When we landed in our new spot, I made a note to make sure Eva was never in charge of transportation again. Using satellite images to find a quiet cornfield was a lot more precise than using a lunatic for navigation. Not to mention the funny feelings I got while we were in motion.
My whole body felt like a live wire had been plunged into my flesh. I made myself shiver a few times to get rid of the feeling, but it remained subtly under my skin. As I glanced around the street Eva had plopped us in on, I saw a sign for the Amana Meat Shop & Smokehouse.
“Which is exactly where you wanted to go, if my memory serves me right.” I hated when Eva took on her overly confidant tone. She had way too much power for someone who liked to rub it in.
“Didn’t you forget to add your majesty to the end of that?” I quipped.
“Not at all, my queen, I just didn’t think you liked hearing that constantly, so I’ve decided to limit myself to saying it only four times a day.”
She’d finally gone insane. I’d always thought she was at least borderline in need of a straightjacket before, if not a fully padded room without a way to escape. Her calling me her queen before we changed locations, and actually meaning it, had crossed her over a line I didn’t think she’d be able to come back from.
“We’re drawing a crowd, so maybe we can discuss Eva’s need to proclaim her fealty a little later,” Liam suggested.
I didn’t feel any tingles close by, so I assumed without looking that our crowd was of the human variety. I’d wanted to draw as little attention as possible, which is why I thought landing in the middle of the street was such a dumb idea. I knew very little about Amana, but I was fairly certain the locals weren’t expecting a large group of people to appear.
“As far as I’m concerned, it doesn’t need to be discussed, but you should probably start picking out straightjackets that match your skin tone, Eva.”
I couldn’t see the crowd Liam had mentioned, and I was fairly certain the only reason he could was because he was ten-feet-tall. Not literally, of course, but compared to me he might as well have been. As far as me seeing what was going on in front of our group, it didn’t help that I was standing behind a Kapre.
“What exactly do you consider a crowd, Liam?” After doing conferences in front of roughly a thousand people, my definition had changed from what it used to be.
“About thirty, and I believe they would be tourists, at least most of them.”
I imagined a group of people in corny t-shirts with cameras draped around their necks. I was sure a few of them were recording our sudden appearance, which was going to be fun for our public relations people. When we traveled in a big group there was usually communication with the humans, so there wasn’t a rash of calls to the local police.
“Wonderful. Since we have no idea why we’re here, or whether we’re in the right place, I suppose we better ask a few questions.”
No one had asked why I’d immediately thought of Amana based on the clues the warlock had relayed. I didn’t doubt there were other places that would qualify, but I’d ordered a bacon bundle pack for Rick’s birthday from the shop Eva had brought us to. I didn’t think that was a coincidence.
I’d found more and more during my life that things rarely happened by chance. I hated the fact that it seemed my life had been planned without my involvement.
“Now that we’re here, and I’m sure you know there’s no warlocks in the area, is it okay if we split up and look around a little?” Eva asked. “With this big of a group, we can cover a lot more ground if we break up into thirds. I’m sure it will still be intimidating to any humans sight-seeing, but since we don’t know what we’re looking for, getting our eyes everywhere can’t hurt.”
I glanced over at the Fate, and even though what she’d said sounded logical, I had to question the words coming from her. She was just along for the ride, making sure I didn’t do anything stupid. Whatever that meant.
Eva liked to come to our meetings, mostly just to flirt with Liam, and drop in at unexpected times, but she’d never been too involved in making plans. I’d never really wanted her input, because I was sure it’d be disastrous. I wasn’t sure I believed that she didn’t know what we were looking for since she took pride in letting everyone know she knew everything.
“Don’t look at me like it’s impossible for me to have a logical thought. I’ve spent enough time with you in recent weeks that it was bound to rub off.” She rolled her eyes and waited for the stunned expression to leave my face.
“I honestly didn’t think the word logical was one you knew. It’s nice to see you’re actually using the ‘word of the day’ calendar I got you. As you mentioned, there are no warlocks lurking around, so maybe we need to rethink things.”
“Nah,” she immediately replied. “We’re in the right place, we just have to figure out why this is the right place.”
“Are you saying you don’t know the answer to that? I thought you knew everything when it came to my life.”
I hated not being able to see around the wall of soldiers in front of me. For some reason there wasn’t a crowd behind us, which I’d looked over my shoulder to confirm. I wanted to get a feel for whether the tourists were trying to find pitchforks and run us out of town. Other than the conversation I was having with Eva, things were too quiet.
“Even the best oracle wouldn’t be able to predict the events of your life, my queen. I’ve observed enough people to be able to say no one messes with the timeline like you do. I think we’ve had that conversation before, though, so I’m going to take a small group and start wandering around. I know you’ll need to keep enough people with you to start a small village, but if you can spare two groups of ten, I think we can be out of everyone’s hair relatively quickly.”
I didn’t understand her sudden need to call me her queen, and probably never would, but doing something other than standing around sounded like a good idea to me. I checked with Nate, and he nodded to let me know he had no problem with the notion of splitting up.
If it came down to us disagreeing about that, we both knew I’d win. Checking in with him was just a courtesy.
“I’m not sure what we’re going to find, but I don’t get the feeling we’re going to be running into Malphas.” Nate slid his hand behind my back as he spoke.
“No, just like I knew the last place wasn’t the right one, this isn’t either. He’s getting us to hop around while he sets things up exactly as he wants them. It’s already been said, but this is just an elaborate game he thinks he’s going to win.”
It annoyed me that my words were true, but I apparently had a plan in place to make sure things worked out in my favor. It would’ve been better if I remembered the plan. I assumed eventually I would, but that time couldn’t come fast enough.
I knew I’d been working on a plan for a long time as I’d prepared to become as strong as I could decades before. It appeared all the final decisions had been made during the month I didn’t remember, though. Because all I knew was who the opponent was and that I was fighting not only to save my life, but also my brother’s.
Remembering everything other than the missing month was even more frustrating than having no memory at all. I’d assumed that once the rest of my life had been sorted out, all mental blocks would be down. I had to remind myself it was my life, though, and nothing ever made sense.
The fact that my enemy was the one who granted me most of my memories had proven that. It was in Malphas’ advantage to keep me forgetful, and yet he’d oddly shared the life I’d forgotten. Part of me believed he’d only done it to prove how strong he was. I couldn’t really think of another reason why he’d have done something so foolish.
“Can’t someone perform a little trick and just tell us what we’re looking for?” Rick asked.
He sighed, like walking around trying to figure out why we were in Amana was a big deal. Our original goal was to zip off into battle, so I was fairly certain we hadn’t taxed all his stamina from making him walk through
a cornfield.
“It’s probably best we refrain from doing that, don’t you think?” I said as I nodded towards the humans I couldn’t see.
There were things humans didn’t know about us, particularly me, that we didn’t need someone catching on camera. We’d kept my sorceress powers a secret and I had no plans to start saying spells in the middle of the street.
“It’s not like anyone would see, and you know Mak can do things without anyone noticing. He’s moved large groups of people without blinking an eye.”
Rick had a point, but I didn’t know how much help Mak could be. I’d tried hundreds of, or at least five, spells to figure out where Malphas was and none of them worked. As much as I hated to admit it, the jerk was powerful.
“It shouldn’t take long to figure out the clue and move on to the next place,” Eva said before I had a chance to reply.
I looked at her, ready to make a comment about her still standing there, but Rick had his own plans.
“You say that like the next place isn’t going to be the one we finally meet up with Malphas.”
“Wow, you aren’t as stupid as you look,” Eva said, sparing only a quick glance at Rick before turning to me. “If you find anything, whistle. I’m sure we’ll hear you.”
She latched onto Liam’s arm and directed a group of uniques to follow her. The words she’d said to Rick weren’t mean-spirited, but he was pouting when I looked around to see if anyone else was going to take off to follow Eva. Most of the ones who did had looked my way to make sure it was okay they left.
“If you keep sticking your lip out like that, it’s going to get stuck. Can we talk about the scavenger hunt we’re on later and figure out what we’re looking for? As amazing as it would be for Mak to point us to what we need, Malphas is too smart to make it that easy.”
Rick’s lip protruded out a little further before he tucked it back to its normal position. He sighed, and then waved his arm out in front of him, indicating the floor was mine.
“I can’t see around our wall either, but I imagine you’ll be a little less scary to the humans. A third of them want to be your best friend, another third wants to marry you and the last third just wants to pick you up and cuddle with you.”
“Very funny, Freddie. Last I checked it was you who looked like a giant teddy bear. Would you like to tell everyone to clear the way so we can get down to business?” I looked over my shoulder at Nate, waiting for his command.
“You’re so cute when you pretend I’m in charge. You know they’ll move if you ask them.”
Sometimes that worked, but more often than not I found my protection squad a little overbearing, and they waited for Nate to agree with me before following my commands. It gave him a nice little ego boost, while driving me crazy. As much as some of the troops enjoyed anything that irritated me, I tried to find workarounds whenever I could.
“Just tell them to move.” It wasn’t like they didn’t hear the conversation. One would think that when their nominated leader said move, they would. I supposed I was their prophesized leader, but either way they looked to me for direction.
“They’re still trying to decide if there’s any danger. You’re known to run head first into spells.”
The laughter in Nate’s voice made me want to punch him. Vinnie had worked tirelessly on our spell detectors, and none of them were going crazy. I didn’t feel any warlocks, or any other uniques, and no one else sensitive to those things was wigging out.
“Can we not get into the argument brewing after that statement,” Rick said as he started pushing his way through the crowd.
People moved more easily out of his way than they ever had for me. I moved to follow, but Elan and Joseph were directly in front of me, and trying to move Elan was like pushing through a titanium reinforced concrete wall. If he was really feeling ornery, he’d make up a scene for me where I thought I was winning.
“Seriously? We’ve been standing here for over five minutes and this is stupid. Believe me, I’ve seen the future and I know I’m involved in the battle, so there isn’t going to be anything that keeps me away from it.”
“Do you really think that logic works when Eva just got done saying you had a tendency to change the timeline more than anyone else?” Elan asked. “Whether you like it or not, there are times you need someone to keep you from getting in trouble.”
“I’m pretty sure all roads end with Avery being at that battle, so let’s go ahead and do some looking around. I know no one wants to really leave Avery’s side, but it makes sense for us to split up and look around a little. Joseph, do you mind leading a group.”
Joseph spun around and stared at Nate. The look on his face made it clear that move wasn’t in his plans, but he nodded and walked off. A group followed him without being told.
That left me with my Kapre friend in my way. There was a vacated hole next to him, though, so I slipped around him and through some bodies before they realized I was on the move. I wasn’t exactly looking forward to the questions and needed explanations, but it was best to hurry up and get them out of the way.
CHAPTER 6
Would someone please look up the word helpful?