Awakenings

J.T. didn’t have the same grace.  “You’re going to send your husband out chasing crazy with one of our other top tactical brains when we could be attacked at any second of any day?  What are you thinking?”

“Cameron will be here and so will you,” I said, sliding my arm around Thom’s waist as I turned my attention to J.T.  “Besides, if we listen to Phelan’s insane rambling, the major target is him, not us.”

“You don’t believe him,” J.T. said, his eyes narrowing.

“Of course not.  But it’s not me that needs convincing, it’s him.  If we get attacked while he’s gone, so be it.  We’ll have to turn the tide without him.”

Thom grimaced.  “I don’t like the sound of that.”

I probably shouldn’t have brought it up, but then again, what choice did I have?  I shook my head slightly.  “We’ll be fine, Thom.”

“Just like you were fine after the last fight?”

I winced and kept my mouth shut.

J.T. sighed.  “I shouldn’t have brought any of this up, should I?”

“No, you really shouldn’t have,” I said.

Thom shook his head.  “No, he’s right.  It’s too dangerous to take all of us away from here just to make sure that Phelan doesn’t somehow get himself killed.  We’ll find another way.”

“What if there isn’t another way?”  I snapped.  “What if this is the only way to convince him that he’s being a fool?”

Thom set his jaw.  “We’ll find another way.”

I could have punched him as I fumed, inwardly cursing his stubbornness.  I loved it and I hated it all at once—just like I always had.

“If your way doesn’t work, we’re going with Rory’s,” I said, then pushed to my feet and started to walk away, coffee cup still locked in my hand.

“Then we’d better hope that our way works,” Thom called after me.  I just barely heard his voice as he turned back to J.T.  “We have to come up with something that’ll work.  I won’t leave her here to die alone.”

I winced but kept walking.  I didn’t want to know what he’d seen.  Sometimes, the visions were just too terrible bear.

Real or not, sometimes it was just too terrible to bear.

“Out looking at the wards again, weren’t you?”

I smiled ruefully at Thom as I joined him and J.T. near the fire.  “What was your first clue?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” he said, smirking as he stood up and came to me.  His hand were warm as he cupped my face between his palms.  “It could be the red in your cheeks or the fact that you’re wearing two sweatshirts and a winter jacket.”

“Well, the second clue, then.”  I grinned and leaned in to kiss him, siding one arm around his waist and squeezing gently.  “Someone had to have a look and I figured if I went out early enough, I’d be back before Neve woke up.  She and I have been trying to put together some histories based on what she knows and what I know of mythology.  It’s been…interesting.”

Thom laughed, smoothing my hair back from my face.  “Once a historian…”

“Exactly.”  I stole another kiss and stepped back, stripping off my gloves and starting to unzip my coat as I edged closer to the fire.  “She wants all the kids we’ll have someday to know what really happened, in case she and Phelan and her brother and Phelan’s sister aren’t here to tell them the stories.”

Thom winced and J.T. shook his head as he poured her a cup of coffee.

“She doesn’t have to worry about that, Mar,” J.T. said as he passed over the mug.  “Nothing’s going to happen to any of you while that ghost friend of Phelan’s his hanging around.”

I shuddered at the mention of Ériu and shook my head.  “I try not to think about the fact that she’s here.  Thanks for reminding me.”

“Sorry.”

I shrugged and sat down next to Thom, shrugging out of my coat.  “It’s all right.  I just prefer not to think about her, that’s all.  It’s weird.  I can remember a life when she was my daughter and that’s…more than a little unnerving sometimes.”

“She’s our ally in keeping him in one spot,” J.T. offered, smiling weakly.  “As much as she can be, anyhow, being disembodied and all.”

She’s a soul healer.  Being disembodied isn’t that large of an impediment to her abilities at this point.

I swallowed bile and leaned against Thom, who wrapped his arm around me.

“What’s wrong, Mar?” he asked, ruffling my hair.

“Rory and I talked about Phelan today,” I said, taking a deep swallow from my cup of coffee.

J.T.’s brows went up.  “Is he a new ally in our scheme?”

“He came up with a scheme,” I said.  “And I happen to think it’s a good one.”

“Really?”  Thom shifted slightly so he could see my face.  “What’d he come up with?”

“That we should let him walk—as long as he takes you, Rory, Thordin, and Jac with him.”

Thom stared at me as if I’d grown a second head, his jaw tightening slightly.

“Really.  And you think that’s a good idea?”

“I do,” I said softly, straightening.  “I absolutely do.  And if this is the plan we’re going with, you’re going with him.  I don’t trust anyone else to keep the rest of them safe and I don’t trust anyone else to bring them home.  It’s you or no one.”

Thom opened his mouth and then closed it again.  I reached up and stroked his jaw.

“Don’t have a knee-jerk reaction,” I said.  “Think about it, Thom.  Think really hard.  Then you can tell me that I’m crazy and wrong, but not until you’ve thought it over long and hard.”

He stared at me for a long moment.

Then he nodded and didn’t say anything else on the matter.

“You’re not going to like my answers,” Rory warned, suddenly glowering at everything—at the snow, the trees, at me.  It was as if he hadn’t expected my agreement to his plan at all.

Then again, we usually don’t like the plans he comes up with and end up co-opting them somehow.  This may be the first time that he’s ever been told that he’s right about something and had any one of us want to go with his plan right away.  “It’s all right,” I said.  “I don’t like the plan, either, but when you’re right, you’re right.  I don’t get a vote in whether or not you’re right on this because I know in my gut that you absolutely are.  I just have to accept it and find a way to fix this.”

“Stubborn,” Rory muttered.

“You know it.  I always have been and yet somehow, all of you manage to put up with me somehow.”

He cracked a smile.  “That’s because we love you, you stubborn bitch.”

I grinned and shrugged.  “Everyone’s got something.  So tell me who you think should tag along with the only person here that’s more stubborn than Thom and I put together.”

“Your husband,” Rory said without another moment’s hesitation.  “Thordin, me, and Jacqueline.”

“Jac?”

Rory nodded.  “Jac.”

“Why Jac?”

“You mean other than the fact that she’s absolutely head over heels for him and I’m thinking that he’s got more than a little yen for her, too?”

Wincing slightly, I glanced sidelong at him and found myself meeting his gaze head-on as I did.

“I’m surprised that she’s the one you’re arguing about,” he said.

“You thought that I’d argue with you about sending Thom?”  I shook my head, giving him a rueful smile.  “They’re more likely to keep each other out of trouble than the alternative.  Besides, when we float this plan, I don’t want Thom to feel torn between volunteering and not because he feels like he needs to stay here with me.  Sure, I’d like him with me, but sometimes we have to stop being selfish and do what needs doing.  This is what needs doing and he’ll know it if I don’t fight it.”

“That—”

“Probably doesn’t make sense,” I said.  “But it’s true.”

“Yeah,” Rory said quietly.  “I guess it is.”

“That took less time than I thought it would,” he said, glancing sidelong at me as I caught up with him.  “You want to know why I said it.”

“You know me pretty damned well by now,” I said.  “You knew I’d want to know.  So tell me why you said it.”

“There’s something I’ve started to realize about our friend who’s about as old as the dirt we’re walking on,” Rory said, shoving his hands deep into his pockets and hunching slightly in his coat against the wind.  “It’s that he’s stubborn to a fault until he’s convinced himself that something is stupid or wrong or an impossibility.  There’s no way we can convince him shy of an object lesson.  Letting him try to wander off and showing him that he can’t is the only way that he’s going to give up the idea of doing it.”

I frowned.  “I don’t think I believe you, Rory.”

“I’m not sure you have to believe me if I’m right.”  He glanced toward me, his cheeks ruddy in the cold.  “Mar, he’ll try to run.  He’ll do it when none of us are looking and you and I both know that things won’t go well for anyone involved if he manages to get very far from us.”

“Because we’re likely to never find him again,” I murmured.

“Oh, we’ll find him,” Rory said with no small measure of confidence.  “It’s just a question of how many people we lose before that happens and what sort of state of affairs he’s in when we do. It doesn’t take a prophet or a visionary to see how it’s all going to play out.  Tell me I’m wrong.”

“You’re not.”  I exhaled a sigh.  “That’s why we’re all trying to keep him from going.  I just can’t believe the solution would be to let him try.”

“The alternative would be to send some folks with him.  He won’t like it and he’ll probably try to shake his escorts, but…”

My stomach twisted and I swallowed bile.  I knew that was true, but for some reason, that felt like a smarter option than letting him wander away on his own.

“Who would we send?”  I asked softly.

Rory looked at me sharply.  “You’re not—”

“Who would we send, Rory?”  I asked, the words tasting like ash on my tongue.  “You’re right.  We don’t have any options that are better.  Someone has to make sure that he doesn’t abandon us or get himself killed.  This is the only way.”

Isn’t it?  He’s dead-set on going.  If we can’t talk him out of it, this will have to be what we do.  It’ll do for a plan B, anyway.

I just hope we won’t need it at all.

The wind stung my eyes and cheeks as I stood at the edge of the ravine, tugging at my sleeves, my hair, the hem of my jacket.  There was a pounding somewhere behind my eyes, the combination of too little sleep and possibly too little of my power used.  The wards we’d set were weakening in the weather, hurt by our inability to get out to check on them as often as we’d have liked.

At least, I have to hope it’s that and not something more sinister.  I shivered, watching the bare branches wave in the wind, silhouetted against the gray sky.  It was early, too early for me to be up and out here, though the sun had already risen.  The others would be having breakfast, getting set to start another day in the cold of the longest winter I’d ever known—one that was far from over.

I tugged my jacket tighter and shivered again.

“What are you doing out here all by yourself?”

I half turned toward Rory and smiled weakly.  “What are you doing out here?  I figured you’d be hunkered down next to a fire.”

He shrugged slightly.  “I come out in the cold sometimes to clear my thoughts.  Crowded near the fires right now, anyway, and I’m not in the best of moods.”

“Because it’s your birthday?”

One corner of his mouth twitched toward a smile.  “It’s good to know someone remembers.”

“I was pretty sure I was the only one keeping a calendar,” I said softly.

“I think all of us are keeping one on the down-low,” he said, then shook his head.  “A last vestige of civilization, right?”

I choked back a laugh. “That and everyone’s journals and the fact that we’re not all fighting over the last piece of meat on any given night.”

“We don’t take enough deer to run out anytime soon,” Rory said, his hands shoved deep into his pockets.  “So I really don’t think there’s much reason for us to be fighting over things, is there?”

“I’d guess not,” I said, my gaze drifting back to the trees.

“It still doesn’t feel right, does it?” he murmured.  “The ravines.  Everything.”

“The wards are weakening as quickly as we can strengthen them,” I said.  “We need to think of something.  Something will make them stronger, make them last.”

“Have you talked to Phelan?”  Rory asked.

“No,” I said softly.  “Though I think I’m going to see what Thordin’s thinking, and Neve.”

“Why not Phelan?”

“Because he’ll want to come out here and see,” I said with a wry smile.  “And he needs to be in bed right now and as far away from the perimeters of camp as we can keep him.  We’re still afraid he’s going to try to leave.”

Rory snorted and shook his head slightly.  “He’s not physically capable of it right now.”

“You’re right,” I agreed.  “But that doesn’t mean he wouldn’t try.”

“Then let him.”

I arched a brow at him and he shot me a wicked grin.

“Trust me.”  He squeezed my shoulder.  “I’m going to walk the rim.  I shouldn’t be long.”

I nodded and watched him go, his boots crunching in the snow.

Why would he suggest letting Phelan try to leave?  What purpose would that serve?

I frowned, hugging my arms against my chest.  “Maybe,” I murmured to myself, “I ought to find out.”

I turned and jogged after Rory.

“There is absolutely nothing you can tell me,” she continued, “that would make me think you leaving us is a good idea.  You could tell me that you were going to spark some disaster of Biblical proportions and I’d still tell you that you have to stay.”

His breath caught.  “Why?”

“Because we need you.  Biblical disaster or not, you’re one of the things that holds us all together.  The axle to all of our spokes on the wheel.  You’re more important to us than you know.”

“I’m not,” Phelan said, his expression turning stubborn, his jaw setting and brows knitting.  “You can’t keep thinking I am.  I’m just a footnote, a side character in this drama that’s playing out.”

“Are you?”  Jacqueline shook her head slowly.  “I don’t believe that.  Why would so many people be so interested in making you dead if you were just a guest star and a footnote?”

“Because I’m the pain in the butt type of sidekick that makes things more difficult for everyone else involved.”  Phelan sighed, his head dropping back against his pillows and his eyes sliding shut.  “Why are you all being so stubborn and not listening to reason?  I’m trying to protect you.”

“Maybe we don’t need that kind of protection,” Jacqueline said softly.  She went to the edge of his bed and sat down slowly, reaching for his hand.  His fingers were cool, roughened by years of wear and tear.  “Maybe we don’t want it.  Maybe we just want our family together.”

“Family,” Phelan echoed softly.  He opened his eyes to stare at the ceiling.  “Every family I build falls apart.  The only reason that my sister and Neve and Teague are all still alive is because we’ve mostly stayed away from each other for thousands of years.  It’s been safer that way.”

“Neve’s here now,” Jacqueline said.  “Nothing that bad’s happened.”

“Other than the troll and the assaults, no, of course not.”  His lips thinned and his gaze met hers.  There was something heartrendingly sad in his eyes, a pain deeper than any she’d seen before.  “Don’t you understand, Jacqueline?  I’m the Wanderer for a reason.  I can’t stay in one place.  Trouble finds me and makes the people I care about suffer.  That’s why I keep moving.”  His eyes slid closed again.  “Maybe I’ve stayed too long already.”

“We want you to stay,” she whispered.  “That’s the only thing that matters.”

“Is it?” he murmured.  “I don’t think so.”

“Yes,” she said.  “It is.”

He opened his eyes again and stared at her.  He started to say something, but she didn’t hear it.

She kissed him and whatever he was about to say was lost on both of them.

Whatever it was didn’t matter anymore anyway.

He wasn’t alone in his cot and she could feel it, even as she squared her shoulders and marched down the narrow hall toward his door.  Jacqueline took a slow, deep breath and closed her eyes for a moment.

Lord, give me the strength I’m going to need to deal with this raging idiot of a man right about now.

His words still stung, made her heart hurt.  How dare he think about leaving.  That just wasn’t an option.  He couldn’t just abandon them out here to their own devices.

“No,” she murmured to herself.  “No, he absolutely can’t.”

She pushed open the door.

Phelan was half propped up on an elbow and his head jerked up when the door came open.  “Jac,” he said, his voice hoarse.  “What are you doing here?  J.T. was—”

“I know.  I told him that he has to deal with you until you stop thinking about this stupid leaving thing.  I won’t be a captive audience and I’m sure not going to help patch you so you can just bolt at the earliest opportunity.”

“I—”

“Unless you’re about to tell me that you’re not going to leave, Phelan, I don’t want to hear it.”  She finally closed the door behind her and strode toward him.   She could have sworn that she heard the faint sound of female laughter coming from somewhere to the left of Phelan’s bed.  She tried to ignore it.  There was something else in here with him, but she wasn’t quite sure she wanted to know what it was.

It was the same presence she’d felt vaguely the last few times she’d looked in on him when he was sleeping—something she was fairly confident that he didn’t know she’d done.

“I can’t stay, Jac,” he whispered.  “Please, try to understand that.”

“No,” she said firmly.  “You need to understand.  You have to stay.  We need you here.”

I think I need you here, and God knows that should somehow be enough, right?

Right.

They were both silent for a few long moments, J.T. working the bellows and Matt staring into the bright heat of the forge, looking like his mind was a thousand miles away.  At length, he sighed and pulled the metal out of the heat and started hammering it again.

“You think it’s that important, huh?” he asked between hammer strokes.

“I absolutely think it’s that important,” J.T. said.  “If I were to tell your sister and Thom, they’d think the same.”

“Why haven’t you, then?”

J.T. snorted.  “Because they’ve got more than enough on their minds already, don’t you think?”

“I guess,” Matt said, brows knitting for a moment.  “Are we going to keep this from them?”

“I don’t think that we’ll be able to,” J.T. said, then heaved a heavy sigh.  “We’ll eventually have to tell them.”

“Tell who what?”  Marin slipped into the warmth of the forge, pushing back the hood of her jacket and dusting some of the snow off and onto the floor, where it hit and melted quickly.

Matt opened his mouth to answer her, then closed it, glancing at J.T.

“Uh-oh,” Marin said as she tugged off her gloves.  “What’s going on that you’re not sure you want to tell me about?”

“Phelan’s being ridiculous,” J.T. said.

“You mean about leaving?  I knew about that.  We just have to figure something out.  I really don’t think that he’s got his heart set on it, do you?”

J.T. winced.  I think he does.  It’s not going to be easy, making him stay.  He’s convinced himself it’s for the best and something tells me that once he decides something’s for the best, swaying him is no easy task.

“You do, don’t you?”

“After what he said today and what Ériu said after that?  Yeah, I think I do.”

Marin shivered at the mention of the spirit, then shook her head.  “Neve and I are trying to come up with some kind of plan.”

“We’ll need to work fast,” J.T. said.  “Because I’ve got a feeling as soon as he thinks he’s healed enough, he’s going to try to leave.”

“Maybe we should let him,” Matt suggested.  He blinked as they both stared at him as if he’d grown a second head.  “What?  We let him start to wander away, then we collect him again when he ends up sprawled on his face in the road.”

“You’re underestimating his stubbornness, Matt,” Marin said, a smile tugging at one corner of her mouth.

“Maybe,” Matt agreed.  “But right now, it’s the only plan we’ve got.  Use that was motivation to come up with something better.”

J.T. choked on a laugh as Marin put her hands on her hips.

“Fine,” she said.  “We will.”

“Matt, I need to talk to you.”

“You can talk all you want if you’ll get on those bellows.  Can’t promise I’ll hear half of what you’re saying.”  Matt glanced toward J.T. , swiping a soot-stained sleeve across his forehead and leaving a smear of gray in its wake.

“I’ll talk loud,” J.T. said as he stepped around Matt’s anvil and quenching trough to take over pumping the bellows.  “Since I need you to hear me.”

Matt’s brows knit and he paused before he picked up his hammer again.  “What’s wrong?”

“Maybe nothing,” J.T. said, feeling his stomach give an uncomfortable somersault at what might have been a lie.  “Do you remember anything about the life you lived as the druid?”

He paused, hammer poised to fall over the blade he was working on.  His gaze was confused, almost haunted as he stared at J.T. for a long moment.  “Why are you asking?”

J.T. closed his eyes for a moment.  The smell metal and the forge filled his nostrils, feeling as soothing as a walk in the woods used to be, or the smell of the scene shop at the height of pre-production for a show.

I miss that too much.  So much it hurts.  He exhaled softly and opened his eyes again.  “Phelan’s going to do something stupid.  What you and Marin and Thom can remember of the lives you led then might be the key to making sure he doesn’t go off half-cocked now.”

“Where the hell is this coming from, Jay?”

“He’s talked about leaving, Matt.  We can’t let that happen.”

Matt shuddered, then took a breath and resumed working.  “No,” he said over the sound of his hammering.  “No, we can’t let that happen.

“There have been dreams,” he said.  “Dreams that maybe I had when I was a child and was never able to remember.  They’ve been coming every night lately.  I’ve only told Pippa.  I haven’t even told my sister.

“I run through the woods.  Something’s chasing me, but I’m more annoyed than afraid, but something’s not right.  I shouldn’t be annoyed.  There’s some part of me that’s terrified, something buried and subsumed.  Someone’s calling my name that’s not my name and someone’s calling what’s not my name but has become my name.”  He exhaled in a rush.  “It doesn’t make sense, does it?”

“No,” J.T. said.  “But I’m sure if you slow down, it might.”  Or if I knew more about that existence, but I don’t.  He frowned slightly.  “Do you think you were the druid in the dream?”

“I know I was,” he said.  “But I’m not sure what it all means.  There are other dreams I’ve had, dreams where I’ve been with the two of them and a girl and others.  They’re disjointed pieces of a life that doesn’t make sense.”  He exhaled softly.  “But I don’t remember Phelan.  Not clearly.”

“Damn,” J.T. breathed.

“But I can try,” Matt said as he thrust his unfinished piece into the fire to heat again.  “If it’s that important, I can try.”

“Listen to him, Phelan,” Ériu said, her spirit drifting closer to the bed, close enough that J.T. could clearly feel the chill of her presence through the heavy sweatshirt he was wearing.  He suppressed a shiver, lips thinning slightly.  The spirit didn’t seem to notice as her spectral hand grazed Phelan’s forehead.  “They care for you, you fool.  You’ll not put them off as easily as you put off Mother and Father.  You never did put off Uncle, you just stopped listening.”

“I didn’t—”

“Phelan.”  J.T. checked his tone, took a deep breath, then tried again.  “I wouldn’t argue with her.  Something tells me that hasn’t worked out overly well for you in the past, has it?  I mean, the only ones who know what—”  He stopped short, brows knitting as his mind slammed into a brick wall of possibility.

Marin and Thom might know.  Marin was Ériu’s mother in a past life—or something.  His lips thinned.  If that was the case, didn’t it stand to reason that Thom may have been the father then, and Matt the uncle the spirit talked about?

“You begin to understand,” the spirit whispered.  J.T. shuddered as he realized that she was talking to him, her gaze penetrating to the depths of his soul.  “You begin to see the strands that bind us all together.”

“No,” J.T. murmured, though it was a lie.  He was starting to see the connections, the interlocking threads.  Something tells me she’s talking about something deeper than the connections, though—there’s something I’m not quite seeing yet.

I’m not sure I want to see what she’s talking about.

“You’ll learn,” she promised softly.  Her spectral hand was on his arm, not burningly cold as he’d expected.  There was something warm about it, despite the chill of her presence.  “You have a Spiritweaver’s gift, a Spiritweaver’s burden.  You’ll learn, you’ll understand.  Then you’ll know.”

“Know what?” J.T. asked without thinking.

“How terrible and wonderful it can be,” Phelan said softly, his eyes focused on some distant point.  “It’s a rare gift, Jameson.  A rare curse.”

“It’s neither,” Ériu said softly.  “And both.”

J.T. shuddered again, swallowed bile, and tried to concentrate on his work.

Nothing made sense anymore.  Nothing.