Time to Your Elf, page 3
“I could send you some pictures,” she offered, “if you would like to look at them. And I have an evaluation from a jeweler, with the weight and cut and clarity and all that.”
“Yes, that would be helpful,” the dwarf agreed. “But why have you not sold them to this jeweler?”
“Well… that’s a good question, I guess. You see… these gems have a bit of a history…”
“All gems have a history.”
“Of course.” Reg imagined that most of the gems that the dwarfs acquired were probably ones that they had mined themselves. Maybe they had been passed down from generation to generation over the years. Though maybe they had bought a few on Amazon or eBay. But the gems that she held had a more… storied past. “They were… uh… cursed for some time.”
Gwythr cleared his throat.
“They aren’t anymore. They have been cleansed. And I could sell them to a regular jeweler in the city. But some of them are more powerful, and I would rather find them a good home with someone I know. Somewhere I know they would be safe, and not be stolen again. Where their power would be used… in positive ways.”
She did not want them to end up in the hands of a magical warlord like General Mbombo. She had seen the kind of harm that a man like he was could cause. The maimed villagers. The child soldiers. The poverty of the people who were pulling one of the world’s most precious resources out of the mud.
“We appreciate that,” Gwythr acknowledged. “Most humans do not understand how gems need to be properly cared for.”
“Yeah. I didn’t used to. But now that I know how they can be damaged by misuse and the trouble they can cause, I didn’t want to sell them to just anyone. They could end up anywhere. I wouldn’t have any control over it.”
“You cannot control where they would go from here, either.”
A heaviness settled in Reg’s stomach. She had hoped that if she sold them to the dwarfs, they would be guaranteed to stay in the dwarf mountain. The dwarfs would keep them as heirlooms and not sell them anywhere else.
“No, I guess not. But I think that… someone like a dwarf who understood gems would be careful about who he sold such gems to, or how he used them.”
There was a brief silence from Gwythr. She wondered whether he was thinking this over or had muted his mic and was talking to someone else in the background, going over strategies and negotiations. Eventually, there was a soft click and he spoke again.
“We will need to discuss this. Send me the pictures and specs. We might need to send someone to have a look at them firsthand.”
“Okay. That sounds good. I’ll send you the information.” Reg let out her breath slowly, hoping the tension in her muscles would soften. “Give Nico an ear-scratch for me. He’s really doing well?”
“He fares very well,” Gwythr assured her.
“And… no one has come to see him?”
“Come to see him.” Gwythr’s voice hardened. “Who would come to see him? Has Reg Rawlins sent a delegation?”
“No. I haven’t sent anyone. If anyone shows up to see him, it isn’t because of me. I’m trying to make sure that no one bothers him.”
“Why then? Who would bother him?”
“No one. I don’t think.” Reg thought of Harrison, and how to explain him to the dwarfs. Her immortal godfather? A powerful magical being with a penchant for cats and chocolate cake? Someone who didn’t much care about human lives that could be lost while he and his kind amused themselves?
“Who?” Gwythr insisted.
“There is… a magical being. I don’t know. I haven’t told him where to find Nico, but I think he could search him out if he wanted to. He has… visited some of Nico’s litter mates recently. I just want to make sure that he can’t get near Nico.”
“What does this being want with him?”
“I can’t be sure. He likes cats. Maybe… he knew Nico in a previous incarnation. An old friend… I can’t really understand it very well.”
“When will he come?”
“I don’t know whether he will. I hope not. But just… be aware.”
“We shall,” Gwythr agreed, his voice low and gravelly. “This person shall not bother our warrior cat.”
CHAPTER SIX
Reg hung up the phone after talking to Gwythr. She focused on Starlight, who was sitting directly in front of her, staring at her intently. She hadn’t even been aware of him during the phone call with Gwythr. But she was sure that he had heard every word and had probably understood the situation better than either of them.
“I’m sure it will be fine,” Reg told him. “Right? I’m just worrying over nothing.”
He blinked at her slowly, then opened his eyes again and stared at her, blue and green eyes drilling deep into her thoughts.
“The dwarfs will take the gems. I don’t have any doubt about that. The only question is whether I can negotiate a price that both of us will be happy with.”
The dwarfs were good at bartering. But they would want the gems once they had seen them. They would be ready to deal.
And Reg really didn’t have anything to worry about as far as Harrison was concerned. She had already told him to stay away from the rest of the kattakyns. Harrison was her protector. He would not do anything that could cause her trouble. Not after she had warned him. The world was safe from the kattakyns and the danger of the Witch Doctor re-forming again in her lifetime. That wasn’t going to happen.
The phone rang. Reg looked down at it, expecting to see a call back from Gwythr with further concerns or inquiries. But she hadn’t even sent him anything about the gems yet. He wouldn’t want to negotiate until he had seen what it was that he was buying.
And it wasn’t Gwythr’s name that she saw, but Corvin’s name and incredibly handsome face. Something fluttered in Reg’s stomach, and it wasn’t worry and dread this time. She tried to keep her voice calm and relaxed and not give away that she was glad to hear from him. They hadn’t spoken much since she had returned from her trip across the ocean to deal with the first batch of gems. He was kind of miffed by the fact that she hadn’t waited for his help, hadn’t even let him finish his research into how to cleanse the gems before her little excursion. Reg supposed that he had a point. She had asked him for help, and when things hadn’t happened as quickly as she had hoped, she had found another way to deal with the problem. Corvin probably felt used. Unimportant.
“Corvin. Hi.”
She shouldn’t sound too friendly, since she was usually more reserved with him, trying to avoid being charmed by the warlock who could use his wiles to gain control over her if she weren’t careful.
“Regina. We haven’t… talked lately, and I was thinking of you…”
“Yeah, it’s been a while. Everything going okay with you?”
“I am well, thank you. And you?” His voice took on a purring note. As if he really cared about her and wanted to know. That voice could get right under her skin and worm its way into her brain. Reg took a deep breath, trying to get air into her lungs. But she still sounded breathless when she answered him.
“Yeah. Things have been going a lot better for me, actually.”
“Maybe divesting yourself of the cursed stones has had an effect.”
“Maybe,” Reg agreed. He didn’t know how many gems she had started out with and how many she had been able to find new homes for. And how many gems were still sitting in a wooden box in her closet, waiting for her to take another trip. “What have you been up to lately? Working on any interesting projects?”
Not that she was really interested in any of his business. She didn’t understand what he did as a warlock, when he wasn’t stealing others’ powers, and she found his collegiate studies to be extremely boring. But she felt she should at least inquire.
“I have applied to Davyn to reinstate me to the coven,” Corvin told her.
It hit Reg like a punch in the gut. It shouldn’t make any difference to her whether he were an active member of Davyn’s coven or still being shunned by them. She had continued to be friends with him, despite the treacherous things he had done, so what did it matter whether he was being disciplined by his coven or not? If she, the victim in his case that had gone before the tribunal, was still on speaking terms with him, then why not the friends he’d had since before he even met her?
But that would mean that it was over. That the magical community felt that he had been fully punished for what he had done and was a full member of their order once more. He would be able to pick up more business, since he could now see and talk to the others in his coven without any restrictions.
Maybe he would stop calling her so often if there were other people he could call when he got bored with his solitary life.
It felt like a betrayal. Like the amount of damage that Reg had received from him had been measured and deemed to be compensated for. She should be over it now, since they had decided that he’d been shunned for long enough. No lasting harm.
Nothing they could see, maybe. That didn’t mean that what he had done hadn’t left scars that she would never get over.
“Are you still there, Regina?”
Reg considered just terminating the call. Why was she still on the phone with him anyway? Why had she even answered it to start with? Why would she even consider having anything to do with someone who had attacked her and taken something so precious from her in the past?
“Regina?”
“Yeah.”
“Did you hear what I said?”
“Yes.”
“You don’t have anything to say?”
Reg licked her lips and swallowed. “What do you expect me to say?”
“I don’t know. I expected you to go off, to be honest. Full-blown tirade about how I should never be released from my punishment after everything I have done. I expected… a lot of four-letter words, if nothing else.”
“Well… however the coven wants to deal with you, that’s their business.” Reg cleared her throat. She felt very off balance but tried to act as if everything were normal. “I’m not the one who brought the charges against you in the first place.”
“No, you didn’t. I always thought that said something about you. And maybe about how you felt about me.”
“Just that I didn’t want anything more to do with you,” Reg told him with a snap.
“Really, Reg. I think we’re past that childishness, don’t you? You and I have had some very enjoyable times together since then. We are far more alike than we are different.”
Reg supposed he was referring to the fact that she was a siren and he was a warlock who had inherited certain abilities from his patriarchal line that allowed him—or to hear him tell it, forced him—to steal the powers and gifts from others to satisfy his unending hunger. Such things were not spoken of in the community, and that reluctance to talk about it had led to Reg being tricked by him into giving him her powers. She had never felt so empty and bereft as she had when she had woken up that morning.
In a bizarre twist of fate, Corvin had returned her powers to her, something that was previously unheard of. But he’d been trying to get them back ever since.
“We are not the same,” she told Corvin coldly. “I am nothing like you are. What your coven does about you is their own business. It’s got nothing to do with me.”
“I’m sure Davyn will be calling you. You could, perhaps, happen to mention that you have no axe to grind. If you truly don’t care whether I am readmitted to the coven or not, then tell him so.”
It was a challenge for Reg to put her money where her mouth was.
“You could tell him that you are not afraid of me,” Corvin prodded. “Inform him that you don’t think I’m a danger to you any longer. That would go a long way to showing how much I have rehabilitated.”
“You haven’t rehabilitated. You haven’t changed at all.”
They had been psychically joined so many times that Reg couldn’t ever fully separate from Corvin or keep him out of her own head. So even though he was only on the phone, she saw the smirk on his face and felt the chuckle that was too low to hear.
“Regina. I’ve changed so much. You know that. Look at how many times I have helped you. With the Witch Doctor and the draugar. With giving you the strength that you needed to help protect your younger self from Weston. Giving you strength to heal Calliopia and keeping you from blowing up the dwarf mountain. Can you really say that I haven’t been the perfect gentleman, always willing to help you out whenever you called? Even if there was nothing in it for me?”
“No, I would not say that,” Reg snapped.
“Well… I suppose everyone has a different perspective. But you can bet that I will be telling the tribunal of our many adventures together and how often you have called upon me to assist you. Whether you ended up taking my advice or not. I think if you look back at it, you will see that I have more than paid for one small mistake.”
“Is that what you called me about? Just to gloat over how you are going to get reinstated into the coven? Because if that’s all you’re calling about, I have other things to do now.”
“I’m sure you do. But I did want to give you a heads-up. It seems like the right thing to do. I wouldn’t want you to get blindsided by this.”
Reg breathed out slowly. Was she ever going to get to the point where she wouldn’t react to Corvin’s goading? Where she didn’t care about what he was doing or thinking or had to say to her? It shouldn’t matter to her what he did with his life. They were not a couple. They were not family. There was no tie between them, other than a psychic connection that both of them would prefer to break. Corvin was attracted to her, yes. Having once held her powers for that brief period, he didn’t seem to be able to give up on the idea of talking her out of them again. But Reg knew too much now and she would never let him get the upper hand over her again. His powers had grown much stronger, but so had hers and, so far, she had been able to resist him.
And she would not give in to him again.
“You do what you have to,” she said coolly. “It doesn’t make any difference to me.”
“I will, then,” Corvin agreed smugly.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Reg was glad to get off the phone with Corvin. She didn’t need the aggravation. He could go ahead and do whatever he wanted to. It was Davyn’s problem to deal with, not Reg’s. She didn’t have to make any kind of decision about it. And she certainly wouldn’t beg.
“What a pain in the neck,” Reg told Starlight crossly.
Starlight, curled up on the couch with his nose touching his back feet, raised his head slightly to look at Reg. Who was a pain in the neck?
“Not you,” Reg reassured him. “I’m talking about that warlock.”
He blinked at her, then eventually closed his eyes and put his head down again, apparently satisfied that she wasn’t criticizing him for something he had done.
“What would make me happy is if he just left me alone,” Reg muttered to herself. She wasn’t crazy. Not really. Talking to herself was just a way of sorting things out in her mind.
It wasn’t as if she were talking to the voices in her head.
The voices had, unfortunately, been very loud recently. She thought it was her increased psychic activity. She was doing so many readings now that she was always open, always vulnerable to what the spirits had to say.
Or those who were not spirits but still, somehow, managed to worm their way into her head.
“That Corvin is lovely,” one voice simpered, the accent and cadences as familiar to Reg as the sound of her own voice. “He is a wonderful specimen. You should get together with him. Go for a walk at the beach.”
“Shut up, Norma Jean,” Reg said evenly. “I can’t even hear you.”
“If you can’t hear me, then how can you answer me?”
“You’re not there,” Reg pointed out. “You’re all the way north in Maine or wherever you ended up. I’m just having a nervous breakdown.”
“Of course you can hear the voices of your sisters.”
Reg blinked, trying to process this. She petted Starlight, digging her fingers down into his thickest fur and trying to ground herself. “This is ridiculous,” she told Starlight. “Even if I could hear Norma Jean, she is my mother, not my sister. Why would I think that?”
“We are all your sisters,” Norma Jean’s voice informed her.
“All of you?” Who else would Norma Jean be talking about? The other voices that Reg fought to ignore were not living beings like her mother, but those who had passed on. Reg had carried Norma Jean’s voice in her head for a long time before Weston had changed the timeline, making it so that her mother had not died at the hands of Samyr Destine when Reg was four. Reg assumed that her familiarity with Norma Jean’s voice after so long with her was the reason she could hear Norma Jean’s voice even though it couldn’t really be there. Reg had just gotten so used to it, that was the voice she had assigned to her internal voice.
At least, that was what she had been telling herself.
Everyone had an internal voice, right? She had heard writers talking about internal narrators. And that had to be what Norma Jean was now. No longer a ghost trying to communicate with her still-living daughter, but Reg’s own brain, making observations about things around her. Helping her to make decisions.
But who else was Norma Jean talking about?
“No more. I’m tired. I need a break.”
“You said he was yours. You claimed those waters, but you have not anointed them. You must seal your claim. Soon.”
Reg shuddered. The last thing she needed to do was to take Corvin to the beach again. The last time she had nearly succeeded in pulling him into the water. Heart pounding loudly in her ears, she could almost smell the sweet scent of his blood that she had been able to sense that day. She had wanted so badly to just pull him into the water.
“Seal your claim,” Norma Jean’s voice insisted, losing the fake southern accent. “You must seal your claim with blood.”
