Then she looked up, her eyes shining. “I forgot about time zones, but Jen says that if we’ve got a possible piece of the Long Cang mess, she’d pick us up even if it was the crack of doom.”
“Crack of doom?” three people said at the same time.
“Crack of dawn, I know. Crack of doom?” Alejo asked.
“What else but three a.m.,” Godiva said. “Think about it. Is it ever good to be woken at three a.m.? Anyway, she’ll Transfer Gate us at six-thirty her time, which gives us a little over an hour to pack up and get one of those fabulous breakfasts at the B&B.”
Lance shook his head. “Much as I’d love to join you, I need to get back up into town before ten.”
“And we’ve got to get our evidence turned in,” Kaydi stated. “There’s probably a team waiting for these books right now.” She cracked her knuckles. “The customers in these ledgers will very shortly be receiving visits. It’ll be all hands on deck for even the freelance agents,” she added, turning Alejo’s way.
“You know where to find me,” Alejo said, waving his phone.
Everyone said their farewells and thanks, then the Guardian agent took the ancient book back, and the two groups parted.
Rigo reveled in walking with his son and his mate. The ordinary world around them felt new-made. Even the heat was merely warmth, the sun glorious in its summer brightness, the colors truer and purer. Godiva had determinedly—gleefully—torn down that wall of hurt anger that had separated them, freeing the mate bond to reach between them, shining and golden. Though he was not sure that she was aware of it yet. The completed bond, at last, was new enough to him!
He remained silent, listening contentedly to Godiva’s and Alejo’s chatter as the three of them walked back to the B&B. “ . . . and maybe it’s the mystery writer in me,” she was saying, “but I want to know everything about that book. Where he got it. How. What’s going to happen to it. Is it going to disappear into some shifter secret vault?”
“If there is such a thing, it’s probably high in the northern mountains of China, where the empress reigns,” Alejo said. “And that’s just a guess. I don’t know much more about the empress beyond the fact that she exists. And communicates with the Guardians.”
“According to something Doris said, Bird’s husband Mikhail is one of her knights,” Godiva commented.
Alejo whistled. “You’ve been hanging out in some exalted company!”
“And I didn’t even know it. I used to think he reminded me of one of King Arthur’s knights. Turns out I wasn’t so far off.” She uttered her raspy cackle that Rigo found so endearing. He could never get enough of her laughter. Of her.
Then she switched tracks, still quick as a hummingbird. “So, do you think your Guardian posse will get Barth to talk? I’m not saying I want him to be tortured, because that would be very bad. But I hope at least he rates a dreary prison cell of some kind, and a very uninspired cook for meals.”
Rigo shrugged, smiling. “You know I’m a latecomer and an outsider, as far as the shifter world is concerned. Everything I know pretty much came from Alejo, other than what that old shaman told me, years and years ago.”
Alejo was laughing. “It’s not like there’s a secret republic of shifters. Many have no idea of the existence of other shifters outside of their community or family, much less knowing anything about the Guardians. As for interrogating the likes of Barth, I’m told there are people with talents—magical or otherwise—who’re good at getting info. And no ice-cold dental equipment or waterboarding required. Then they try to rehabilitate anyone who can be rehabilitated. Those who won’t, or can’t, and whose crimes reach into both worlds, they dose with specially treated shiftsilver, and turn them over to the human authorities.”
“Shiftsilver?” Godiva repeated.
“Easiest answer is, think of it as kryptonite. In fact, I should tell you another friend’s theory about how the origin of Superman was related to shifters, but that can wait . . .”
That can wait.
Rigo relished the ease with which Alejo said such simple words. They meant so much. The three of them were a family at last.
“ . . . this type of shiftsilver keeps us bound in whatever shape we’re in when it touches us, but it also dampens powers.”
“Powers?” Godiva repeated. “Oh! Like Rigo’s evil eye thing.” Her small hand, tucked into the crook of his arm, tugged him closer.
“Well, that’s part of dad’s basilisk, but some have powers beyond what their animal is equipped with by nature. You can call it energy, or qi, as some do, and there are all kinds of theories on how powers work. But I’m totally comfortable with the word magic,” Alejo said.
“I am as well,” Rigo said. “My first electric lights looked like magic to me. I had no idea how electricity worked. Of course I learned. And there is surely some similar explanation for Transfer Gates and all the rest, but. . .” He shrugged. “Magic, power, energy, source, it all pretty much means the same thing to me.”
“Humph!” Godiva snorted. “To me magic suggests magic wands. If there is one, I have a list of things to magically transform, beginning with my trick knee. And ending with turning that Barth into a petunia. But until such time, here we are. Let’s eat—and start translating.”
She brandished her phone. “We don’t need the antidote to the zombie spell since the dog whistles apparently work fine. We should probably concentrate on this new one Long Cang bought. At least from the brevity of this handwriting, these are recipes, and not academic papers complete with ten pages of footnotes.”
They paid up, then asked for their breakfast to be delivered up to the little balcony outside Rigo’s room, which had a table and three chairs. There, working with Godiva’s laptop and a tablet of lined paper she carried everywhere, they got to work, everyone taking different words to hunt down.
They had translated most of the words, but were trying to puzzle out the sense of them when Godiva’s phone lit up with a text from Jen saying she was ready.
Godiva took a picture of the floor at their feet and sent it. Seconds later, tall, blond Jen appeared, bringing a current of air that carried a tang of sea breeze.