Katie MacAlister - The Art of Stealing Time

“Pah,” she said again, then returned to the previous subject. “We can’t go to Summerland, and that’s that.”

“You have to go!” I said, pounding the steering wheel when another light turned red. “Dammit, I don’t want either or both of you sent to the Akasha! You have to go somewhere to lie low until the Watch gives up trying to find you. I’ll take Mrs. Vanilla back right now, and then we’re getting you two to safety. They won’t keep after you long once she’s back. You’ll only have to stay there for a few months. Six at the most.”

“No,” my mother said, and I could see in the mirror that she was shaking her head. Worse, she had that stubborn look on her normally placid face that I knew boded ill for me.

“Then where do you want to go? It has to be somewhere beyond the reach of the Watch.”

She gave a little half shrug. “I suppose we could visit Anwyn, as you suggested.”

I wanted to bang my head on the steering wheel, but knew that would do no good. Besides, the light had just turned green. “I’d take you there in a heartbeat, but we don’t know how to get in.”

“Mrs. Vanilla does,” Mom Two said.

I shot her a startled look. “She does?”

“Yes. That’s what she wanted to show you. Mags, do you have it?”

There was a click as my mother unfastened her seat belt in order to lean forward and wave a piece of paper in front of my nose.

Suddenly blinded, I swore and jerked the car to the side of the road. Luckily, it was empty of parked cars. “Mom!”

“See? Mrs. Vanilla drew a map showing the entrance of Anwyn.” Mom sat back and with a smug look snapped her seat belt into place.

I stared at the crumpled piece of paper, willing my heart rate to slow down as I smoothed out the wrinkles. “OK, this is a mistake.”

“I doubt if it is, dear.”

“No, see, this can’t be right. The old biddy—sorry, Mrs. Vanilla, no offense intended—the old lady is a shrimp or two short of a cocktail. She has to be.”

Mom Two frowned. “Why would you put a shrimp in a cocktail?”

“That was a reference to a shrimp cocktail. I was trying to be witty. It relieves the feeling that I’ve gone insane.”

“Mags,” Mom Two said, her gaze never wavering from my face, “I have changed my mind. A second visit to Dr. Gently may well help our girl.”

I shook the paper at her. “I am not the one who needs to see a mental health counselor! I didn’t the first time you guys dragged me in to see her, and I sure as shootin’ don’t now, although all the little gods and goddesses know that I’m entitled to one, given what you’re putting me through.”

“Gwenhwyfar Byron Owens!”

I looked upward, knowing full well what was coming next.

“You are very well aware how offensive we find it when you say things like that. We raised you to be a proper Wiccan, one who worships the Deity, not a mingle-mangle of assorted gods and demigods.” Mom had her sternest face on, the one I had run into quite a bit in my teenage years when I rebelled against their Wiccan beliefs.

I was older and wiser now, however. “I don’t think ‘mingle-mangle’ is technically a word, and don’t try to change the subject. We need to be focusing on how to find the entrance to Anwyn, and no”—I held up my hand with the paper in it—“this isn’t it. The entrance to heaven isn’t in a Krispy Kreme shop.”

“Have you ever had their cocoa?” Mom Two asked. “It’s pretty close to heaven.” With a hurried look over her shoulder at my mother, she added, “If I believed in such a thing, which of course, I don’t.”

“Anwyn is not in a Krispy Kreme,” I said firmly.

“How do you know? Have you been there?” my mother asked.

“No, but—”

“Then I don’t think you have the right to say harsh things to Mrs. Vanilla about her lovely map.”

“Mom, it just doesn’t make sense. She’s either kidding, or . . .” I made a circular motion with my finger.

“I don’t think she is either. She seems to know where the entrance is. Perhaps she has been there herself.”

Mrs. Vanilla made her peculiar squeaking noises and fretted at the seat belt.

I looked up and over to Mom Two, shaking my head as I said, “This is crazy.”

Mom Two smiled and patted my hand. “I’ve always said that crazy is in the mind of the beholder.”

“Yes, but we can’t indulge in that when so much is at stake.”

“Drive,” my mother ordered, tapping me on the back of my shoulder. “We’ll see when we get there.”

“Oh, for the love of all that’s shiny and sparkly!” I took a deep breath and pulled out onto the road, mentally plotting the fastest route to Mrs. Vanilla’s nursing home. “Fine, we’ll go to Krispy Kreme, although the mall is sure to be closed at this time of night. First, however, we’re going to take Mrs. Vanilla back where she belongs.”

Both mothers opened their respective mouths to protest, but as I stopped at an intersection, waiting to turn onto the road that led to the nursing home, two police cars suddenly zipped across our line of vision.

I swore under my breath and jerked the wheel in the opposite direction, pissing off the car behind me. “Right. Krispy Kreme it is. But when we get there and it’s closed and there’s no entrance to Anwyn, you guys will owe me a great big apology. And a hot chocolate. With extra whipped cream.”

The fireworks were over, but Gregory Faa felt as if he’d been caught up in some sort of residual whirlwind that left him baffled, intrigued, and with an overwhelming sense that he’d just been duped.

“And I don’t like that feeling,” he announced after arriving at the spot where his cousin’s wife, Kiya, was sitting on a small woolen blanket.

“What feeling?”

“That someone has just pulled the wool over my eyes. A lot of wool. At least three or four sheep’s worth. Perhaps a small flock.”

Kiya scrunched up her nose, pursed her lips, and looked thoughtful. “That’s kind of odd, isn’t it? I mean, you’re not the easiest person to pull the wool . . . over . . . on. That got mangled. How should I end that sentence?”

“—‘on which the wool can be pulled.’ At least, that seems a fairly grammatically correct version.” Gregory scanned the area, but didn’t see his cousin. “Where’s Peter?”

“He went to the north gate to watch for the lady you guys are after. I’ve been stationed here with this”—she showed him the blurry printout from a security camera that showed a short, round woman stuffing a tiny elderly woman into a blue sedan—“and strict instructions that if I see either woman, I’m to call Peter immediately and not attempt to talk to the lady myself.”

“I take it you haven’t seen anyone?”

“Lots of people, but none who look like this lady.” She studied the picture for a moment. “She doesn’t look like a kidnapper.”

He continued to scan the crowds of people moving to and fro in the night, many of them beginning to drift out of the park now that the fireworks were over. “Finding her would be so much easier if it was daylight. There would be fewer people about, for one.”

“Ah, but then your canny kidnappers seldom flee to parks with their victims, since they would be noticeable there. In fact, I think it’s downright odd that she came here to begin with. I mean, why? Why would you go to the trouble of kidnapping an old woman out of a nursing home only to take her to the park?” She narrowed her eyes. “Are you sure she really kidnapped the woman?”

“I’m not sure of anything yet. The only thing we know is that a police report came across the radio, and they gave her name as being attached to the car.” Static and unintelligible conversation burst out of the small electronic device concealed in his pants pocket. He pulled out the police scanner that all Watch officers used when a case involved someone who wasn’t a denizen of the Otherworld, listened for a moment, then shook his head. “The mortal police are still trying to find her car. Thought they had spotted it, but it turned out to be someone else.”