Page 17 of Backpacking through Bedlam

He smiled, the polite, bland smile of someone making nice with a guest who they hoped was going to leave soon, and drifted over to speak with a cluster of refugees. They laughed, agreeing with something he’d said.

Thomas’s translation spell would leave with us when we went, and these people would have to learn to communicate the old-fashioned way, but looking around, it seemed like they’d be more than pleased to make the effort. The mound had a fairly large population of the spotted, semi-feline people, and our group had a reasonable number of striped, semi-feline people. I guess “semi-feline” was a not uncommon body form in the adjacent dimensions. The spotty ones seemed to be the original inhabitants; the less-spotty ones, like Kenneth, were direct descendants of the incubus who’d come to visit a few generations back.

Interestingly, he’d been traveling in the company of several Johrlac, and even more interestingly, according to Kenneth, we had just missed a similar group—where “just missed” meant “it happened about a year and a half ago,” if I was doing the local time conversion correctly. No guarantees. But apparently, a group consisting of a Johrlac, an Incubus, and a couple of sorcerers had come crashing through, along with a fairly hefty chunk of masonry, and upset the spiders something awful before leaving again, taking their masonry with them.

It was hard to tell from Kenneth’s descriptions, but it sure sounded like he was talking about a bunch of my grandkids. Which would be a pretty big coincidence, and just made me more sure that he was talking about people I knew. My family lives in the pause between “possible” and “probable,” courtesy of Mom, and if it seemed too good to be true, it probably was. Maybe that’s not how it works for anybody else. It’s how things have always worked for me.

The visitors had been accompanied by a horrifying number of cuckoos, most of whom had been eaten by giant spiders or found dead in the fields after the group took their masonry and went home. Honestly, the whole thing was a little confusing, and I snuggled into Thomas as I tried to puzzle my way through it, finishing my stew and enjoying the somewhat novel sensation of having enough to eat while in a safe, enclosed place.

Thomas skimmed a hand across my hair, the sensation light enough to be barely present. I tilted my head back and looked at him; he smiled at me.

“I think we’re nearly done,” he said. “If all my people choose to stay here . . .”

“Then we head to Ithaca, tell Helen and Phoebe we’re finished, and go back to Buckley to figure out what happens next,” I said, agreeably. “I hope Sally likes the tailypo.”

Thomas snorted. “Buckley is still up for discussion, and I hope the tailypo like me, since all the ones who knew me have long since passed away, and I don’t particularly want a hostile conspiracy of lemurs in my living room.”

“They’re going to love you,” I said. “Just like their ancestors did. Just like I do.”

He leaned down and he kissed me, and I didn’t care that we were in a room full of people, or that the ceiling was covered in giant bugs, or any of those things. All that mattered was here, and now, and the fact that after all this time, I had accomplished my goal. I got to have new goals now, ones that were maybe a little less straightforward but would almost certainly be healthier, or at least involve less gross physical trauma. I could go home, and it would be home, really home, not a waystation between me and the next leg of my wild goose chase. A little public kissing was nothing compared to that kind of relief.

Besides, it wasn’t like we’d had a lot of privacy since leaving the bottle dimension, and as long as we were both fully clothed, there wasn’t much we could do that would feel like crossing a line.

Sally plopped down next to me. I disengaged from kissing Thomas to twist and look at her.

“All done showing off your poking sticks?” I asked.

“Too many Lilu in one room,” she said. “The smell is starting to make my head spin.”

Lilu—incubi and succubi, in the more common usage—sweat pheromonal signals that make them almost irresistibly attractive to people with a compatible biology. It’s never had much impact on the members of my direct family. I figure it’s part and parcel of the ridiculous luck we all got from Mom. Sally and Thomas didn’t have the same luxury, and while about half our company was part Lilu, we’d been traveling outside, where the open air could diffuse the signals.

That explained Thomas kissing me in front of other people. Not that he’s been particularly shy about kissing me since we were reunited—we’re both trying to make up for lost time. But he wasn’t normally that casual about initiating. I adjusted my position, leaning against him as I focused on Sally.

“Does it feel like anyone’s influencing you intentionally?”

She shook her head. “No, just general background noise. But there’s enough women here who fit my standards that I’m starting to get a little flustered. I know we can’t go outside without making ourselves targets for the giant spiders, but is there any place we could go to be a little less surrounded by people who might accidentally cause a massive consent violation?”

Most Lilu are very aware of the effect they have on other people, and take steps to keep themselves from influencing anyone by mistake. In this case, however, we had the Murrays, descendants of some not-very-nice people who hadn’t been shy about using their natural talents to find mates once they landed in the bottle world. The modern Murrays were more restrained, and also had weaker powers of persuasion, thanks to the genetic contributions of their non-Lilu ancestors. That didn’t mean they didn’t walk around in a low-grade funk of supernatural Axe body spray at all times. And then there were the locals, who were just as far removed from their incubus ancestor, but were still sweating organic love potion. None of them had any good reason to have learned to control it, since Lilu can’t easily affect other Lilu, and their pheromones don’t affect close relatives on the non-Lilu side. Meaning that even the non-Lilu locals were safe due to other family ties, and this whole place was a sexy, sexy soup of inescapable perfumes.

“Good question,” I said, and rose, pausing to kiss Thomas on the top of the head before I trotted toward Kenneth. He turned and blinked at me, somewhat nonplussed, although I didn’t know whether he was thrown by my approach or general lack of deference. I’m not great at “unearned respect.” It’s not one of my big callings in life.

“Hey, bud,” I said. “So we have a tiny problem.”

“What would that be?”

“See, you lot are descended from that Incubus ancestor you’re so proud of, and so are a lot of the folks we brought with us,” I said. “Me, Thomas, and Sally, though, we’re just human. No extra bits or bonuses. So the pheromones are getting to be sort of a lot, and we need to move to another room so we can breathe.”

“You are free to go,” he said, imperiously.

“And that would be the tiny problem. I don’t want to wander into the stable and get eaten by one of your giant mantis friends or something, so we’ll need someone to show us where we can safely go, and even more importantly than that, when we leave, the translation spell that’s letting you all talk to each other so easily is going to go with us. Sorcerer, remember?” I shrugged, trying my best to look at least a little apologetic. I was afraid I didn’t do a very good job. That’s something else I’ve never been particularly good at. “Thought it would be polite to warn you that you’re about to have a language barrier all up in here.”

“We have navigated language barriers before,” he said stiffly.

“Not like this. They speak about two dozen languages between them, and in some cases, the kids and parents don’t actually know the same one. The dangers of raising your children under a translation spell. The kids speak English. The parents speak whatever was spoken back in their original dimensions, and they’ve never had reason to learn anything else.”

Kenneth blinked slowly, finally looking as if he might actually understand.

“Anyway, the spell travels with Thomas, and we have to get out of here before something inappropriate happens, so if you could brace yourself and warn your people, that would be good.” I smiled thinly. “Think of it as a test run for what’s going to happen when we move on to the next dimension. Because we’re not coming back here.”