Turned out Raina had a whole camp in those saddlebags. She pulled a bedroll from them, then a tin pot and cup, two cans of beans, and a hunk of smoked pork wrapped in waxed paper. She handed me my small pack and I fished out the blondies, nibbling one as I stood back and let her set up camp with the efficiency of a soldier. I lit the fire with a command after she made a pile of shavings for me, glad I could do one small thing.
“I have flint,” she said, a hint of a smile playing at her lips.
“It’s the most practical magic I know,” I said with a shrug. For a while as we got comfortable around our small fire and filled our hungry bellies, things were almost amicable. I stopped short of saying I missed this, because it was a tiny step from that to saying I missed her, and that was a scab I was unwilling to pick. Even if it was already oozing just from having her solid and real beside me.
“I didn’t ride far enough the last time,” Raina said as she watched me set the wards.
“We’ll find this Alice, tomorrow,” I said as I finished walking the perimeter of our camp, my saltbox in hand. There was nothing out here but trees and small critters that I could sense, but a ward never went amiss. I looked at the pallet of blankets and thick felted pad she’d laid out.
“We can share, or I’ll keep watch a while. I don’t require much sleep.”
That might have been a Reaper thing, but Raina had never slept well either. I couldn’t count the nights I’d awoken with her pressed against my back, holding me in the dark of night, not sleeping, just watching the patterns on the wall turn from black to grey to blue. Sometimes we’d made love, her hands wandering my body until I was ready for her to press inside, but usually I’d pretend I was still sleeping, letting her hold me as she kept an eye on the dark hours.
“Sharing is fine,” I lied. I was a grown-up, I could sleep next to someone and let the past be the past.
The fire banked, she lay down beside me, staying outside the wool blanket though I lifted a corner in offer. I closed my eyes and closed my heart, curling on my side away from her, trying to wish the night to pass.
“You ready to admit you might be wrong?”
“We doing this again?” I rolled onto my back and stared up at the shadow of her face as she leaned over me, her eyes like tiny blue stars. “Let it go. I’m here, I’ll see it through with you, but hearts can’t survive in pieces. I know what I know and I’m sorry I don’t know how to show you.” I wasn’t sorry. I worried the pain of knowing the truth would kill all remaining light inside her.
“You should’ve let me go after her. Hell, before all that you should’ve told her the truth about her asshole fiancé.”
The trouble with our daughter had started before she ran off,when she was fifteen and fell in love with a man ten years her senior. When we’d confronted him and told him he had to wait to marry our daughter, he’d asked for gold if we wanted him gone. I’d never let Raina tell Mairi the truth, preferring her angry at us for running him off than to let her live with a broken heart knowing her first lover played her false.
I closed my eyes as my nails bit into my palms. “She wasn’t a doll we could keep on a shelf. We did what we could to protect her once and she hated us for it. If we’d gone after her, we would have lost her forever.”
“If you are right,” Raina said, the words hard and cold in the dark beyond my eyelids, “we lost anyway.”
I said nothing because there was nothing left in me to say it.
We rode through the damp mist the next morning at blinding speed, only dismounting when we got to a sign telling us White Water was ahead. That final mile was walked in tense silence as well, neither of us feeling like fighting when a real answer might be over the next hill.
Blythe hadn’t led us wrong; Alice’s house was a pretty log cabin set among an explosion of blooms, many I recognized. A sweet hint of magic rode the air, so faint I nearly missed it and might have if it hadn’t been so familiar to me.
“Mairi,” I whispered, feeling the dance of her power on my skin. She’d used a lot of magic here, had a hand in this bounty. I practically ran down the path, Raina jogging behind me.
For a moment I believed in miracles; in that space between when I knocked at the door and it opened, I allowed myself to breathe in the scents of magic and life and to hope I was as wrong as I’d ever been.
Then the door opened and the woman who stood there had pale skin instead of brown, gold hair straight as straw instead ofcurls, and blue eyes instead of hazel. There had been no Alice in Mairi’s letters, but she’d often mentioned a woman a few years older than she was, calling her “Goldie.”
“Alice?” I asked.
“You’re Cassidy,” she said, wonder in her voice. “And Raina?” She looked behind me and her smile wavered. “You’d both best come in.”
We sat at her kitchen table as she bustled around offering us coffee until finally she settled. “You’re wondering about May? She spoke of you often and it’s easy to see the resemblance, that’s how I knew.”
“Your garden?” I said, not sure where to start. “Mairi, that’s May’s full name, she planted it?”
“She helped me with the seeds, did her witch thing, well, you know,” Alice said with a laugh. Then her face fell. “Did May send you here? Is she all right?” She looked between us, her eyes not quite meeting Raina’s.
“We haven’t heard from her in over ten years,” I said softly.
“She was coming home?” Raina folded her hands on the table.
“Oh.” Alice’s face fell and she took a deep breath. “She said she might. But then things went bad here and I figured she’d gotten on the train like she talked about. Lot of us did, after the carnival burned.”
I held up a hand to stop Raina from speaking. “Maybe you’d better tell us the whole story, Alice.”
