“Yes.” He smiled but Fable could see the disappointment behind the veil in his eyes. She thought about what she could do besides taking hold of him when she was leaving and dragging him back to 1718.
“I won’t have you hating me,” he murmured with a pout. He caught her in his arms with a laugh when she threw herself into them.
“Thank you!” she exclaimed after a kiss to his cheek. He saved her from fighting whoever she needed to fight with whatever powers she possessed. She didn’t want to fight. She wasn’t made for fighting.
“Would you hate me if I told you how your joy feels like a kick in the guts?”
“Of course I wouldn’t hate you for that,” she assured her father happily.
“He doesn't even know what he’s doing,” Lizzie pointed out. “He’s likely to send you somewhere in the thirteenth or nineteenth century.” She shrugged her seemingly frail shoulders. “Could be anywhere.”
“Then will you keep your promise and do it?” Fable asked her.
Lizzie looked away from her nephew and nodded. “If that’s what you want.”
“That’s what I want. I want to go home to Ben.”
“I’ll do it on one condition,” Lizzie told her. Before Fable could protest, she held up her hand. “Today I will send you to your Benjamin West. The condition is that I will not tell you when you’re going.” She turned her pale gaze to Fable’s father. “Treasure each moment together.”
Fable didn’t protest. She was thankful she was being given the chance to treasure moments with her father. “Come on!” she beckoned her father with a wide grin and a tug on his sleeve. She led him outside and down the street.
She smiled because he didn’t ask her where they were going. He didn’t care. Was it possible to love someone you’ve only known for two weeks?
She brought him to a park where children played under the watchful eye of their mother or father. When she hurried to the swings, unfazed by any disapproving glance that came her way, her father followed.
“I used to hang around parks while my mo–Kittie panhandled,” she told him. “I’d always see little girls on the swings with their fathers pushing them.” Before she said anything else, he went behind her and gave her a push.
They laughed together and Fable hoped she didn’t disappear in that moment.
But, she did, in fact, leave her father although not in her body. Physically, she remained swinging on the swing. Only her laughter had stopped. Her sudden silence brought her father around to the front of her. He knelt before her and called her name.
Fable held out her hand to the red-haired woman with earth-colored eyes looking back at her. She smiled at Fable and reached for her. They shared blood. Magnolia.
Her father called her name, and touched her face. His heartbeat drew her back.
No! Wait!
Magnolia, where are you? Tell me.
Fable let the sound of her father’s voice pull her back. The sound of children laughing and calling their friends filled her ears and replaced her sister’s rhythmic breathing in her ears. What happened? Was this one of her abilities? Spirit telepathy? Could she ‘find’ others or did she know when her sister was because they were twins?
“Dad.”
Before he let her speak, he made certain she felt herself again. “What happened, daughter?”
“I don’t know but I saw Magnolia. I know where she is.”
“Tell me,” her father said.
“She’s in the year–” She began to disappear. No! Not yet
Child you cannot tell him where to find her.Fable felt Lizzie’s voice more than heard it.
“1424,” Fable said as quickly as she could. She hadn’t been raised with rules, and she didn’t care about them either. She would give her father back his daughter. “Graven Fortress.”
Her father reached out for her, but before another instant passed, he was gone.
Chapter Twenty-two
