Page 10 of Backpacking through Bedlam

“Sally is careful, compared to you,” he said. “She doesn’t consider herself indestructible. She knows she can be hurt, and she knows that if she is, it could take her a long time to heal. When she throws herself at something, it’s because she’s already looked at the options and decided on the one that carries the least risk. She’s being tactical.”

“You’re saying I’m not a tactical thinker?”

“No, darling, I’m saying you spent so long being able to bounce back from absolutely anything that you’ve forgotten what it means to have consequences for your actions. Your body can’t handle magical healing right now.”

“We didn’t have magical healing back in Buckley.”

“No, we didn’t. Remember how much time you spent injured, or recovering? Remember how long you were too weak to go to the woods after the slime attacked you?”

I did, unfortunately. I turned my face away, hoping he wouldn’t see the way I winced.

It was a futile hope. Thomas had always paid too much attention to the things I least wanted him to be paying attention to.

“I remember how hard it was on you, and how much you hated it.” He ran his thumb along the line of my cheekbone, palm still cupping my face. “I remember how much I wanted to help, and how I wasn’t allowed. I think it hurt us both, seeing you like that, and I’m sorry, but I never want to see you like that again. If that means reminding you that you’re as mortal as the rest of us, I won’t be able to help myself.”

I turned my head to kiss his palm, then straightened, meeting his eyes again. “I don’t like how you’ve started telling me what to do. I’m not one of your subjects. I don’t take orders from you.”

“And I’m sorry about that, too. Why don’t we make an agreement, you and I? I’ll do my best not to give orders—I’m unlearning the habit of autocracy, just like you’re unlearning the habit of throwing yourself into danger like a woman who never expects to have backup again—and you’ll do your best not to get hurt. You’re the most precious thing in the world to me, Alice. That you were able to stay in one piece long enough to find me and bring me home is a miracle. Losing you now would be . . .” Thomas stopped and shook his head, finally pulling his hand away. “I can’t even think about it. Please, for the sake of my heart, can you try?”

It all made too much sense when he put it that way. I looked at the wall of the tent and sighed. “I can try,” I said, and looked back to him. “But you need to remember that I’m your wife, not one of your people to order around, and at this point, I have more experience with dimensional travel than you do.”

Sure, my experience was full of unexpected holes, thanks to Naga’s pet telepaths digging out whatever information he thought would be too inconvenient for me to have, but it was still experience. While Thomas had been in one hostile death world dimension for fifty years, I’d been running through hundreds of them, and I hadn’t died. That sort of track record had to be good for something.

“All right,” he said, and smiled. I hesitated, then smiled back. “May I kiss you?”

“Always,” I said, and he wrapped his arms around me, bent me slightly backward, and kissed me.

Every time we kissed, it was like coming home. It was tempting to think that it had always been that way, and to be fair, I could remember some pretty scorching kisses from the years before his disappearance. The first time I’d come to his house to tell him how I felt, when I’d been absolutely sure I was going to be dead by the end of the week; the night he’d found me rinsing ghoul guts out of my hair in the downstairs bathroom and suggested we might do a better job of keeping our relationship from attracting the attention of the local gossips if we just went ahead and made it official; the night Kevin had been conceived. But there had been a lot of mundane, everyday kisses, too. More of those than the memorable ones, I was sure.

These days, though . . . absence makes the heart grow fonder, and fifty years had been enough time for my heart to go from “fond” to “absolutely obsessed.” Every kiss was the best kiss anyone had shared since the invention of kissing, and made me regret how few opportunities we had for time alone while shepherding a large group of pan-dimensional refugees to their new home. He made my knees go weak and my pulse rate spike, and it was reassuring that I could still do the same to him.

Thomas pulled back to study my face, eyes slightly glazed, like he was deliberating between painting my portrait and devouring me whole. I made a small, inquisitive noise and pressed my body against his, feeling the length of him like a promise of things we almost certainly wouldn’t be able to do tonight.

As if summoned by the thought, someone clapped their hands outside the tent.

“Hey, boss?” called Sally. “Something that looks a lot like a giant bat just tried to take off with one of the kids. Think you might want to get out here.”

Thomas sighed heavily, and leaned in to kiss me one more time, briefly, before he stepped back. “Duty calls,” he said. “I love you.”

Then he was gone, ducking out of the tent into the evening air. I stayed where I was for a long moment, panting and aching with the need for him to come back, shout “false alarm,” and throw me to the floor. He didn’t come back.

The mice cheered.

When I stepped out of the tent, the camp was virtually deserted. Fires still burned, lighting up the night in flickering orange, but the people were gone. I approached the nearest tent, sticking my head inside, and was met with the sight of four people—two adults, two children—huddled in the center. They all looked up as the fabric rustled, their eyes wide and alarmed, then slumped back down. One of the adults gestured for me to get out.

I got out.

There was no sign of Thomas or Sally. I still had my revolvers, and the knives inside my shirt, but nothing bigger than that; if this was a serious threat, I was a sitting duck. Hopefully, that meant we weren’t dealing with anything major.

Something flew by overhead, flapping wings creating a heavy sound, like canvas snapping in the wind. I glanced up, but it was already gone. Right. Sally had said it was a giant bat. I just hoped it hadn’t managed to carry anyone off before they all got under cover and out of the target environment. I kept walking, now turning to keep my eyes on the sky.

Bats are fast. They can strike almost before the eye can follow. They’re far from the fastest things in the multiverse, however, and after you’ve shot a striking snake before it could hit you, a bat just doesn’t seem all that frightening. Besides, it might not be sure I was a good prey animal yet, and if it made another exploratory pass, I was going to put some holes in its wings.

I was so busy focusing on the sky that the hands grabbing my arm from the side caught me by surprise as Sally dragged me into the tent where she’d taken cover. I squawked, cutting the sound off as soon as I realized what was happening, and turned to glare at her.

“Sorry,” she said, unrepentantly. “Boss is off making sure the kids’re all under cover. He’ll be pissed if I let you get carted off because you wanted to go big-game hunting with a peashooter.”

“My guns are not peashooters,” I objected.