Guy Kay - Ysabel

“Yes, ma’am,” Greg said meekly. Ned would have said the same thing. He felt an overwhelming sense of relief that his mom was here, and not just because she wasn’t where she’d been yesterday.

Meghan Marriner made a precise tick mark on her first page of notes. She put her glasses on again and studied the page a moment, then looked up at her sister again.

“Same point. If Ysabel has become Melanie, or the other way round, what do we know from that? Is Melanie there in any way?”

Kim pursed her lips. “I think so.” She looked at her husband. “I think Ned had it right, before…the men return as themselves, but she’s summoned into someone, and she’s a little different each time.”

Meghan nodded, “So if she’s different it’s—”

“—Melanie that’s the difference,” Kate Wenger finished. “That makes sense.”

Meghan Marriner smiled a little. “I try.”

“But what do we know if we know that?” Steve asked.

Meghan took off her glasses again. “Well, for starters, imagine she wanted to steer this, to tell us something. What does Melanie know about Provence, about Aix, this whole area?”

Ned’s brief excitement faded. He looked glumly at Greg and Steve, and then his dad.

Edward Marriner sighed. “Just about everything, honey. She spent half a year getting ready for this.”

“She’s worse than Kate, Mom. She’s worse than you,” Ned said.

“Well, really,” said his father, half-heartedly, “I wouldn’t go that far.”

Meghan raised an eyebrow at her son and then looked at her husband. “Careful, both of you. You are both in potential trouble tonight.”

“Why me? I didn’t compare the supernatural realm to an adolescent shaving,” Edward Marriner protested.

“I still think that was a good metaphor!” Uncle Dave complained promptly.

“That,” said Kimberly, “just makes the point for us. Better to keep quiet. Nobody needs to know you still think that way.”

“The management is taking the entire question of male idiocy under advisement,” Kate Wenger said.

Meghan grinned encouragement at her. “You said it, girl.”

Ned carefully avoided looking at Kate. He knew exactly what she was doing with that phrase. He’d either redden or laugh if he caught her eye, and neither would be useful just now.

He cleared his throat. “I hate to accuse my own mother of being frivolous, but is this really the best time to get into sisterhood bonding?”

“It isn’t such a bad time,” Aunt Kim murmured.

She was looking at Meghan. Ned blinked. Moods could change pretty fast, he thought.

Meghan shook her head, “Don’t rush me, Kim.” She paused, looked back down at her notes. “So you guys are saying we can’t predict anything from Melanie being part of this?”

“Maybe we can,” Kim said. “It’s a good thought, Meg. I just don’t know what, yet.”

Steve lifted his hand. They seemed to be copying Kate’s good-student gesture here. “You know, I’d bet a lot the reason there’s a search and not a fight is Melanie.”

“That makes sense too,” Kate said. “They were really surprised by it. They didn’t like it at all.”

“Why?”

“They want to kill each other,” Ned said.

Meghan hesitated, then made another tick mark.

HIS MOTHER HAD other notes, and other questions. None of them triggered anything close to a revelation.

She asked why Phelan had been going under the baptistry in the first place. What he’d been looking for down there. Ned didn’t know, neither did Aunt Kim.

“If I was guessing…” Ned began.

“Might as well, honey,” his mother said. “No marks deducted.”

“He said something about finding him—the other guy—in time. And never being able to do it.” The world will end, he’d actually said. “Maybe he wanted to kill Cadell before the summoning.”

“But then she’d never appear,” his father said, “if I understand this at all.”

“I know,” Ned said. “That’s why I’m just guessing. I think…I think he’s really tired.”

There was a short silence.

“‘Who could have foretold that the heart grows old,’” Aunt Kim said. Then added, “That’s Yeats, not me.”

The air I breathe is her, or wanting her. That didn’t sound like a worn-out heart.

“I think it’s really complicated,” Ned said.

“Uh-huh, I’ll buy that,” said Greg.

Ned’s mother made a dash this time on her sheet, not a tick mark. She asked about when the sculpture underground had been stolen, and when it might have been made. The theft, they knew, was recent. The work, they had no idea. A tick mark, a dash.

Meghan wanted to know what had happened at Béziers. God will know his own. Kate answered that one. Good student. Another tick. More questions, varying marks on paper, the moon rising outside. Ned felt a sudden rush of love for his mother. Against the weight of centuries—against druids and skulls and wolves, rituals of blood, fire, and men who could grow horns from their heads like a forest god, or fly—she was trying to bring order and clarity to bear.

He saw her put down her pen, take off her glasses and fold them. She rubbed her eyes. This would have been, he thought, a long, amazingly hard day for her.

Kate excused herself to call Marie-Chantal’s house and report she was spending another night away. Ned had the feeling they didn’t worry a whole lot about their guest there, but he didn’t ask questions. He was glad she was staying. There were—by now—a variety of reasons.

In the absence of anything close to a better idea, they decided to stay with today’s plan: do the same searching tomorrow. Kate had been right—they arranged three groups.

“I want to go back to Aix,” Ned said suddenly.

He hadn’t planned to say that, but it was interesting how everyone simply accepted it, deferring to him. Even his mother. That went beyond “interesting” and reached “surreal,” actually.

Veracook had gone home. Greg went into the kitchen to make another pot of tea. Kate and Kim and Uncle Dave stayed at the table, bent over a big map, sorting out routes. Ned’s parents put on sweaters and went out on the terrace together. He could see them through the glass doors, their chairs close. His mom touched his father on the shoulder once, as Ned watched.

Steve had put on the television, a soccer game. Ned went and joined him on the couch. Eventually Greg brought his tea and sat with them. On the screen one team got a corner kick and someone headed the ball into the net. The player became very excited, so did the announcers and the crowd.

When it was time for sleep things got interesting in another way, since they were now short a bed. Ned had the two singles in his room, but he somehow didn’t think Kate would switch up there.

Good call on that one. Uncle Dave came upstairs with Ned, Kate stayed in the main-floor bedroom with Aunt Kim.

Ned thought he might talk with his uncle a little. He had his own really long list of questions. Mostly about his family. But he was also flat-out exhausted and he fell asleep pretty much as soon as they turned out the light.

He woke in the middle of the night again.

Not jet lag this time. He felt disoriented, afraid. He sat straight up in bed, his heart pounding. After a minute he rose quietly and went to the window. He looked out over the grass and pool. Nothing there that he could see. He checked his watch. It was past two in the morning.

“Ned, what is it?”

He hadn’t been as quiet as he’d thought. “Don’t know. Something woke me.” His head was hurting.

That was what made him do the inward search.

Another good call. He found his own aura, and Aunt Kim’s downstairs. But there was a third presence registering, gold as well, but shaded towards red now—and pulsing, bright and dim, bright and dim, like a signal beacon.