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“Yeah,” sneered Melody, “well someone should probably tell him that.”
Xiomara reached back and clasped her hands behind her back. She looked stoic, like a statue. He body utterly motionless as she absorbed the heat from the fire.
“We always suspected he went after the egg on his own,” she went on. “Especially Aldwyn.” She paused before continuing. “Hanham disappeared decades ago.”
“D—Decades?”
“Yes. No one has heard from him since…” She paused, then turned back and shrugged. “Since sometime back in the 1980’s.”
Melody’s mind was spinning. She’d been gone three whole days at Evermoore. And yet here… only twenty-two minutes. Silently she did the math in her head.
And he’s been in there for decades…
It was too horrific to think about. Her heart dropped into her feet.
“Are you saying you ran into Eric Hanham?” Xiomara said, her voice suddenly deadly serious. “At Evermoore?”
“Yes.”
“And you’re sure you saw him?”
Melody nodded mechanically. “More than saw him.” Reaching into her pocket, she pulled out the amethyst pendant and dangled it from its broken chain. “The whole time I was there, he kept trying to take this.”
Xiomara glanced at the Heart of Isolomara, then back to Lucus. She seemed to be trying to determine something.
Melody was still livid. “Are you saying you didn’t know he—”
“No,” the old woman said quickly. “Of course not. We would’ve never risked you had we known.”
“But you suspected?”
Xiomara sighed heavily, then sank back into her chair. “Aldwyn did,” she shrugged.
“Then he’s an asshole,” Melody snapped.
“Was,” said Xiomara. There was an underlying sadness to her reply. “Aldwyn died years ago.”
Another stretch of silence followed, somber and melancholy.
“Now you know why I had to bring Lucus back,” said Melody. “Trapped in there, for all that time. It’s a wonder he didn’t go insane.”
Xiomara cleared her throat. “I still don’t know how you did it,” she said simply, “but this man doesn’t belong here.”
“Bullshit.”
“He’s from a different time, Ms. Larson. A different place.”
“And if it weren’t for this man,” Melody said, throwing her own words back at her, “I’d be stuck there, at Evermoore. Forever, probably. Just like Eric.”
Xiomara turned her attention to Lucus, as if considering him for the first time. Her expression was mostly impassive. She was perturbed by his existence, Melody knew, but she could tell the old woman was also intrigued. She’d surprised her with something completely and totally unexpected. In that one regard, Melody could sense she’d gained a certain measure of her respect.
“You know you could’ve told me what I’d be walking into,” said Melody. “That the plantation was trapped in time, its occupants from two and three centuries ago.” She pulled at her mud-streaked dress. “Hell, you dressed me for a cotillion for fuck’s sake! Told me I was going to a ball, and—”
“It doesn’t work that way,” Xiomara interrupted. “If you’d known, things would’ve been different for you. It had to be the way it was.”
Melody stared down at her bare, filthy feet. She suddenly wanted a shower. A hot shower. The hottest shower she ever—
“Now,” said Xiomara, “if you’re all done pissing and moaning about your dress and your shoes…”
