Firewalker (10 page)

Samantha had started wandering toward the garage door. She was twisting her hands together so tightly the skin on her knuckles was thin and white.

“It'll be okay, Mom,” Juliet said, chasing after her and catching ahold of her elbow.

“I think I'd like to make a pot,” Samantha said, her eyes wild.

Juliet and Lily shared a pained look. “Ma, you're out of clay. Why don't you let Juliet take you upstairs so you can lie down?” Lily said.

“I'll make you some tea, Samantha,” Rowan said, already reaching for the kettle.

“Oh, that'd be lovely,” Samantha said with a relieved look. “I love your teas.”

“I'll bring it up to you as soon as it's ready,” Rowan replied cheerfully.

Juliet brought Samantha to her room, leaving Lily and Rowan to speak in tense undertones.

“We need to come up with a name for that clinic,” Lily said. “Simms wants to know exactly where I've been for three months.”

“Juliet and I are working on a phony Web site. It's nearly done. Look, let me worry about that,” Rowan replied. “You focus on settling back into your life.”

Lily laughed mirthlessly. “Like that's ever going to be possible.”

“It better be,” Rowan said sharply. “Or what was the purpose of coming back here at all?”

“I didn't come back to fulfill a purpose. I came back because—”

“Because you were dying, and if you were to go back to my world it wouldn't take long before something else would be threatening your life,” he said, cutting her off. “We're here so you can live a long and normal life. There's nothing for you to do, except move on and be happy. That's it. You need to put my world behind you and rejoin this one like a regular person or your family is going to suffer for it.”

Lily was taken aback by his vehemence. She didn't know what to say, only that she felt hollow and cut off from him. The adventure was over, and Lily had to accept that.

“You should sit. The skin on your feet isn't completely healed yet,” he said, softening his tone.

Her feet were hurting her. Lily took a seat at the table and gingerly lifted a foot to look at the bottom. Blood had seeped through her sock. The sight of blood reminded Lily of Carrick.

“Could you tell if Carrick was inside your mind, spying on us?” Lily blurted out, changing the subject.

“Of course I could,” he said, coming to her. He saw the blood on her sock and pursed his lips, back in angry mode again. “You can't be running around yet, Lily. You have no calluses on your feet anymore.”

“Just before Simms showed up, Mom told me that Lillian claimed Carrick. Lillian made him her head mechanic,” Lily replied through her teeth. Now that she was sitting down her feet had started throbbing.

“Here, let me do it,” Rowan said.

He left the room and came back with a leather pack very similar to the one he'd carried when they were hiding in the Woven Woods. Lily assumed that he'd made himself a new one. Inside were the silver knives he'd worn into battle the last night they were in his world and all kinds of small jars and vials of potions.

“Lean back,” he said. He pulled Lily's feet into his lap and began applying one of his tingly skin creams. His face was dark with anger, but his tone was gentle. “I've been trained to recognize it if someone tries to sneak into my mind. The only time I'm vulnerable is when I'm asleep, but I never sleep without casting a ward of protection around myself, which would wake me as sure as a hand shaking me if someone tried to steal into my thoughts. Didn't I teach you that?”

“Yes,” Lily admitted.

He had taught her how to manipulate the finely knit fields of energy that make up what seems to be empty space. Field magic—wards and glamours—had several different uses. Wards operated like a bubble of security around a small area, and glamours distorted light and air to slightly alter the way things appeared, sometimes making things disappear entirely in dim light. Both were low-energy magic and not very hard to do; Lily just hadn't remembered to cast a ward around herself when she was half dead. And since then, maybe she hadn't wanted to remember to do it. A ward would have kept Lillian from contacting her, and whether she liked it or not, Lily needed to understand what had made Lillian the way she was and why she had made the choices she did, or Lily knew she'd be damned to repeat them. It was more than just curiosity or a perverse desire to view Lillian's memories. Lillian
was
Lily, and if Lily ever wanted to understand herself she had to understand Lillian.

“Lily?” Rowan was staring at her, worried.

“Sorry. I freaked out,” she said, lying automatically. “I started thinking about Carrick and I freaked out.”

Will you show me what he did to you in the oubliette?

Lily recoiled at the thought. To show him would be to go through it again. “I can't.” Her voice sounded robotic and strangely disconnected, even to her.

You don't have to hide anything from me.

“I can't,” Lily repeated, her face blank.

“Okay,” he said, looking down.

Rowan stood and left the room, his face sad. As soon as he was gone, Lily felt empty. She wanted to call him back, but she knew if she did she'd have to open that dark box in the corner of her mind and show him what had happened in the oubliette. She couldn't share that with him. It would change the way he felt about her. There was only one person Lily was certain wouldn't judge her. Lily momentarily dropped her guard, just to see if Lillian was there.

When I came back from the cinder world I shut Rowan out because I couldn't tell him what I'd done, or what had been done to me. You and I are the only ones who can really understand each other. Come back, Lily. You need me as much as I need you.

No, I don't. Go away, Lillian. I hate you.

As I hate myself—but look inside, Lily. You hate yourself, too.

*   *   *

“Keep stirring,” Rowan said.

“But my arm's tired,” Lily whined. She propped up her stirring arm with her other hand and sighed dramatically. “And the fireplace is so hot.”

“I know,” he said without a shred of pity. “Takes a lot of work to make that salve for your skin, doesn't it? Maybe from now on you'll remember that before you go running down the hallway when I tell you not to.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Lily groused. She peeked into the bubbling cauldron and wrinkled her nose at the heady fumes. “I don't think the punishment fits the crime.” She looked up at Rowan and tried to coax a smile out of him. She knew he was still upset that she wouldn't share memories from the oubliette with him that morning, and she'd spent the rest of the day trying to thaw the frost between them.

“The punishment definitely fits the crime,” he said, finally giving her that smile she was after. “Keep stirring. I'll go see how Samantha's doing with dinner.”

“Uh-oh,” Lily said, looking across the living room and into the kitchen. “You left her alone in there? With the stove on?”

“She can handle it,” he replied calmly. A clank, a hiss, and a cuss came from the kitchen. “And that would be her handling it without an oven mitt. I'll be back.” Rowan let his fingers trail across the sliver of exposed skin between Lily's T-shirt and the waistband of her jeans before darting off to rescue her befuddled mother.

Lily watched his lithe frame disappear into the kitchen and heard his deep voice rumbling under her mother's nervous tittering and leaned toward it. Wherever Rowan went was where Lily wanted to be.

“Keep stirring, lover girl,” Juliet taunted from the sofa. She put down her magazine and tucked her bare feet under her.

“You don't get to fill in as taskmaster just because he's gone,” Lily said, making a childish face at her sister, but picking up her stirring speed nonetheless.

What's going on with you two, Lily?

It's complicated, Jules.

I'll bet. Relationships are hard enough without adding the whole “he's from one world, I'm from another” thing. Literally, in your case.

You'd think mindspeak would make it easier, but it doesn't.

The house phone rang and Juliet reached over her shoulder to pick up the receiver on the coffee table.

“Proctor residence. Hello, Dr. Rosenthal,” Juliet said, straightening her posture when she heard the voice of the superintendent of the Salem school system.

Lily tried to get closer to her sister and listen in on the conversation, but she was stuck at arm's length, stirring the cauldron.

“Yes, Lily's feeling much better,” Juliet said, waving Lily away. “They say she's practically cured. Can you believe it? She's almost completely over her allergies.” There was another long, agonizing pause. “Well, yes, I think she would be able to go back to school. Oh, yes, of course. Everyone wants Lily to graduate on time. Yes. Yes, I know, she's always been at the top of her class and she shouldn't have any problem making up for lost time.”

What the hell, Jules? I can't do that!

Yes, you can. You have a photographic memory now. All you have to do is read and repeat on your exams. Now shut up so I can concentrate on Dr. Rosenthal.

“Yes, sir. But you know things are complicated at home for us,” Juliet said sweetly into the phone. “Lily is still going through a lot of changes and we have a … a…” Juliet looked up at Lily frantically.

What's the word when you have a counselor working with you on your lifestyle, Lily?

A life coach?

Bingo.

“A holistic life coach working with her and our mother for the next few months until they readjust,” Juliet said smoothly. “Yes. Yes, of course we all want Lily to graduate. I'll talk it over with my parents and we'll call you tomorrow, Dr. Rosenthal. Yes. Thank you.” Juliet hung up the phone and looked at Lily. “You're going back to school.”

Lily knew this was coming, but it still rankled inside her. Why couldn't Simms just stay out of it?

“When?” Lily asked around the bitter lump in her throat.

Juliet shrugged. “He seemed to want you back in class by next week.”

“She'll be ready,” Rowan said, joining them.

“This is so ridiculous,” Lily said, rolling her eyes. “Just the thought of having to sit in class and do homework is so—not okay.”

“Come on, Lily, think about it. Even if Simms wasn't watching everything you do, what else are you going to do?” Juliet asked honestly. “Do you want to be a high school dropout? Maybe get a job as a checkout girl at the supermarket, if you're lucky?”

Lily bit her lower lip, chastened. “I guess not.”

“Not that many want ads for witches in this world,” Juliet said gently.

“And you are staying in this world,” Rowan said. “I don't see what's so terrible about going back to school. This is a nice place, Lily, and all the dreams you had and the future you'd planned before can still happen for you.”

Considering the way Rowan was raised, complaining about having to sit through class for a few more months did sound petty. Any Outlander would kill to live the way Lily did, and as she thought about it, she realized how much she had to be thankful for.

“I never stopped to think about what I wanted to do with my life,” Lily said sheepishly. “I always thought I'd be too sick to get a full-time job or to join a radical save-the-whatever group. But I can do anything I want, can't I?”

“Yes,” Rowan replied in a subdued tone. “And you can stop stirring now. Dinner is ready.”

Lily gratefully abandoned her post by the cauldron and followed Rowan and Juliet into the kitchen, wondering again why Rowan seemed so distant.

His dinner ritual was new to both Lily and Juliet, who had become used to fending for themselves when their mother's condition worsened, yet Rowan's insistence that they eat at least one meal a day together was welcomed. Since Lily had come back two weeks ago, Juliet had been commuting to Boston during the day to attend her college classes but so far she hadn't missed one of Rowan's dinners. Juliet joked about free meals and bad dining-hall food, and Lily laughed along with her even though she knew that for both of them this was practically a miracle. Samantha had never been the most attentive mother and their father was more like a tourist who dropped in a few weeks a year than a parent. But with this dinner thing, Rowan had quietly pulled their family closer together. It was the first time either Juliet or Lily felt like she was part of a real family, rather than the unlucky crew member of a sinking ship.

Thank you, Rowan.

He didn't have to be told what Lily was thanking him for. Lily opened herself up to him so he could feel her gratitude and the sense of peace she felt sitting at a table with her loved ones. While continuing his conversation with Juliet about something gruesome she was doing to a cadaver in her anatomy class, Rowan reached under the table to take Lily's hand.

It's your family. I'm just borrowing it, Lily.

You're not borrowing. You're a part of it.

Rowan squeezed her hand reassuringly, but he didn't answer her in mindspeak. Something had been bothering him all day. Lily waited until after everyone had eaten their fill and gone to bed to bring it up again.

Rowan? Are you still awake?

Yes.

Lily went downstairs and found Rowan transferring the salve they had made from the cauldron into little pots. She joined him and silently began to help.

It came out very well, Lily. You're getting better at potions.

I still don't know what the heck I'm doing without you talking me through every step, though.

They finished up with the cauldron in silence. Lily could feel Rowan growing tenser with each second. When he finally had nothing else to distract him, she faced him with a determined look.