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The house and barn are directly connected through a short breezeway. Once we’re traversing it, I’m hit by the smells of fresh grass and hay. A few less pleasant things too, but I focus on the former.
Kiama motions me toward a large open-air enclosure behind the building, where a huge striped wildcat eagerly lopes toward the rail as soon as the witch approaches. Kiama’s joy is just as tangible, and she buries her face into the tiger’s fur with affectionate croons.
“Told you she was going to be okay.” Liseli’s voice is also drenched with happiness. I look back to her in time to catch a brief sheen across her gaze. I won’t deny how that affects me, with a clutch in what Jesse would callmy feels, centered somewhere between my middle ribs. It inspires my wider smile at her, along with a new question.
“So now I’m curious. Where’syourfamiliar?”
“Sleeping,” the woman replies while quickly pulling her hair into a ponytail. “He’s a fennec fox who, like me, prefers the moon instead of the sun.”
I toss around a curious glance in the early afternoon rays. “I get it. Sometimes I’m most productive at night too.”
“Ah. Then I look forward to introducing you to Koko soon. Though there’s certainly no rush.”
The woman is just as easygoing while guiding me toward the barn’s interior, allowing Kiama some private time with Cally. On the outside, I continue to be an interested tour taker, nodding and humming at the right junctures. But on the inside, Liseli’s casual remark sticks to me with glaringly opposite results.
There’s certainly no rush.
It’s a broad statement. Words that can be translated in a lot of different ways. I only wish one of them was a relief valve for my sudden tension.
The loose interpretation is that Kara and I are going to be here for a while. Maybe alongwhile. Or worse.
Is Hecate expecting us to move in permanently?
Technically, that prospect shouldn’t be tempting my pores to sprout a thousand hives. This is Topanga Canyon, not Iceland. If I throw a rock hard enough, it’d likely shatter a panoramic window in a movie mogul’s mansion. Malibu is half an hour west, and Burbank is a doable drive the other direction, if taken at certain hours of the day. We’re close enough to LA to make it all work.
But maybe that’s the core of my issue.
Maybe we’re too close.
LA is home—in many ways, it always will be—but for Kara and me, is it safe anymore? Is Iremia and everyone in it?
For now, I have to believe as much. I have no reason to doubt Hecate’s promises to the same thing. She’s formidable—I watched her bring Hades to a respectful heel in less than ten minutes—and she obviously cares for Kara to the core of her heart. To the depths of my own, I suspect that my woman needed that maternal touch even before Hades swooped her into the pit of hell.
But hell isn’t always a literal realm. And home isn’t always a physical address. Especially when the queen of all the gods has decided to keep her operatives sniffing in Kara’s and my shadows.
Which means that for now, this has to be home.I’m not comfortable with the thought, even with its qualifier.For now.
This isn’t going to be for good. I know that much as fact. But what or wherewillbe for Kara and me?
My mind replies with a pitiful blank. Even before Hades’s not-so-fun little ordeal, I’d started to consider backup living plans for Kara and me. Notplansso much as a whole new start, created by the two of us alone. It wouldn’t need to be far, but I’ve saved enough to afford a place close by. Something similar to what she shares now with Kell, only it’d be ours. No prying paparazzi or mothers with front door keys. Best of all, someplace Hera couldn’t locate us.
But is that even possible?
If she lets the world think she’s still back in the Hollywood Hills, would it be enough to fool themortalworld, let alone the otherworldly powers who all continue to have such strange compulsions about us?
Too many questions. Not enough answers. And none of them are going to come right away.
The threat of Hades’s obsession is still too fresh to forget. Why was he so incensed about giving up Kara? Is he that huge of a megalomaniac, or are there other, scarier, reasons? And why is Hera continuing to sic her minions on our trail, using Elizabeth McCarthy as an unknowing accomplice?
I can’t let go of the suspicion that Z is troubled about all this but won’t let on why. Only one fact seems rock solid right now. I’m not going to learn any of those details by brooding here in the dust.
But maybehereis exactly where I need to be.
In a bizarre but brilliant manner of speaking.
Maybe here, basically beneath Hecate’s nose, is the most ideal launching pad for rocketing to those answers. The route doesn’t get any more direct than this. Besides, I’m here with Kara, who’s being nurtured and cherished by some women I’m truly beginning to like.
Right now, that’s more than good enough.
