Cold Fire (Spiritwalker 2)

“What odd notions you hold, Catherine. Is this some sort of Phoenician belief??”

“Can’t you remember that it is properly Kena’ani, not Phoenician?”

“I beg your pardon. You told me before, and I forgot.” He closed his fingers over the stone. “Something of my grandmother touches this stone. By holding it close, we are close to her. If we sit down to a meal and pour the first drops of our wine on the stone, then she will be called to dwell close beside us.” He rose, still clutching the stone. “If you’ll excuse me…”

“Go and do what is proper. I’ll see if Aunty needs help.”

He took a step away but turned back to brush my hand with his own as if checking to make sure I was a solid creature and not an illusion woven out of light like the one he had once woven of my face. He walked to the two-story wing, hurried up the stairs, and vanished into a room.

If I had a thought, I am sure it was too faint to register. At length, I stopped staring after him. I finished the food and carried the tray back to the kitchen sideboard.

“A good appetite is a precious thing,” Aunty Djeneba remarked. She was back at the griddle.

“The food was splendid. My thanks. Can I help in some way? I’m a good worker. I know how to sew, cook, read, and write. I must tell you, I have nothing, no coin, no possessions, nothing but my labor to offer you.”

“Yee’s married to Vai, is yee not?”

I blinked. At least four times. I had no idea what my expression looked like, but Aunty Djeneba glanced away, and the girls giggled.

“Is that what he told you?” I demanded.

She considered me thoughtfully. “Everyone around here know the story. He and he sister come here six months ago. He is handsome and charming. He work hard. Know how to make friends. He manners is so very good, I should like to meet he mother. Such a young man is like a flower. The gals will come round to see if they can pluck it. But yee know, Cat, never a hint of that with him. Always he is talking about the gal he lost, that one he married. How can he look at another when he don’ know what had become of she he had lost? Yee know all this, don’ yee?” She grasped my arm. “Yee need to sit down?”

“Why would I need to sit down?” But I could not get out the other questions foaming up in my thoughts: How had the world come unmoored? Who was this baffling personage pretending to be my husband the arrogant cold mage? Was I actually going to be safe here? How could I save Bee?

“Yee’s looking unsteady, gal.” She guided me to a sling-backed chair next to a toothless old woman who smiled at me but spoke no word. “Sit.”

I sank into the sway-backed canvas and shut my eyes, overcome by a sense of extreme disorientation and by the unrelenting heat.

I dozed off. When I woke, the shadows had drawn long across the courtyard and a dozen children of varying ages were standing in a semicircle watching me with great round stares. As soon as my open eyes registered, one of the little lads raced across the courtyard over to the long counter where men gathered, drinking and talking. Vai was deep in conversation with men his own age who looked vaguely familiar, likely carpenters from the yard, the ones I’d thought had been teasing him. Except they hadn’t been teasing him at all.

Someone laughed; a couple of the men made sparring gestures, play fighting. The little lad tugged on Vai’s arm, and he turned. His gaze met mine, and he made excuses and threaded through the crowd and over to the shelter. The children crowded around as he crouched beside me.

“Catherine, I hope you are feeling well, not ill.”

“I’m just so hot and thirsty.”

He tapped one of the little girls. “Juice.” With a bright grin, she hurried off and returned in triumph with a full cup. “Best if you rest until you get your feet under you.”

I drank. My head hurt and I felt queasy, but I did not want to complain. “Let me just sit.”

“Send one of the little lads if you need anything. The girls can fetch you juice. No giggling or talking.” As he rose, I belatedly realized the last was a command meant for the children.

He went back to his friends. I shut my eyes, because the shifting angle of the sun’s rays beyond my patch of shade was making me dizzy. The lilt and cadence of voices comforted me. Rain pounded on the shelter’s roof, kissing me with a cooling draft. Then it was hot again, and I tried to wake up, but I kept fading.

I heard them talking, but it was too hard to open my eyes.

“Are you sure she’s not a shade come to haunt you? Like what they call opia here?”

“Of course I’m sure, Kayleigh! She and I are bound by threads of magic chained by a djeli through a mirror. I knew the locket would bring her to me.”

“She doesn’t even like you.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure about that.” His tone had a smile in it.

“Could you be more vain? You can’t think she came here to find you! Kofi told me she came in on a canoe up from Cow Killer Beach. It’s all criminals, witches, and whores down there.”

“Don’t you talk like that, Kayleigh!”