Page 37 of Backpacking through Bedlam

FORTUNATELY, SALLY’S DEPARTURE FROM Earth had been recent enough that she knew what a Walmart was, and while Buckley is too small to have anything like that within town limits, it’s only about a forty-five-minute drive to Gaylord, where there’s a Walmart Supercenter that—best luck yet—stays open until midnight. Even more fortunately, keeping the house accounts paid for all these years has meant keeping me vaguely up to date, on a financial level. I prefer to use cash when possible, and mostly squirrel it away under the couch cushions. Sally had been handed five hundred dollars and instructions to come back with as much of a wardrobe as she could assemble, plus whatever else caught her eye, plus ice cream if they passed a drive-through.

Cynthia was driving her. My only real regret about the evening was that I couldn’t go with them to watch the fireworks. But I was doing something much more important. I was sitting on the edge of the bed I hadn’t slept in for years, sharpening one of my knives on a small whetstone while Thomas dug through his wardrobe, studying clothing he hadn’t seen for decades. It was oddly domestic, and might even have been relaxing, if we hadn’t been gearing up to head for New York first thing in the morning.

Rose had promised to come with whoever came to pick us up, at least to make the handoff and reassure us that we were with the right driver, which meant we’d be riding with someone who knew the situation, and not someone who’d just been drafted into driving some weirdoes to another state.

That was nice.

“Alice?”

I looked up from my knife. Thomas was watching me, a tie in one hand, a kukri in the other. “Yes, dear?”

“What was that Rose was saying before, about the windows getting shot out?”

“Oh.” I waved my knife airily, then studied the edge as I said, “It was nothing. It happened about two years after you vanished. The Covenant didn’t know you were gone, of course, but they knew about our marriage, and they knew we’d had at least one kid. They wanted him.”

“What in the world could they possibly have wanted with a five-year-old?” Thomas asked. “They’re sticky. All the time. It’s the purpose of five-year-olds.”

I lowered my knife so I could stare at him. Thomas blinked, raising his eyebrows.

“What? He was three when I disappeared, he would have been five and, hence, sticky. Why would the Covenant have wanted him?”

“Blood charms?” I waved the knife again, before setting it beside me on the bed. “The ones keeping the Covenant out of the Price family accounts? Your banker in London passed away, by the way, although he gave his client list to his son. He’s been handling things for the last twenty years.”

Thomas had left a banker’s key, attuned to the family account, with his man in London. If someone the blood charms recognized as a Price wrote and asked for money, the key could be used to authorize a withdrawal in the requested amount. It was a complicated piece of magic. As I lacked the ability to recreate it, and had never seen a way it could apply to my search for my missing husband, I’d left it pretty much alone. It kept the money safe from the Covenant. Kevin could make withdrawals, which meant he could give me money to pay the bills for this old place without putting a financial strain on himself or the family. That was all that really mattered.

“We weren’t that wealthy,” Thomas objected. “Coming to America and abducting a child to get at a few pounds seems excessive, even for the Covenant.”

I made a noncommittal sound. I’d never seen the account balances—it wasn’t allowed, even for the widow, when the key wouldn’t work on my word—but Kevin had been paying maintenance and upkeep on this place since he turned fifteen. Prior to that, I’d been burning through my own meager savings and depending on the kindness of every ally I had to keep the roof from caving in. The rent from my childhood home had helped, as had the fact that even people who’d hated my dad still thought well of my mother. Frances Brown made friends everywhere she went, from the day she was born until the day she died.

Point was, I knew what it cost to keep the house going, and Kevin had funded it for the better part of fifty years. Whatever number we were talking about here, it was definitely more than “a few pounds.”

“They really tried . . . Oh, Alice.” Thomas suddenly seemed to realize his response had been more analytical than was necessarily appropriate when talking about an incident that had involved armed Covenant soldiers attempting to abduct our child. “What happened?”

“Well,” I began. “It took me a while to wrap my head around the idea that you were actually gone, even with Mary trying her best to convince me the crossroads weren’t going to give you back.” I realized midway through the sentence that I’d said Mary’s name aloud, and winced, waiting for her to appear. When she didn’t, I relaxed and continued.

“The bills kept coming in, of course, and I didn’t know what you’d had the time to pay before you vanished, so I went through your office. I’m sorry!” I help my hands up before he could say anything. “I couldn’t risk the power being cut off while I was away, and I was just starting to experiment with ideas to get out of this dimension and look for you, and the more I could handle before it became a problem, the better.”

Thomas took my hands as he sat on the bed, lacing our fingers together and tugging them down, until our joined hands were resting in his lap. He looked at me gravely. “I’m not your father, Alice, to protect my office from my wife the way a wolf protects its kill from scavengers.” His voice was gentle. “You know you’ve always been welcome anywhere I am. If I asked for privacy at times, it was because I was working on elemental spells that could have harmed us both if disrupted.”

“I know, I know,” I said, looking down at our hands. “I know. You never told me to keep out. I did that on my own. Yell at a person enough times, they stop doing whatever it is that gets them yelled at, I guess. Even if the person who did the yelling is gone. I’m sorry.”

“You don’t have to apologize to me. Not ever.”

“Oh, I’m sure I’ll think of something I need to apologize for,” I said, and smiled, trying to look coy.

Either I missed the mark or he was more concerned about the Covenant’s attempt to abduct Kevin than I’d realized, because his expression didn’t waver. “What happened? What does my office have to do with anything?”

“Oh. That.” I took a deep breath. “Like I said, I wanted to make sure everything was in order, so I went through your office . . .”

The first six months after Thomas disappeared had been the hardest of my life. Everything reminded me of him. The house, the Red Angel, the streets of Buckley, the library, the children. Everything except the woods. The Galway was still my sanctuary, and the trees loved me the way they always had. If anything, they might be glad he was gone.

From anyone or anything else, I would have resented that potential joy in my misery. From the Galway, which had never liked him in the first place, it was only natural, and proof that at least something was still the way it was supposed to be.

Like Kevin, Jane had been born at home, eased into the world by Laura and Mary, with Cynthia and Basilia Kalakos assisting. Having a sanguivore on hand meant I didn’t get blood all over the rug, and Basilia was not only a trained midwife, her paralytic gaze worked remarkably well as a painkiller. Better than I would have received at the hospital, that’s for sure.

With Basilia’s help, I was able to sleep through more than half of my labor, coming back to consciousness only when she allowed the effect to wear off so I could push. The first person to hold my shrieking, squalling little girl was Mary, the dead girl who’d practically raised me, and that seemed only right, just like the absence of my daughter’s father seemed entirely wrong.

But it was temporary. It was only temporary. I was going to find him, I was going to bring him home, and we were going to be a family. We were.