“Sure we do. And I was given the option of trying treatments in hospitals where they couldn’t guarantee my safety, or living my life the way I wanted. I would rather the cancer take me with dignity than die as an experimental lab rat.” He glanced around and lowered his voice. “My wife, Ella? She was a beauty. We had a lot of good years together, more than any human ever has a right to expect. Our kids grew up and left home. Do you know how I lost her?”
Lina shook her head.
“She died in the bombing of Hamburg in 1943. She was trying to help her cousins escape.” He looked down at his coffee cup. “I spent a lot of years feeling bitter and angry. At the Nazis. At the Allies. At everyone. We didn’t have a side in the battle, we were simply trying to survive and keep our families alive. I found out about the cancer twenty-three years ago, when my first grandchild was born. Beautiful little girl. They named her after my Ella.”
He looked back up at Lina. “I made an active choice to live for that little girl. The Nazis are long gone. So are the RAF and others who bombed Hamburg. They are no threat to my little Ella. There are many dangers in this world, but there is only one danger that has directly sworn to try to kill her and others of our kind, as well as other shifters.”
“The cockatrice,” she whispered.
He nodded. “My hate is directed only at them now. I will do everything in my power to keep our people and others safe from those bastards. I will die fighting them, if I have to. Once I decided that, I felt a peace in my life I haven’t felt since losing my Ella.”
“Does anyone else know? About your cancer?”
“Bertholde did. She promised not to tell anyone. She’s the one who came to me and told me to get it checked out. That I was sick.” He shrugged. “I will die a happy man if all Ella has to worry about in the future are the same things the rest of the world usually must worry about. Only the cockatrice are deliberately out to harm her.”
“I won’t tell anyone.” Lina reached out and laid her hand over his to give him a gentle squeeze. Instead, her vision went blue. She was standing with Jan, Rick, Zack, Kael, and several others in a funeral home. She turned and at the front of the chapel she spotted a bronze urn. Next to it sat a picture of Andel looking a few years older than he did now. She realized she held something in her hand and looked down.
The program. On the front, the same picture of Andel, a made-up birth year that put his age approximately right, and the date of his death.
In seven years.
Her vision cleared and she was once again sitting in the booth in the hotel restaurant with Andel. He stared at her, curiosity on his face.
She let go of his hand and quickly tucked hers in her lap, under the table.
He laughed. “Don’t tell me. You saw how long.”
She forced a smile and nodded.
He sat back with a sigh. “I don’t want to know when. I’m guessing not right away?”
“No. There’s a while, yet.”
“Good. Plenty of work left to do.” He finished his coffee and left money on the table to pay their bill. He climbed out of the booth and helped her to her feet, giving her a hug. “Take care of those boys of yours,” he said with a smile. “The fanged as well as the furry ones. I’ve got to get checked out of the hotel and to the train station so I can go home. Safe journeys, Goddess.”
She smiled. “Safe journeys, Uncle Andel.”
He laughed. “See? Family is family. Adopted or not.”
She headed back to her room where Jan and Rick were struggling to get all the luggage stacked on a cart so they could make it downstairs in one trip.
“What are you two doing?”
Rick looked up. “It’s not obvious? We’re taking rumba lessons.”
“I’m the Goddess of Snark, buster, not you. I meant why not take two trips?”
Jan grinned. “I bet him he couldn’t do it in one.”
She rolled her eyes. “You two are like a couple of kids, you know that?”
“And you love it,” Rick said. “We’re never boring.”
“Nope, boring isn’t even on the top twenty list of adjectives I apply to the two of you.”
At the airport, before they boarded, she glanced at Daniel and took a deep breath as she stepped up to the doorway.
Just one more flight, please. If not, it’s a good day to die.
She stroked the aircraft’s skin as she stepped through the doorway. Daniel smiled and nodded to her when she glanced back at him awaiting his turn to board.
Lina had to admit she loved it at the Pack compound. She sat on the thinking rock and stared across the water. This early in the morning, the rising sun threw beautiful colors on the sea mist and gave her a gorgeous show.
She heard something at the top of the overlook. When she looked, Lacey waved down at her. Lina waved back and sat there as the Seer made her way down to the rock.
Lacey climbed up next to Lina and smiled at her. “I wondered if that was your car,” she said. “I take it the tablet has a new home?”
Lina smiled out at the water. “Yep.”
Lacey laughed. “That old thing has certainly been a pain in the ass, hasn’t it?”
“Yep.”
“Was it worth it?”
“Was what worth it?”
“Whatever it was you had to do to take out the cockatrice nest over there?”
Lina felt a cloud descend on her thoughts. “It had to be done.”
Lacey nodded. “Unfortunately, I believe you’re right.” She frowned as she stared out over the water. “It’s going to get bad.”
“Yep.”
“You see it, too?” Lacey asked.
Lina nodded. “Yep.”
“Do you want to talk about it right now?”
“Nope.”
Lacey chuckled. “Fair enough, dear. We do have at least a couple of years to worry about it.”
“Yep.” Lina sighed. Two years, if her latest visions were right. How much happiness could she cram into that time before the shit started to hit the fan again?
She decided she would start with getting to know her adopted wolf family better and spending more time with all her chosen family and not at work. She didn’t need to be at the office every day. Paula could run the place without her and Zack there.
After a while, Lina’s stomach grumbled. She’d set out on her task before breakfast, driving over to Lacey’s by herself before dawn, doing what she needed to do, and then coming down to the thinking rock.
“I baked some banana bread before I came down here, dear. Would you like some?”
Lina smiled. “Yes. I’d like that very much.”
They strolled back to the house together. On the way, Lacey stopped in the back garden. “Oh. I didn’t notice that before.” She stared at the sundial Lina had set up on a pedestal, the assembly sitting on several stone pavers. “Did you bring that?”
Lina smiled. “It’s a present.”
Lacey hugged her. “Thank you, dear. It’s lovely.”
Lina shrugged. “Time’s short, even in a really long life. I’m going to enjoy every minute of it. Thank you for teaching me that. Bertholde, too, but she’s not here for me to thank.”
Lacey cocked her head at Lina, curious but apparently not wanting to quiz her any further. She smiled. “You’re welcome, dear.”
They headed inside to eat.
PART IV:
Epilogue
Chapter One
“So, Old One. Are you proud of yourself?”
Baba Yaga turned from her stove, where she was cooking herself a pork chop, to look at Brighde. It wasn’t uncommon for her sister to appear in her home, but she wasn’t expecting her today. “What do you mean?”