The waitress stared at me, then looked at Morrison as if expecting rescue. He smiled. “She’s hungry. I’ll have some of hers, and some coffee.” After a few more seconds, the woman shrugged and went to put an order in for one of everything. The apple pie arrived within forty seconds and I ate it in five bites. The cherry pie appeared less than thirty seconds later, and I ate it in five bites, too. Cherry pie was followed by blueberry, and I had an ice-cream headache building by the time a couple fried eggs with bacon showed up.
I ate that, and pancakes, and scrambled eggs and French toast and an omelet and some waffles and grits and oatmeal and more bacon and lost count of how many glasses of orange juice I drank. Then I burped loudly enough to silence the conversations around me, and started in on more fried eggs and corned beef hash and hash browns and toast and a piece of lemon meringue pie, and by then enough of the edge had left that I started to get picky about my food. I retracted the one-of-everything request and ordered a cheeseburger with bacon and cheese fries.
Morrison, by that time, was starting to look ill. There were occasional respectful murmurs at the sheer number of empty plates piled at my elbow, which I thought the waitress was leaving there just to see how many I went through before I was done. Somewhere after a chili dog with onions and cheese piled so high there was no actual evidence of a hot dog in the bun, my hands stopped shaking. I ordered a Rueben with potato chips and a milk shake, and by the time I got done with that, people were taking bets on how much I could eat, and I was feeling nearly human again.
Humanity demanded greenery, apparently. I ordered three salads with three different kinds of dressing, some proper Southern sweet iced tea, and worked my way through those, finally sighing in contentment. Only then did Morrison dare to speak. “I have never seen anyone eat that much. Ever. Are you all right, Walker?”
“You said I was too skinny.” I laughed at Morrison’s expression, then laughed again and put my hand over his. “Joking, I’m joking, Morrison. No, shapeshifting from this and last week took it out of me, and then that stunt with Petite, I just wiped myself out. I need fuel. Speaking of which, can I get one of those brownie sundae things, Tilly?” The waitress and I were good buddies by now. She got me a sundae, and when I finished it and indicated that I was perhaps done eating now, the whole diner broke into spontaneous applause. I stood up and took a bow, then sank back into the booth. “Oh my God, that was good.”
“That was disgusting.” Morrison looked torn between admiration and horror, but another voice said, “Nah, it was cool.”
I turned around to see Aidan a couple booths back. He looked older than he had been, and weirdly pale with the still-white hair. I wondered if it would grow back black, or if he’d been through so much it had left scars.
Ada, beside him, saw me noticing the changes and tried not to let herself look too worried. I wanted to hug her. Instead I smiled and waved them over. They came, and we scooted around our booth until we could all see each other over the mile-high stack of plates from my feast. “That,” Aidan said again, “was cool. I think you ate more than a whole football team.”
“I’ve never eaten a football team before, so I can’t compare the amount of food they would be to what I just ate.”
Aidan kicked me under the table, which made me yelp and laugh all at once. His mother gave him a scolding look that no one took very seriously. “How’re you doing?” I asked both of them, and they exchanged glances, then nodded.
“Okay,” Aidan said. “That all kind of sucked.”
I was in full agreement with that assessment. “You did a good job, though, Aidan. You were...” I spread my hands helplessly. “A hero. I mean, holy crap, kid. The ghosts. Holy crap.”
He got a little smile that looked like it was trying hard not to burst out all over the place. “That was good, huh? It was mostly the walking sticks. It’s a good thing you found yours, Joanne. Two wouldn’t have been enough.”
I actually smacked myself on the forehead. I hadn’t thought about it, but of course Renee had been drawing on my magic as well as her own. No wonder I’d been so utterly wiped out. I noticed the others peering at me and put my hand back down, trying to act like a grown-up. I didn’t feel much like one, really. I was feeling a little floaty and relieved, like everything was going to work out, but I thought I should try. “Glad to have been of help. But what even made you think of it? I mean, how could you possibly know there was any old magic in that valley to bring forward? Were you just working on a wing and a prayer?”
Aidan lifted one eyebrow. “Seriously?”
“Yeah, seriously! I recognized the valley after the fact, when the ghosts showed up, but you, you weren’t even there, Aidan. You got sucked off to the Ohio River Valley when we went back in time, so how could you even have any sense of what was there?”
The kid gave his mother an incredulous glance, as if she might be able to explain my astonishing stupidity, then looked back at me. “I’ve been going out there since I was eight, with the elders and the others who want to learn the old ways. We’ve been all over that valley. Don’t you know what’s on the north end?”
“Of course I don’t know what’s on the north end. How could I know what’s on the north end?” Maybe I hadn’t eaten enough, after all. My brain was still fuzzy.
Aidan kept giving me the bemused look for a while, then took a napkin and some crayons off the end of the table where the “keep kids entertained” material was mostly buried under my empty plates. A minute later he pushed a drawing across the table at me. I stared at it a moment, then turned red from my elbows to the top of my head.
It was a rough sketch of a pair of stick figures. A man and a woman, their bodies inverted triangles, their heads unattached to the shoulders. They were leaning back-to-back, their arms folded across their chests, and they were both looking out at the world.
One was wearing a short black jacket, and the other, a long white coat. I’d been proud of that touch, when I’d made the petroglyphs four hundred years ago: the rock had shaped itself under my will, bringing all the dark bits to Morrison’s jacket and all the sparkling white to my coat. I’d completely forgotten about the petroglyphs, and I was still blushing when I met Aidan’s eyes again.
“Everybody’s been wondering about those for like ever,” he announced. “Everybody goes up to check them out. They’re obviously old, ’cause they’re all soft and worn and stuff, but I didn’t figure out it was you until I saw you and him—” he nodded at Morrison “—there in the power circle, wearing those coats. And then I knew you had to have been in that valley a really long time ago, and if you were there that meant there was some kind of power I could reach back for. So I did, and the ghosts came.”
“Holy crap, Aidan. Wow. That’s amazing. I don’t think I could have done it myself.”
“Are you just saying that?”
“No. In the condition I was in yesterday, I definitely couldn’t have, and normally, well, maybe, but I don’t think I would’ve thought of it. No, you definitely kicked ass and took names. You gotta keep studying with Dad, Aidan. You’re going to be amazing.”