10:4
“Okay.”
Siobhan curled her lips over her teeth, drew a deep breath, then carefully replaced the last page of paper on the neat pile in front of her. All was silent for long mikros as the group contemplated the ramifications of the story. Or rather its appearance in the hands of Jack.
Eventually Dan broke the silence. “So, we assume we have a new abductee. Grace.”
Siobhan nodded, still looking at the papers. Slowly she lifted her gaze. Instead of looking at Dan she looked directly at Rapunzel, pinning the woman with an unwavering stare.
“It seems we do,” she said through whitened lips.
“Where did the story come from?”
“Jack found it through his contacts,” Rapunzel answered Ivan’s question. “A woman, Grace, didn’t show up for work for a few days. This was found during a wellness check by the Guard.”
“Days?”
Rapunzel nodded and repeated, “Days.”
Prairie released her grip on her seat, curling up her shoulders then lowering them and placing her hands lightly on the tabletop. “So, they may not be stepping up their timeline.”
“Do we think they had both Roanne and Grace at the same time?” Ivan asked.
Siobhan gave a hard sniff that drew everyone’s eyes. She balled her hands into fists next to the papers.
“When they,” she paused to swallow then blinked her eyes hard before continuing, “had me.” Again she paused and drew a deeper breath.
Patti leaned in and placed a hand on Siobhan’s shoulder then leaned in to whisper, “You aren’t there any longer. You are here with us and you are safe.”
Siobhan nodded hard enough to send her flower crown askew. Gwen reached a hand up and righted it, then pressed her hand to the side of Siobhan’s face. When Siobhan turned to look at her Gwen gave a watery smile, sniffed, and whispered, “We’ve got you.”
Siobhan blinked hard several times then turned her face from Gwen’s hand and locked eyes with Rapunzel. “When they had me,” she said in a voice devoid of emotion, “they tried to mold me into something. They kept using these items on me and kept calling me Jack. I don’t know why Jack or why those items, but I felt like they were trying to get into my mind and my heart and convince me I was someone else. Could that be what they are doing to the people they take?”
“We don’t know. We have no inside knowledge.”
“You have me,” Siobhan snapped. “And my inside knowledge. And you have Kim,” she looked over at Kim then quickly looked back at Rapunzel. “Ask your questions!”
“We don’t have time for this.”
“Ask your questions! What, you don’t have any? How about this.” Siobhan leaned forward, almost spitting the words. “Why are they kidnapping people? Why did they kidnap me?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well,” Siobhan rose to her feet and leaned on the table, arms locked, pressing towards Rapunzel, “What do you know?”
Rapunzel rose. Her voice did too, “I said I don’t know. Not that I don’t have some thoughts.”
Siobhan’s nostrils flared as she drew a harsh breath. Then she slowly lowered herself back into her chair and made a show of folding her hands on the table. Her knuckles stood out stark against her skin, the definition in the bones clear.
“So, what are your thoughts?” she bit out.
Rapunzel sat too. If possible her back was even stiffer as she planted herself in the center of her chair with her back nowhere near the chair’s back. “I will answer more when we talk again,” she said through stiff lips.
Fire lit Siobhan’s eyes. No, wait, that was the reflection from the fireplace but still it was straight up literary imagery with the reflection of the fire crackling in Siobhan’s eyes highlighting the fire in her voice. “You will answer them now!”
Unclenching her fist, she jabbed her forefinger into the tabletop.
“No. I will not.” Rapunzel leaned forward and drilled Siobhan with her stare. “We can stay here while I give you more information that isn’t going to help you recover Grace and has the potential to turn your brains to pudding which would set us back. Again. Or you can mess up Geppetto, Mary, and Aleric’s plans by recovering Grace before they can do whatever they plan to do to her, denying them whatever they want from her.”
Kim caught Siobhan’s eye, the corner of which was twitching. Yeah. Time to step in.
She looked at Rapunzel, fire literally in her eye, not the reflected light in Siobhan’s but actual ash falling from her lower lid and fluttering on her cheek. Pursing her lips she blew it up and off her skin while continuing to glare at the blonde.
“I’m gonna insist on this. If you don’t know the why tell us the who. Why do those three target the ones they do?”
Rapunzel followed the float of ash as Air picked it up and dumped it on the table in front of her where it formed a thin coat obscuring the wood. After contemplating the evidence of Kim’s anger, she looked up, rolled her lips over her teeth, then forced a smile that held death in it.
“Our theories were they picked Nulls with an ancestor with Magick.”
“Siobhan and I aren’t Nulls.”
“Which is why,” Rapunzel gritted through bared teeth, “we’re re-examining our theories.”
“How?” Siobhan’s tone was tight, like she forced the word through a constricted throat.
Rapunzel shifted her gaze between Siobhan and Kim. “We’re questioning if you two were retaliatory.”
“Then why just the two of us?” Siobhan rasped. “Why victimize Kim and me? What were the two of us doing that was so damned threatening? Why not target Dan or Ivan or…?”
She stopped, stretched her mouth, made her eyes real wide which emphasized the way they shone with unshed tears.
Shifting her gaze to look at the end of the table where Ivan and Gwen sat, Rapunzel ran her tongue over her front teeth. “We just don’t know.”
Siobhan’s shoulders slumped and she blinked several times in rapid succession. Kim kept her gaze locked on her friend and took a steady breath, willing her calm to travel to Siobhan.
“It would be easier if we had all the answers,” Rapunzel continued.
“It would,” Ben said on a grunt.
“But life don’t work that way.”
Siobhan’s lips tightened until they formed a rosebud. She snorted a hard breath through her nostrils then dropped her shoulders further, her posture melting along with the air of confidence she usually wore like a cardigan tossed around her shoulders. “Fine.”
“So glad I have your permission,” Rapunzel quipped.
“Bitch,” Patti leaned in around Prairie to drill Rapunzel with a stare. “Do not push it. We’ve been through shit most people never experience and apparently it has something to do with a fuck up you and yours caused so how about you just thank us?”
“Thank you.” Rapunzel returned Patti’s glower. “For doing the right thing.”
“You. Are. Welcome.” Patti bit off every word then sat back with her arm crossed. Sass, on her shoulder, crossed their arms too and glared at Rapunzel. As much as a mouse could glare.
“You said you’d answer more when you came back?” Abe asked in a subdued tone that was at odds with their usual sunny aspect.
“Yes.”
“Implying you will come back.”
“Yes.” Rapunzel rolled her eyes and wobbled her head. “I may get called away to deal with some of the fallout that the Others’ actions have caused.”
Ivan leaned forward. “Fallout?”
“Natural disasters. Floods. Earthquakes.” Rapunzel ticked off a count on her fingers. “Sinkholes. A lot of sinkholes.”
Ivan planted his elbows on the tabletop, cradled his fingers, and leaned his chin on his thumbs. “I haven’t heard of any natural disasters. As a member of the Council I should have heard of anything like that.”
“Interestingly enough, you kind of have–”
“Really?” Ivan voice rose on that. “You wiped out memories of natural disasters?” Kim frowned. How did he get that from what Rapunzel said? The way Rapunzel looked to the side and winced slightly suggested he was right. Damn. “Did you do it only to us?” He swept the fingers of one hand around to indicate the table while clenching the other against his chin. “Or…”
Rapunzel straightened in her seat and met the rage burning from his gaze. “The entire town.”
“The town? Only? Why not the world?”
“First, wiping the memory of a world’s populace would be impossible. Except maybe with a Wish,” Rapunzel rolled her eyes up to the left then shook herself and got back on point, “It’s better to leave the world outside aware than to ask Jinn for a Wish.”
“There’s so much to unpack there.” Dan said, drawing Rapunzel’s gaze. “Jinn?”
“The individual who became the Genie in all the Arabian Nights.”
“Okay. We’ll circle back to that. Why protect our town?”
“It’s the epicenter. Probably because it’s where we stood when we molded the world.” She turned back to Ivan. “Also, we can’t afford to panic the populace. Many would flee but they’d be fleeing into potential danger.”
Kim’s brows felt like they hit her hairline. “Worse than the potential of being kidnapped and abused?”
Rapunzel slanted her glance to Kim. “None of the abductees have died.”
“Oh, fuck you, Lady.”
Rapunzel drew a harsh breath through her nostrils. Then she shot Kim a finger gun like “good shot”. Lowering her hand, she shifted her focus back to Ivan. “Also, not everyone can afford to leave. So, you could end up with your most vulnerable population at greater risk. We didn’t make the decision lightly.”
“I would have had trouble making that decision,” Ivan conceded.
“We did.”
Ivan narrowed his eyes at Rapunzel. “But you should have included our local government in it. That’s the responsibility we’ve taken on as elected officials.”
“And read them all in on the crazy making details? It’s been too much for those of you here at this table and you’ve experienced some of it. It wasn’t feasible.”
Ivan crossed his arms. “Still.”
Rapunzel lofted her chin. “Again. We don’t have time for this. Go. Find Grace. We’ll talk after that.”
“We’d better,” Ivan gritted.
Patti held her middle and index fingers in a vee in front of her eyes then pointed them at Rapunzel, mouthing “Watching you.” Sass added their glower to Patti’s poking their arm forward so hard they almost stumbled off Patti’s shoulder.
It should have been ridiculous and probably in other circumstances it would have been but in the moment there was just too much anger and resentment in her gut and clearly in her friends for Kim to find any humor.
All this went right over Rapunzel’s head as she had already turned to Dempsey. “Mr. Dempsey, can I speak with you for a moment?”
“Sure.” Dempsey walked over and bent down towards Rapunzel. She waved at the fireplace and they both turned their backs to the group. A mero later they turned back around and Rapunzel said, “I’ll send a runner after you return so we can arrange a time to talk.”
Gwen raised stricken eyes to Rapunzel, “Because you’ll know we’re back.”
“Yes.”
Gwen audibly swallowed then squared her shoulders. The searching gaze she pinned Rapunzel with spoke of things unsaid and perhaps unexplored. Yet. “Because you are God?”
“No.” Rapunzel’s shoulders slumped. “As our powers are intrinsic to the world when power shifts we know. So, if you fail we’ll know. If you don’t fail we’ll know. It isn’t huge cosmic powers or omniscience as you’d define it.” She winced, bit her lip, then met Gwen’s gaze with a wealth of soft feeling radiating from her expression. “I’m sorry that if what I explained shook your faith.”
Gwen went silent and stared at the table. Kim stepped into the silence. “I don’t want my brain to turn to oatmeal. Again. Please stop.”
Rapunzel kept her gaze on Gwen’s lowered head. A shadow of true grief flitted over her features then she nodded and said quietly, “I’ll send a runner if you return.”
“If?” Abe asked.
Turning to Abe, the expression of pain smoothed completely from her features, Rapunzel forced a smile. “Well, Life doesn’t come with guaranteed Happily Ever Afters. It isn’t a fairy tale.”
Dan lifted his brows. “It isn’t?”
Rapunzel shifted her attention to him. Again for a mikro her expression melted into a mix of regret and sympathy that hit Kim somewhere in the chest. “It isn’t.”
Enter The Woods 