Impervious (City of Eldrich Book 1) (31 page)

Chapter 55

T
hey got through
that day and then several more until a couple of weeks had passed.

Meaghan slept for the better part of two days and then began reading her father’s journals in earnest. She wasn’t getting caught unaware again. She had a job to do. No more screwing around.

She kept her distance from John. He had work to do and didn’t need the distraction. And she didn’t need the temptation. He had to stay sober for a while.

Russ advised her not to even consider a romance with John until he could bring her at least a ninety day sobriety chip from AA. “And make sure he has a sponsor,” Russ warned. “He can’t skimp on that. Dad had three false starts before he finally admitted he couldn’t do it on his own and got himself a sponsor. And remind him that if he hurts you, I’m kicking his ass. Hard.”

Meaghan merely smiled. John could mop the floor with Russ. Everyone—including Russ—knew it, but she appreciated Russ saying it anyway.

Jamie, with some string pulling by Meaghan, was placed on short term disability leave and wouldn’t be back to work for a while. The raw emotional bond forged between them in Fahraya seemed to have evaporated. He wouldn’t look Meaghan in the eye or talk about what had happened to him. He was furtive and ashamed, not only with Meaghan but with Patrice as well.

Patrice’s boss, the doctor who ran the local clinic, was the son of a witch and clued in. After treating Jamie’s physical injuries, he told Patrice to take a few weeks off and get Jamie out of town for a while. Buzz Hallam, whose law firm was handling Jamie’s workload, had a remote cabin on the New York side of the state line. Patrice left the kids with Natalie and took her wounded husband away from Eldrich. Jamie was human now, so there was no amulet to worry about.

Emily returned to work the same day Meaghan did. When Meaghan got home from the forest, she found Emily still locked in the basement. No longer bound to a chair, Emily was sleeping on an old camp cot she’d found. Meaghan, still wearing clothes stained with Jamie’s blood, woke her and told her to leave. Emily snarled a response about making everybody pay. Meaghan said nothing, responding only with a cold, heavy-lidded stare. Emily, silenced by the look in Meaghan’s eyes, fled up the basement stairs and out of the house. So far she’d kept her distance, but Meaghan suspected it wouldn’t last.

Jhoro, nursing his grief for Finn, moved in with Meaghan and Russ. It seemed she’d gotten more than one surrogate son during her time in Fahraya. He told John that he wanted to make sure Meaghan was safe from whatever had taken over his father. Meaghan suspected that he was feeling lost without Finn and unsure what his role was now that John appeared to be king again. Being her protector gave him something to do.

She and Russ were glad for the company. Jhoro helped fill the void left by Matthew’s death. Russ had been a caregiver for a long time and didn’t quite know what to do with himself with Matthew gone. Jhoro had a sweet goofy charm under his rough exterior and, unlike Jamie at the moment, was happy for a little parenting. A lot of parenting, actually, considering she and Russ had to teach him how to use the toilet, bathe, and eat with a fork, among other things.

At Jhoro’s insistence, Finn was buried in the stone circle that marked the closed gateway. Jhoro cleared the brush and, with Russ and Caleb’s help, replaced the unimpressive standing stones with larger boulders. It now looked like a proper mystical site even if the magic had been drained from it.

The now-human Fahrayans were gathered in Eldrich and the surrounding area. Most of those who survived had come through the Eldrich gateway. There had been only about a thousand of them to begin with and by the current headcount, about half of them had perished when Fahraya was destroyed. Or at least they weren’t accounted for yet, despite the best efforts of the European witches and the Troon to find them.

Unlike the Eldrich gateway, the European gateways were not so remote. The one in England sat right on the edge of an exclusive new housing development. The local coven managed to gather up the confused Fahrayans before they attracted too much attention and, by detouring through Troon, got them safely to Eldrich.

The gateway in Germany, in the Black Forest, wasn’t quite as close to major population centers, but was still surrounded by tourists. Melanie observed signs of wind damage near the gateway but no Fahrayans. The French and Romanian gateways showed similar wind damage and also no Fahrayans. The popular theory was that those gateways had been destroyed before the fleeing Fahrayans could get to them.

Meaghan hated government conspiracy theories because of her familiarity with how government actually worked. But she had to wonder. It had long been rumored that a few Fahrayans from John’s father’s doomed raid had been captured by German troops. If the story was true, then somebody who wasn’t part of the magical world might know of their existence. What if the missing Fahrayans had arrived but been grabbed before the witches got to them?

But there was so much work to be done dealing with the Fahrayans who could be accounted for that there was no time to worry about what might have happened to the others. Meaghan had seen firsthand what V’hren’s hole in reality had done to Fahraya. Considering how little time they had to evacuate, the most likely explanation was that the lost Fahrayans were dead.

Trying to feed and shelter nearly five hundred bewildered new humans with no modern living skills was a logistical feat that took up all of John’s time, as well as the time of Lynette and every witch who didn’t hide when she called for help. For now, it was barely manageable between home placements and the refugee camp that had sprung up around John’s house. Without magic, it would have been impossible. A more permanent solution would have to be found before winter.

The Order and whatever V’hren now was—Meaghan felt sure that what Caleb called the Power had been the thing possessing V’hren—were still out there, which concerned Meaghan quite a bit. Everyone was so busy dealing with the Fahrayans that she hadn’t pushed the issue, but Meaghan knew she needed to learn more about the war her mother and Natalie had mentioned. John had also mentioned a great war waged by wizards told of in Fahrayan folklore. And whatever had possessed V’hren could do magic and was working with wizards. So far, nothing had turned up in Matthew’s files, but she could feel the connections even if she didn’t yet know the details. She suspected that the Order and the Power weren’t finished with them yet.

So far, the Order had made no obvious effort to contact or control Caleb. Lynette kept a watchful eye on him, as did the other witches, but detected no signs of Order interference. Caleb moved in with Lynette and worked by her side, gaining weight and growing visibly happier every day. The Fahrayan children, in particular, adored him. He was almost as much a stranger in the modern world as they were, and he understood, better than anyone else in Eldrich, what it was like to have your whole world disappear in a moment.

And so the days passed and after two weeks, a fragile new normal asserted itself. Then John called early on Saturday morning. He had, he said, something he wanted to talk to her about.

Meaghan showered, dressed, and waited for John to arrive, trying to control her nerves. They hadn’t spoken since their return from Fahraya, when they’d agreed, in light of John’s renewed responsibilities to his people, that Meaghan and John’s burgeoning romance would have to wait.

Much to Meaghan’s relief.

Despite John’s sober interlude, Meaghan was too familiar with alcoholism to believe that his sobriety could last without serious effort on his part, effort made much more difficult by the Fahrayan exodus. No matter how much she wanted him, they couldn’t be together until they both knew he could stay sober.

She only hoped she was strong enough to resist him. She felt a funny little thrill in her gut when she remembered how it felt to kiss him. It had been so long since any man had even interested her, let alone touched her, that Meaghan knew if he pushed, even a little, she might not be able to say no.

John drove up a few minutes after ten. She heard the rattle of his old truck as she waited in the kitchen.

The house was empty. Russ had left shortly after dawn to take Jhoro fishing. Meaghan realized she hadn’t been home alone since the day she’d first met John. It felt like it had been ages ago, but it was not quite a month.

She heard a gentle knock. Taking a deep breath in a futile effort to calm her nerves, she opened the kitchen door. John stepped through the doorway, smiling shyly.

And within moments she was in his arms, kissing him, with an urgency and need that shocked her. It had been so long, so many lonely years, and her resolve to wait evaporated like steam.

It was John who pulled away finally, taking several steps back from her. “Meaghan,” he gasped. “We . . . I . . . wow. That’s some kiss.”

Meaghan, flustered, took her own big step backwards. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be,” John said with a grin. “No one’s been that happy to see me in a long time. But if I don’t stop us, I think we’ll do something we’ll feel bad for after. It’s too soon for us. I go to AA every day and my friends there they tell me it’s too soon.”

“You’re going to AA?” Meaghan asked.

“Every day.”

Meaghan’s legs were shaking so hard she had to sit down. “Russ said to go at least ninety days and you need a sponsor before we . . .” She felt her face grow hot.

“I have a sponsor,” he said. “A good one. Clued in so I can tell him everything.”

“You have a clued-in sponsor?”

John smiled. “Yeah. I do. He’s been sober a long time now. He was a big deal to his people once and then not anymore—like me—so he understands.”

They sat in awkward silence at the kitchen table until Meaghan couldn’t take it anymore. “You want some coffee?”

John sighed with relief. “God, yes.”

Coffee served, Meaghan sat back down. Before she lost her nerve, she had to tackle the issue they were both avoiding. “About us, I . . . we . . . is ninety days enough?”

“That’s what I’m here to talk with you about,” he said, avoiding her gaze. “I keep remembering that kiss in Fahraya, to break the magic, and wondering . . .” He finally looked up. “I want to be with you, but I’m scared to death.”

Meaghan let out her own sigh of relief. “Oh, God, so am I. Just terrified.”

John laughed and she joined him. “I have to confess something to you,” he said. “I never . . . do the . . . you know . . .” His face turned red. “I’ve never been with a human woman. And never as a human man.” He sighed. “It’s been a really long time.”

“For me, too,” Meaghan said. “So, now what?”

John took her hand, his fingers warm and calloused. “My sponsor tells me he tells new members to wait awhile to be with someone new, but he knows nobody listens to that and I should let what happens happen. But . . .” He stroked her hand gently and stared at the tabletop.

“But what?” she asked, already knowing the answer.

“They say one day at a time, but I’m not even to one day yet. Sometimes it’s one hour, one moment at a time. I’m so nervous it was all I could do not to drink before I come here today. I never thought I’d be the . . . the
king
again, you know? That they’d all look at me for the answers. I have to learn again how to do it.” He finally met her eyes. “At the same time I have to learn again how to be sober. And how to be a father.”

“And learning how to be with a woman again is too much right now.” Meaghan nodded, disappointed but also relieved. “The other things have to come first.” Only two months earlier she’d been so shut down she couldn’t even admit how lonely she was. Since her emotional breakthrough in Fahraya, she was trying to mommy anyone who’d let her and was prone to bursting into tears at odd moments. “I get it,” she said. “I’m not ready either. I have a lot of things I need to learn myself. I can wait. It’s not like I’m going anywhere.”

“I don’t want to mess this up,” John said. “It’s too important for too many people, including you, that I don’t fail.”

The wall phone rang. John let go of her hand and she got up to answer it.

It was Natalie. “Boss, we’ve got a problem.”

“Of course we do,” Meaghan said. “Now what?”

“It’s not a big problem,” Natalie said. “More a nuisance really. Want to meet a new species?”

“What kind?” Meaghan asked, wondering if she really wanted to know.

“Wee folk.”

“Actual fairies this time?” Meaghan looked at John and rolled her eyes. He laughed.

“Um, not exactly,” Natalie. “Well, technically, yeah, but these aren’t like Tinkerbell either.”

“Okay,” Meaghan said. “So what twisted representation of a beloved mythological figure are we dealing with this time?”

“Leprechauns,” Natalie said.

Meaghan was silent for a long moment. “Are you shittin’ me?”

“No, really.”

“Whimsical little men in green suits guarding their pots of gold?”

“Um,” Natalie said. “No, not really. More like grubby, foul-mouthed little loan sharks. There should be a file in the garage somewhere. Read up on them and I’ll be over later today.”