“Of all the irritating, arrogant—holy cats, can he kiss!—men I’ve ever met, you, sir, are the worst,” I grumbled aloud as I got into my car. “And if you think you can just walk away from me without answering more than a couple of questions, you can just think again, buster. Eloise, follow!”
I performed the intricate ritual that normally results in Eloise starting up, but after having been so obliging earlier in the day—multiple times, yet—she had evidently felt she’d done her part in granting me happiness. She played coy by pretending to start, then sputtering into silence.
“Dammit, Eloise!” I said, stomping hard on the gas. “Don’t you do this to me! We have a man to kiss! Er…follow. Although the kissing was really, really nice. Did you see that he got all bulgy when we were going at it out on the lawn? I did. Mmrowr.”
A little ball of golden light zipped along the ground, then disappeared into Peter’s car just before it drove out of sight.
“At least Sunil didn’t get lost in the woods,” I groused, peering impotently over Eloise’s dashboard. “And seriously, I need some sort of formal recognition that I didn’t freak out at the idea of balls of talking light, and Travellers, and glamours and such. At the very least, a big ole herkin’ piece of chocolate is in order.”
I sighed and straightened up in the seat, cursing myself for forgetting to ask Peter for his cell phone number. A horrible thought struck me then—what if that kiss was an anomaly? What if he didn’t want to give me his phone number, didn’t want to see me again? Dear god, what if I repulsed him?
Really, my ego said to my superego, someone has got to stop watching so many reality TV shows. She’s gone all drama queen on us.
Totally, my superego responded. Any minute now she’s going to start saying that no one finds her attractive, and she’ll die alone and unloved in a small one-room apartment filled with thirty-nine cats. Which will eat her when she drops dead. And then escape to find better, more loving, non-cat-hoarding homes.
“For the love of the good green turtles, will you stop!” I told both of them, and bent over with determination to start Eloise.
Turtles are not green, my id said quietly. I threatened to punch her in the gooch, and ignored the other two parts of my psyche when they made rude comments about my state of mind as I got Eloise going, and drove back to the camp.
Seriously, there were days when I wish Carla had been anything but a psychologist.
“You! Girl! Kiya!”
The voice assailed me as I parked Eloise near my tent, and crawled out of the window.
Mrs. Faa was standing at the steps of her RV, her dogs plopped in the shade around her like furry mounds of dough. “Come here. I have something important to discuss with you.”
I bit my lip and hurried across the camp, ignoring the strained faces of the women as they bustled their kids out of my path. What had I done to make Mrs. Faa so angry? I didn’t have a watch, because they never worked for me longer than an hour or two, but I had checked the time when I was buying the picnic lunch, and I didn’t think I was late coming back.
Unless Peter had stolen more time than I thought he did. I gave a shake of my head, amazed that I could process something like Travellers without checking myself in for a mental evaluation. But Peter had seemed so sincere, and when he did that trick of making me déjà vu, it proved that his claim was possible.
“Come here,” Mrs. Faa repeated, gesturing toward a couple of Adirondack chairs before turning to the women. “I would speak with her alone.”
The two women and the children disappeared into their respective RVs. I caught sight of Mrs. Faa’s two dark-haired grandsons, Piers and Arderne. They watched me warily, as if they expected me to suddenly go mad and run amok. One held an ax, while the other was lugging an armful of chopped wood to a stack that sat at the rear of one of the RVs.
Peter’s comments about the family being exclusionary came immediately to mind. What I thought was simply a tight-knit family took on a new light.
“Peter’s absolutely right. You can’t be this isolated and not end up with everyone hating you,” I said to myself as I obeyed the royal command and duly walked over to the indicated chair.
Before I could get to the chair, the door to the nearest RV opened and William stepped out. He glared at me, turned on his heel, and returned to the RV without a word.
I thought a few rude things about him, but kept from voicing any of them as I smiled at Mrs. Faa, and took my seat. “Yes, ma’am?”
“You! Girl! Kiya!”
The voice made me jump when I crawled out of Eloise’s window. I cracked my head on the roof and swore as I spun around, rubbing my head and gawking at the elderly woman standing at her RV, surrounded by pugs.
“Come here. I have something important to discuss with you.”
“Oh, no, you did not!” I said, outraged as I marched toward William’s RV. That bastard just stole my time!
“Kiya! I wish to speak to you!” Mrs. Faa said imperiously.
“Just a minute, please. I have to have a word with your son,” I called to her, then stopped before William’s RV and banged on the door. “Come out of there, William. I know you’re in there!”
The door was flung open. William stood glowering down at me. “How dare you disturb me!”
“How dare you steal my time!” I countered, and gave him the meanest look I could summon, the one Carla called my psychotic-murderer-in-a-straitjacket face. “Don’t you deny you did, because I know it was you.”
He smiled.
“You! Girl! Kiya!”
Once again, I jumped at the voice shouting at me, and hit my head on the edge of Eloise’s window as I crawled through it.
“Oh!” I screamed, my hands fists as I bolted for William’s RV.
“Come here. I have something important to discuss with you.”
“Yeah, yeah, be there in a sec,” I snarled as I yanked open William’s door and bellowed inside, “You do that one more time and I’ll—”
“You! Girl! Kiya!”
This time, I was ready for it. I ducked my head down and didn’t jump at the summons.
“Come here. I have something important to discuss with you.”
I stood up and yelled loudly, “I would, but your son keeps stealing my time so I can’t. Make him stop and give it all back!”
Mrs. Faa stared at me for a moment before turning slowly to look at William’s RV. “He would not dare.”
“You think not? I just lived through this moment four times. That…rat…keeps taking my time. And I don’t appreciate it! Here.” I marched across the yard, ignoring the women as they hurried the kids out of the way, as well as the two grandsons who appeared at the end of the RV. “I don’t need silver dollars. I do need my time back, thank you very much.”
She folded her arms across her chest, refusing to take the coins that had appeared in my pocket—as if by magic, I snorted to myself—and pursed her lips, a hard expression on her face. “So. You are not as ignorant as you led me to believe.”
“I’m every bit as ignorant as you think I am,” I said, still riled up from William’s blatant thefts.
She raised one eyebrow.
I cleared my throat. “That came out wrong. What I meant was that I didn’t know what Travellers were until today.”
“I see. And from whom did you learn the truth?”
I sat down when she gestured toward one of the Adirondack chairs. I opened my mouth to tell her, but something stopped me. If Peter was correct about the family, and one of them was a murderer, did I really want to go blathering on about that fact? What if Mrs. Faa was protecting that person (please, oh please, let it be William who was the murderer)? I wasn’t overly concerned about my own safety, but I very much wanted to help Peter.
“Does it really matter?” I finally said, meeting her gaze without the slightest wobble.
She pursed her lips again, her hands moving absently over the hem of her blouse. Around us, the dogs snored loudly
in the shade. Birds overhead sang happy little midsummer songs, and called their joy to one another. The wind gusted gentle puffs of pine and campfire scents, mingling in a manner that encouraged you to breathe deeply and give thanks you were alive. It was as idyllic as it possibly could be…with the exception of time-stealing bastards lurking behind the curtains of an RV.
“My family is an old one,” the mother of one of the bastards said slowly, as if she was having a hard time working out just what she wanted to say to me. “We go back many centuries, many centuries. My husband was a prince, nobility, you understand. I was chosen for his bride because I came from a family of women. No sons, just daughters. This is very lucky amongst Travellers, you see. There are not enough women for our men, never enough daughters born. Even my own sons and grandsons have produced only male children.”
I was suddenly aware of the frailty of the old woman across from me, and was unable to stop the surge of compassion that welled up at the sight of her gnarled, spotted hands fretting with her shirt.
“He was a devil, my Piotr,” she said with a faint smile. “But a good man, and he loved his family.” Her gaze suddenly flickered toward me, the smile fading. “He was caught by the Nazis, rounded up with Romany in Poland because they believed he was one of them. The Nazis treated the Rom horribly. Did you know that? Most people think it was only the Jews who were persecuted by the Nazis, but they were only a part of the devouring. As were many Travellers. The Germans sent Piotr with the Rom to the death camps, and when he tried to escape by the only means possible, he was killed.”
“I’m sorry,” I said simply, feeling the pain that rolled off her. “I thought—I’m sorry, but I understood that Travellers can’t be killed.”
“That is untrue. We are not mortal, but we can be destroyed. We can have our lives stripped from us, either by the will of another, or through our own stupidity.” She bit off the last few words, one hand gesturing in sharp, angry movements. “Piotr did not need to die. He would have survived the starvation, the deprivations, the cruelties inflicted, where the others who were with him would not. But he was never one to bow down to mortals, and it irked him to be forced to do so.”
“How horrible. For everyone. I had no idea that Gypsies were hunted by Nazis, too. What…er…do you mind if I ask what happened to your husband? You don’t have to answer me if it’s too painful, but the truth is, I’m still trying to wrap my brain around the idea that there’s a group of people who can steal time.”
“Steal?” She sat up straight in her chair, or as straight as she could manage. Her chin went up, and I could almost feel the whipcrack of her voice. “We do not steal! We pay for what we take!”
I glanced at the couple of silver dollars that sat on the flat arm of the chair. “Yeah, but in order to buy something, the seller has to want to sell. Otherwise, you’re taking away that person’s choice.”
“Bah,” she said, dismissing that argument. “You admit yourself that you do not understand our ways. You may have Traveller blood, but it is clear to me that you have not been brought up properly.”
I let that slide, not wanting to argue with her. “Are you saying your husband tried to steal time to get out of the concentration camps?”
“It is our way.” Her lips tightened, and her expression changed from one of defensiveness to anger. “Although there are limits. There is always a price to pay for taking time. Always. Sometimes that price can be minor, if you offer enough silver to compensate the shuvani.”
“The what?”
She gave a little sigh, shaking her head. “Your family has much to answer for. A shuvani is a spirit, child. There are four spirits that rule us—earth, water, air, and field. We offer silver to placate the earth shuvani when we take time. If it is not enough, then we pay a price in other ways.”
“Like what?” I asked, wishing I had a notepad so I could take notes. I never had the best of memories, and now there were all sorts of new things being thrown at me that I just knew I’d forget.
Silence fell. The sun went behind a cloud, leaving me in the shade. The dogs sat up and whined. I shivered, feeling as if someone were walking over my grave. Even the birds stopped singing their happy songs.
“The price depends on the amount of time taken,” Mrs. Faa said slowly, her eyes on mine, but now unreadable. “Once, when I was very young and learning the way of things, I did not pay properly for time taken from a girl I met at a small country town. The next day, my favorite hair ribbons were gone. They were scarlet for good luck, and my papa had given them to me to wear on my wedding day. I cried until my mother told me that I must always pay what is owed. Later, when I was a young bride, I forgot that lesson, and once again did not pay the correct amount when I stole time from an elderly man.”
“Was something else taken away from you?”
“No.” Her gaze was turned inward as she stroked the pug who jumped on her lap. Maureen, I thought it was. “No, I received something instead. The man’s dog, the ancestor of my darlings, as a matter of fact. I was obligated to care for the dog no matter how difficult the circumstances. I did it, although Piotr was furious at both my lack of care and the fact that I brought a dog into our home. Most Travellers do not like dogs. They are unclean. My darlings, however, are very clean.”
“And your husband?” I asked, almost hating to hear the answer, since a feeling of foreboding seemed to coat everything in despair. “What happened to him?”
“In the death camp he took larger quantities of time,” she said, her gaze dropping to her hands. She tucked the dog into her side and smoothed one hand over the other, trying to straighten the bent fingers. “Deliberately. But he had no silver, nothing to use to pay for the time that he took. He told the earth shuvani that he would pay later, once he was free. He said that the mortals he had stripped of time were evil, and their loss would not be mourned.”
I waited, dreading what was to come.
“He killed three of them, three evil ones, by stealing enough time to Travel.”
I sensed an emphasis on the word that indicated she wasn’t talking about merely getting in a car and driving away.
“To Travel requires the most silver of all, since it demands the debt of so much time. Piotr took enough time to Travel back the four months he had been confined at the camp. He intended to avoid being captured at all by doing so.”
“You can time travel?” I asked, my mouth ajar for a few seconds.
She made a gesture of dismissal. “The shuvani did not grant Piotr leniency. He took too much without repayment. For that, he lost his own time.”
“Good lord. Your time god killed him?”
Her eyes were hooded now. “He killed himself. If he had only waited; he would have survived it. They could not have killed him.”
“That’s so tragic,” I said, reaching out to gently squeeze her hand. “How did you cope with his loss?”
“I had my sons.” She took a deep breath. “We are Travellers. We have been persecuted since the time we first opened our eyes and knew the world belonged to us. We survive where others do not.”
I wanted to say something to comfort her, but couldn’t formulate anything that didn’t sound like I was lecturing her. It was very evident, however, that Peter was absolutely right about Travellers—they existed solely for themselves, when they could do so much for people. Imagine being able to time travel and stop atrocities?
There is always a price, my superego pointed out smugly. Not to mention paradoxes that are created when you meddle with time.
“I tell you our history so you can understand that all we desire is to be left in peace. We are not a violent people. We do not look for trouble. That is why we are living here,” she said with a wave toward the RVs. “We do not bother others, and we hope that they do not bother us. But of late, we have been the target of the Watch. You understand what the Watch is, yes?”
“The police are the Watch, right?”
“That is a mortal word for it, but it wil
l do—the Watch governs the Otherworld. My grandsons tell me that last night one of the Watch disturbed our camp, attempting to cause mischief or worse. They drove him off, but Gregory feels that you might have seen the man, and have been worried by the contact.”
Gregory knew damned well I had, and wasn’t worried, at least not in the sense he meant. How very interesting that he hadn’t told his grandmother the truth. Briefly, I wondered why, but gave it up when I realized that Mrs. Faa was watching me with obvious expectation.
“I’m more than happy to reassure you that I’m not in the least bit bothered by what happened last night,” I said not quite truthfully. Mrs. Faa didn’t need to know that the way I was bothered by Peter had much more to do with his abilities to kiss than the fact that he had come to the camp to track down a murderer. “Please don’t worry about me with regards to that.”
“You did see the man, then?”
“Yes, I saw him.”
She leaned back, her eyelids drooping, but her eyes were as sharp as ever. “Ah, so you did not tell Gregory the truth when he checked at your tent.”
“No, I didn’t. I was trying to help the man—Peter, your grandson—after your other grandsons stabbed him. Why, Mrs. Faa, did you allow that? Do you hate him so much?” I was going way over the line of what was polite and respectful, I knew, but I couldn’t seem to stop my mouth from asking the questions that had been haunting me. I blame my id for that. It’s always been the troublemaker in my psyche. “I’m sorry if it’s rude of me to ask these questions, but what you’re saying doesn’t really jibe with what Peter says. And I really don’t understand how you can tell me how important your family is, when he’s a member of it, and yet you treat him like he’s the enemy.”
“He is the enemy. He is with the Watch. Have you not listened to what I have been telling you?” She shook her head in dismay. “Peter Faa is not a member of this family. He is mahrime. He chose to turn his back on us and, indeed, has a personal vendetta against us. He seeks to see us destroyed.”
I was lost, not sure what to believe. Sincerity rang in Mrs. Faa’s voice, and yet, the same could be said for Peter. Plus, there was that kiss. And the fact that I felt a definite attraction for him. I couldn’t be so poor a judge of people that I could enjoy snogging a man who was trying to destroy his family, could I?