The little girl was staring at her. "Harper be bad?"
"No, sweetie, you haven't been bad. I didn't bring you in here because you did something bad. But something bad has happened to Mommy, and I have to tell you about it. I don't want to, because it is going to make you very sad. But sometimes things happen that make us sad, and there isn't anything we can do about it."
She exhaled wearily and began to stroke Harper's long hair. "Harper, Mommy isn't coming home, sweetie." Harper went still. "She got very sick, and she isn't coming home. She didn't want to get sick, but she couldn't help it."
"Mommy sick?"
Nest bit her lip. "No, sweetie. Not anymore. Mommy died, honey."
"Mommy died?"
"Do you understand, Harper? Mommy's gone. She's in Heaven with all the angels she used to tell you about, the ones who make the sun bright with all the love that mommies have for their babies. She asked me to take care of you, sweetie. You and I are going to live together right here in this house for as long as you want. You can have your own room and your own toys. You can be my little girl. I would like that very much."
Harper's lip was quivering."Okay, Neth."
Nest gave her a hug and held her tight. "Your Mommy loved you so much, Harper. She loved you more than anything. She didn't want to die. She wanted to stay with you always. But she couldn't." She looked out the window into the park, where the hazy light was fading toward darkness. "Did you know that my mommy died when I was a little girl, too? I was even younger than you are."
"Wanna see Mommy," Harper sobbed.
"I know, sweetie, I know." Nest stroked her dark hair slowly. "I wanted to see my mommy, too, and I couldn't. But if I close my eyes, I can see her there in the darkness inside my head. Can you do that? Close your eyes and think of Mommy."
She felt Harper go still. "See Mommy," she said softly.
"She'll always be there, Harper, whenever you look for her. Mommies have to go away sometimes, but they leave a picture of themselves inside your head, so you won't forget them."
Harper's head lifted away from her breast. "Does L'il John got a Mommy, Neth?"
Nest hesitated, then smiled reassuringly. "He's got you and me, Harper. We're his mommies. We have to take care of him, okay?"
Harper nodded solemnly, wiping at her eyes with her shirtsleeve. "Harper wanna appo jus, Neth."
Nest stood her on her feet and put her hands on the little girl's shoulders. "Let's go get some, sweetie. Let's go get some for Little John, too." She leaned forward and kissed Harper's forehead. "I love you, Harper."
"Luv 'ou, Neth," Harper answered back, dark eyes brilliant and depthless and filled with wonder.
Nest took her hand and led her from the room. It took everything she had to keep from crying. In that moment, she felt as if her heart was breaking, but she couldn't tell if it was from sadness or joy.
CHAPTER 23
While Nest spoke with Harper Scott in the den, John Ross stood at the living-room entry watching Little John play with the pieces of his puzzle. Sitting in front of the Christmas tree, the boy picked up the pieces one at a time and studied them. He seemed to be constructing the puzzle in his mind rather than on the floor, setting each piece back when he was done looking at it, not bothering with trying to find the way in which it fit with the others. He seemed to be imitating what he had seen Harper doing a couple of days earlier. His blue eyes were intense with concentration, luminous within the oval of his pale face. He had lost color over the last twenty-four hours; there was a hollowness and a frailty about him that suggested he was not well. Of course, Little John was only a shell created to conceal the life force that lay beneath, and any outward indication of illness might be symptomatic of something entirely different from what it appeared. Little John was not a real boy, after all, but a creature of magic.
Yet sitting there as he was, lost in thought, so deeply focused on whatever mind game he was engaged in that he was oblivious to everything else, he seemed as real as any child Ross had ever known. Were gypsy morphs really so different from humans? Little John's life force was housed in his body's shell, but wasn't that so for humans as well? Weren't their spirits housed in vessels of flesh and blood, and when death claimed the latter, didn't the former live on?
Some people believed it was so, and Ross was among them. He didn't know why he believed it exactly. He supposed his belief had developed during his years of service to the Word and had been born out of his acceptance that the Word and Void were real, that they were antagonists, and that the time line of human evolution was their chosen battleground. Maybe he believed it simply because he needed to, because the nature of his struggle required it of him. Regardless, he was struck by the possibility that humans and gypsy morphs alike possessed a spiritual essence that lived on after their bodies were gone.
He leaned on his staff, mulling it over. Such thinking was triggered, he knew, by the inescapable and unpleasant fact that time was running out on all of them. Whatever else was to happen to Little John, Nest, Harper, and himself, it should not be invited to happen here. Nest might wish to remain in her home and to make whatever stand she could in a familiar place. She might believe that the sylvan Pick could spin a protective web of magic about her fortress so that she could not again be attacked by surprise. But John Ross was convinced that their only chance for survival was to get out of there as fast as possible and to go into hiding until the secret of the gypsy morph was resolved, one way or the other. They must slip away this afternoon, as quickly as it could be managed, if they were to have any hope at all. Findo Gask would not wait for Christmas to be over or the holiday spirit to fade. He would come for them by nightfall, and if they were still there, it was a safe bet that someone else was going to die.
Ross listened to the old grandfather clock ticktock in the silence, finding in its measured beat a reminder of how ineffectual he had been in his use of the time allotted him. He knew what was required if he was to resolve the secret of the morph. He had known it from the beginning. It had taken him forever just to get this far, and he had almost nothing to show for it. That the morph had brought him to Nest Freemark was questionable progress. That she believed it wanted something from her was suspect. She was levelheaded and intuitive, but her conclusion had come in the heat of a struggle to stay alive and might be misguided. So much of her thinking was speculative. How much was generated by wishful thinking and raw emotion? Could she really believe that Wraith and the morph were somehow joined? What could Wraith have to do with the morph's interest in Nest? Why would it matter to the morph that the ghost wolf was an integral part of her magic?
Ross considered what he knew, still watching the boy. Be fair, he cautioned himself. Consider the matter carefully. It might be that there was a problem because the ghost wolf was created substantially out of demon magic. Perhaps the morph couldn't tolerate that presence. Yet morphs had the ability to be anything. Their magic could be good or bad, could be used for any purpose, so that the presence of other magics logically shouldn't have any effect. Was it something about the form of the ghost wolf that bothered the morph? Was Wraith's magic competing with its own in some way?
Ross mulled his questions through. This boy, this boy! Such an enigmatic presence, closed away and so tightly sealed, so inscrutable! Why had the morph become a boy in the first place? The answer to everything was concealed there, in that single question—Ross was certain of it. Everything that had happened flowed directly from the morph's last, final evolution into Little John, the form it had taken before asking for Nest, the form it had taken before their coming here.