There is so little work here compared to Hyto’s cavern, I am not tired.” Hanna was sturdy, from the Northlands, and she never shirked on helping out. She was around her late thirties, early forties, and seemed content. But, while she was friendly, she seemed to have a very strong sense of boundaries.
“That’s okay—you don’t have to be tired to take a break.” I reached for the basket, but she stopped me.
“No. This is my work. Menolly, you have important tasks. You and your sisters battle evil creatures. My duties are to support and tend to you. You saved me from Hyto’s grasp, and for that, I will serve you willingly.” Her English was still broken, though every day it seemed stronger, but she spoke with strength and conviction.
“You aren’t our servant, Hanna.” I shook my head. “But if you want to take on the duties of housekeeper, we’re happy to pay you. We pay Iris.”
“Iris is your family. I am not. Payment is welcome, but I am your servant and I am content in my place. This is what I know how to do.” Her voice dropped. “When I lived in the Northlands, before Hyto destroyed my life, my husband—he was stern. The house and gardens and children, all were mine to care for while he was off hunting. He loved his children, and he treated me with respect, but nothing was easy.” She struggled with some thought, trying to put it into words. “I…I was born a warrior woman, and would have…preferred to travel unmarried to make my own way.”
“Why did you get married?” Delilah asked.
“My father owed a blood debt to Thaylon’s father. I was payment, as wife to his son. It was my duty to fulfill my father’s honor, and so I did. Such are the ways of my people. Honor is sacred.” She shrugged, looking over one of the towels that had a rip in it. “I will mend this.”
“Did you love him?” I let go of the towel I’d been holding, beginning to understand her a little better. Hanna had been tight-lipped over the couple of months she’d been with us, but she was starting to open up, little by little.
“Love my father? Yes. Oh, you speak of Thaylon.” She smiled with her eyes. “He was a good man. He never misused me. He was proud of our children. I suppose…yes, I came to love him over the years and we had a good life, until Hyto found us.” A shiver raced down her, I could see it visibly, and she pressed her lips together and said no more.
We left her to her thoughts as she set down the towel to comfort Maggie, who had started fussing. I glanced at the clock. Six forty-five.
“I have to be at Roman’s at seven thirty. Tell me what you found out, if anything, before I go.” I straddled a chair as Iris fixed a pot of tea. Camille was drinking what looked like a megashot mocha from Starbucks. Delilah opened the fridge and pulled out the milk, pouring glasses for both herself and Hanna.
Camille took out a notebook. “Yeah. We found two places that fit the requirements and are near enough here that either might be the anchor for Gulakah. One is out near Snoqualmie. Another is on the way to Mount Rainier.”
“Great, near Smoky’s barrow?” Smoky had a barrow that was near Mount Rainier. At first we’d thought he’d co-opted it from Titania, but the size of the underground chamber that allowed him to change into his dragon self kind of put that idea to rest. It had been she who tried to wrest it away from him instead of living in the cave she’d been hiding in. I was a little fuzzy on how he got out from the barrow once he shifted because, hey, dragons were big. Very big. So big.
“No, a little farther up the mountain than that. An access road leads there. It’s a ways out, but not out of the scope of possibility.” Camille finished sucking down the last of her drink and poured the ice into the sink, then dropped the cup in the recycling bin. “The one near Snoqualmie is in the general area where we found the fourth spirit seal.” She paused, glancing at Delilah. “I don’t mean to bring up bad memories.”
Delilah let out a short sigh. She wiped off the frothy milk mustache and shrugged. “Zachary is happier where he is now. And Chase…he’s living with what Karvanak did to him. We can’t dwell on the past. What happened, happened. We can only move forward.”
“You’ve grown up so much, Kitten.” I crossed to her, kissing her gently on the cheek. “You’re right. We can’t go back. We don’t even have time to look back. So we have two possibilities? Have the guys checked them out?”
Iris shook her head. “They only came up with the information this afternoon. There’s been no time.”
