C.E. Murphy - Truthseeker

“Yeah, it’s been a great little … Lara, it’s been seventeen months . You can’t go around telling people it’s only been a day. That’s insane.”

“It’s true.”

“How?”

Lara pulled a smile into place, feeling it fracture around the edges. “David Kirwen turned out to be a prince of fairyland, and he brought me there for a day.”

“Da—” Kelly gaped at her, then grabbed her hands. “Lara, David Kirwen was arrested on kidnapping charges two days after you disappeared. They indicted him within a week, and flagged him as a flight risk because of his dual citizenship. He’s been in jail all this time. The trial’s coming up soon.”

Only then did what Lara had said seem to catch up with her. Her hands loosened, something Lara saw more than felt: her own fingers had gone cold. She whispered “Arrested?” at the same time Kelly said “Fairyland?”

“Two days after I disappeared?” Lara got up and began shedding her armor, an awkward enough task that she was glad she hadn’t tried it at the playground.

Kelly, visibly restraining herself from questions, got up to help. “The last anyone saw of you was at that AA meeting on Sunday morning. When you didn’t show up for work Cynthia was worried, and I went over to your apartment and no one was there. The door wasn’t even locked, Lara. The last person you’d called was David Kirwen, and the next morning you still weren’t anywhere, but he came parading down Cambridge Street in a ridiculous—”

Her hands flew from the binding straps on the armor to her mouth, eyes large above her fingertips. “In this ridiculous suit of armor,” she said through her fingers. “My God. It looked just like this, Lara. It was just like this.”

Lara unlatched the last bit that held the arm pieces in place and set them aside, then loosened the breastplate. Her next breath came easier, for all that the moonlit armor was as weightless as metal could be. “We’d been in battle.”

“Battle,” Kelly said after what felt like hours of silence. Lara heard the attempt to hold back disbelief and caught Kelly’s hands again, squeezing her fingers apologetically. Diamond glittered, catching the light and fading again as she made herself meet Kelly’s eyes.

“Go ahead. Say it.” Then her gaze jerked back down to the clear jewel in the ring on Kelly’s finger. “Oh my God , Kelly, are you engaged?”

“What?” Kelly looked at her own hands as if they belonged to a stranger, then pulled them back from Lara’s grip, hiding the solitaire ring. “No. I mean, yes, but this didn’t really seem like the time to mention it.”

Lara sat down in a clatter of armored legs, light-headedness sweeping her. The summertime heat, the phone call to Cynthia, Kelly’s reaction to her appearance—she had believed months had gone by, but the evidence presented by a half-carat ring brought home the passage of time in a way nothing else had. “It was only yesterday,” she said faintly, and it rang with a dichotomy of truth and falsehood. “Who is he? An undertaker?”

Color rushed along Kelly’s cheeks. “No. That stopped seeming funny after you disappeared. It’s Dickon, Lar. Dickon Collins, David’s cameraman. We were both looking for you, he was determined to find you to prove David was innocent, and I don’t know, I’d liked him in the first place and … I wasn’t going to have a maid of honor,” she whispered. “I wasn’t going to, because there wasn’t anybody but you I wanted to ask.”

“Oh, God, Kel.” Lara leaned forward to hug her friend. “Congratulations. And I would love to be your maid of honor, if you’re asking.”

“I am.” Kelly returned the hug hard, then sat back with tears staining her cheeks again. “I am, and I want to tell you everything about Dickon and the wedding and everything, but fairyland , Lara? Battle? I know you don’t lie, but that’s …”

“Delusional?”

“Crazy talk,” Kelly agreed. “Seriously, Lar. Fairyland?”

“I know. I do know, Kelly. But he was looking for me, for someone with my stupid ability to hear the truth. That’s what upset me so much a couple nights ago at Rachel’s. He’d asked me to go with him, to help him at home. He called me a ‘truthseeker,’ and it felt like it fit.” Lara muffled the words in her hands as she told the story of the past day, ending with the clarity of power that had allowed her to open a doorway back home. Kelly listened in expressive silence, her eyebrows and lips shaping comments she didn’t give voice to.

“Well,” she said eventually, “you’re going to have to come up with a different story for the papers. Yes, the papers,” she said before Lara asked. “Your disappearance, the kidnapping, it was huge, Lara. Kirwen’s a celebrity. Maybe just a local one, but still. Local weatherman arrested for kidnapping? Everybody was talking about it. So you’re going to need a story.”

“You believe me?” Lara asked through her fingers.

Kelly heaved a sigh. “No, but yes. If anybody else told me this, I’d never believe it. But it’s you, so.” She shrugged.

“Thank you.”

“Yeah, well, what are friends for?” She studied Lara, eyebrows drawn together. “So what do you do now, Lar?”

“I don’t know. I make up a story for the papers.” The idea sent atonal vibrations under her skin. “I get Dafydd out of jail.”

“Can you do that? I mean, with your …” Kelly trailed off, then, brightness coming into her eyes, giggled. “With your, um, your magic powers.” She laughed again, contagious enough to make Lara smile, too. “Sorry. I always kind of thought of it as your spooky power, but I never wanted to say that. And now it turns out it really is like magic.”

“Just like,” Lara said drily. “Don’t worry. I’m not used to it, either. What were you going to ask?”

“Oh! Can you do that, get him out of jail with your magic?”

Lara blinked. “I don’t know. I was more thinking that I’d just tell them I wasn’t kidnapped. I mean, I’m back and I—”

“Have no explanation for where you’ve been.” Kelly’s eyebrows rose. “It might not be that easy, Lara. David pled not guilty, but he wouldn’t say anything in his own defense. The only reason he wasn’t prosecuted for murder was nobody could find any evidence of foul play except that you were missing. And none of us wanted to have you declared dead,” she said more quietly. “It was too much like giving up hope.”

“Oh, Kel.” Lara leaned forward to hug her friend again, mumbling “I’m definitely not dead” against her shoulder. “I’m just going to have to make them believe me somehow.”

“Can you do that?” Kelly asked for the second time. Lara sat up, frowning, and Kelly spread her hands. “Look, all I’m saying is if you can make a path between Boston and fairyland, then just making somebody believe you weren’t kidnapped seems like small potatoes. Especially if it’s the truth.” A wobbly smile creased her face. “You’ve always been good with the truth.”

“I don’t know if I have that much power here.” Lara’s protest shriveled under a rising chorus of song that lent credence to Kelly’s suggestion.

Emyr and Dafydd had both made it clear that her magic was purely human, and even the little time she’d spent in the Barrow-lands had strengthened not just her ability, but her confidence in it. There was no reason an earth-born magic shouldn’t be as strong—perhaps stronger—here as it had been in the Barrow-lands. She pursed her lips, then turned her hands palm-up toward Kelly. “On the other hand, there’s really only one way to find out.”

Kelly got up decisively. “I’ll bring you down to the station. Dickon and I got to know the detective on your case, Reg Washington. He’ll be the best place to start.”