Sharon Ashwood - Unchained

“I’m tougher than that.” Ashe got out of the chair and took the cookbook to the kitchen counter. “Whoever heard of asking parents to bake on short notice? What is this, like a command performance or something?”

“Welcome to the dictatorship of the parental fund-raiser,” Holly said dryly. “I’ve heard all about it from the moms in the baby clinic.”

“Janie’s mom called Mrs. Flammand the cupcake Nazi,” Eden piped up.

Holly snorted. “Better watch our step, then. We can send one of the hellhounds for sprinkles.”

Reynard watched and listened with a happy feeling he’d forgotten. Bantering women, the smell of good food, domestic bustle. This was something he’d never take for granted again.

“The soup smells wonderful,” Reynard said.

“Hi!” Ashe and Holly said in chorus. They looked at each other, a bit embarrassed.

“It’s not soup,” said Holly. “It’s a tracking spell for the demon. We’ve given up trying to be subtle.”

“By now it knows we’re on its trail,” Ashe said. “It has to.”

He sat down opposite Eden and looked at her book. It was upside down to him, but he knew what it was right away. “You’re studying the stars?”

“For science.” Eden took a sip from her glass of sticky brown milk—chocolate milk, he thought she’d called it. He’d have to try it when he got the chance.

“You don’t have to do homework today if you don’t want to,” said Ashe.

“It’s okay,” said Eden. “I kind of feel like I should be good for a couple of days.”

Ashe looked at her daughter with concern. “I’m not complaining, but are you sure you’re feeling okay?”

The girl shrugged. “You said I was grounded until I was forty for running away again. I thought maybe I should start sucking up.”

Reynard exchanged an amused glance with Ashe. “Currying favor usually works better if you at least pretend to be sincere.”

“I am sincere,” Eden said blithely. “Mom rocks.”

Ashe gave an exaggerated shrug.

“When this is all over, are you going back to the Castle?” Eden asked Reynard, coming with a child’s instincts to the one topic he didn’t wish to discuss. Which apparently everyone else did, starting with Caravelli.

“Why do you ask?”

She gave him a wary look. “Is it all really horrible there?”

Yes. He had to answer this one carefully. He didn’t want to frighten the girl. “There are some wonderful people there. Your uncle Mac, for one. Lore and his hellhounds lived there until a little while ago.”

“I like the hellhounds. They play fetch.”

Reynard’s mind boggled a moment. “Good for them.”

“Do they have other animals in the Castle? I didn’t see any.”

“Yes. Parts of it are a bit like a zoological garden.” A bizarre, nightmarish one. “Your mother and I saw a rabbit there the other day.”

“Are the animals in cages?”

“Not all of them.”

“Don’t they eat each other?”

“No. The Castle makes it so no one’s hungry or thirsty. You weren’t there long enough to notice that.”

“You don’t ever eat in there?”

How many questions can she ask in under a minute? “Never ever. At least not the old-timers, like me.”

“That sucks. What about Choco-puff cookies?”

“Fortune is a harsh mistress.”

She made a face. “You’re laughing at me.”

“A little.”

“I’m just a kid.”

“Don’t underestimate how wonderful that is to an old soldier like me.”

She wrinkled her nose. “You’re not old. Grandma’s old.”

“I am, too. I’ve lived a long time and traveled a great many places.”

“You talk like you’re from England.”

“I was. I’ve been other places, too. Flanders. Italy. Germany. India.”

“India? Did you see elephants?”

“Of course. And a few lions and tigers as well.”

“And bears?” Eden’s eyes twinkled.

“No bears,” he said, thinking that now she was laughing at him, though he couldn’t figure out why.

She pushed a bag of cookies his way. “Have a Choco-puff.”

He took one and bit into it. It was disgustingly sweet. He ate it anyway.

“Why did you go to India?” she asked around a mouthful of chocolate.

“The king sent me. And I wanted to get away from home for a while.” From his father. From Elizabeth. From the fact that she had borne his brother a son. Oddly, the memory didn’t burn the way it used to anymore.

Eden watched him intently, the way children do. “Did you get homesick?”

“Yes, but I watched the night sky, like in your book there. When you travel the world, somehow knowing the people at home see what you see in the sky helps a lot. And it helps you sail your boat home again.”

“You can find your way with them? Could I find Spain with the stars?”

“Stars are like a map. You can find your way anywhere if you know them well enough.”

“Are there stars in the Castle? I didn’t see any stars.”

“No. There are no stars.” There is no connection to anyone else there. You are truly alone.

Eden looked glumly at the book. “I can’t remember this map, and we have to name the stars on a test.”

Reynard tilted the book to see it better. It was a map of the night sky, with lines and dots marking the major constellations. He looked at the window over the kitchen sink. It was just starting to grow dark. Not dark enough to teach her the way he had learned, from simply looking at the sky with his tutor.

He thought for a moment. “Sometimes it helps to remember them by the story they tell. Do you know your Greek legends?”

Eden wrinkled her nose. “Like gods and goddesses?”

“They play a part.” And he started to tell her the stories he knew of Hercules’ lion, of the twins Castor and Pollux, and Orion the Hunter, pointing to each of the players where they danced in the night sky.

Ashe listened with half an ear as she worked, measuring flour and trying to double the recipe without miscounting. Reynard’s voice was soft, his stories steeped in the elegance and heroism of another time. She didn’t know about Eden, but she wasn’t going to forget a word of his tale.

But when the story ended, her mind drifted. It had been a busy day, an urgent search through books with Holly and Grandma to find the perfect demon locator spell, dozens of phone calls in search of news of demons or vampires, and keeping an eye on Eden and Reynard to make sure they were all right. She’d tried contacting her hacker friend again to see what other properties the demon might have purchased. No answer. She wasn’t worried—every so often he seemed to fall off the planet only to reappear days later, but it was a bad time to pull one of his vanishing acts. Then she’d got Mac on the phone to see what he’d learned from questioning Miru-kai. Even if she hadn’t been banging on doors, the last hour was the first reprieve from the search for the urn, Belenos, or the demon.

One other thing had happened. Earlier that afternoon, Brent Hashimoto, the lawyer who was presumably not a demon-possessed nut job, had phoned with a proposal for her. Roberto’s family wanted to spend the holidays with Eden. That meant summer vacation and Christmas in Spain. In return, they’d back off about Ashe’s suitability as a parent. As Hashimoto said, their real concern was losing touch with their only grandchild.

That gave her something to think about. Ashe agreed that Eden should have a relationship with her grandparents. The sticking point for her was, as always, safety issues. As long as they agreed to work through those, she was willing to talk. Hashimoto was smart: Confronting Ashe head-on only made her hostile. Appealing to her reason engaged her. Acknowledging that nothing came before Eden’s well-being had her willing to play ball.