. .
"You messed with the wrong person, you know?" Claire said as Jez reached her door. "You shouldn't have dumped me like that. You shouldn't make me mad."
"Yeah, Claire; well, now I know better. I'm terrified."
"You're still not taking things seriously, are you?"
"Claire-" Jez rounded on the smaller girl. Then she stopped dead. "I don't have time for this," she muttered. "I have to make a call. You just run along and harass somebody else."
She shut the bedroom door in Claire's face.
Which, she realized later, was a mistake. At the time, though, she was too tired to think about it.
She was too tired to think properly at all. Tired and distraught, with the feeling that everything was closing in and happening too fast.
And so when she picked up the phone to dial Hugh she hardly noticed the little click on the line, and she didn't stop for even a second to consider what it meant.
Chapter 14
Did you have trouble getting away?" Hugh said It was the next morning, a very different sort of day from yesterday. The sky was overcast and the air was heavy. Everyone Jez had passed at the Concord BART station looked a little depressed.
"Eh, a little," she said, and sat down by Hugh on the platform. They were at the far end of the station, beyond the covered area with benches, beside a little concrete security house. It was a safe and private meeting place since the station was almost deserted after the morning commute. "They chained up my bike with this huge chain. Claire drove me to school-she's been watching me like a werewolf guarding dinner. And Aunt Nan called the office to make sure I didn't cut" Hugh shifted in concern. There was a tiny breath of warm wind, and it stirred his fair hair. "So what did you do?"
Jez grinned. "I cut." She shrugged and added, "I got a guy from my auto shop class to drive me here. It wasn't hard."
He smiled at her sadly, his gray eyes distant. "But they're going to find out. Jez, I'm really sorry for completely messing up your life."
She shrugged again. "Yeah, but if I don't do it, everybody's life is going to be even more completely messed up. Every human's."
"I know." He shivered slightly. Then he drew up his legs, clasping his arms around them. He looked at her with his chin on his knees. "So what did you find out?"
"That the girl Morgead thought was the Wild Power isn't." He looks so cute that way, Jez thought helplessly. So-compact. Morgead would never sit like that.
Hugh winced. "Great. You're sure?"
"Yeah. It was a little kid, eight years old, and she was something special-but not that. She was..." Jez tried to think of a way to describe it. Hugh watched her with eyes that were clear and fathomless, sad and wry and gentle all at once. And suddenly Jez got it. She gasped.
"Goddess-I know! She was like you. That kid was an Old Soul."
Hugh's eyebrows went up. "You think?"
"I'm sure of it. She had that same way of looking at you as if she's seen all of history and she knows that you're just a little part. That... trig picture' look. As if she were beyond stupid human things."
"But not a Wild Power," Hugh said softly. He looked half discouraged and half relieved. "So then the Morgead connection is useless."
"Actually, no. Because he's got evidence for the Wild Power on videotape." Jez explained about the movie and the fire and the blue flash. "So somebody around that kid is probably it. I know that area and so does Morgead. We may be able to find out who."
Hugh chewed his lip. Then he looked directly at her. "It sounds dangerous. Just how is Morgead taking tins-you coming back and all?"
Jez stared out across the BART tracks. They looked like regular train tracks, except for the big one labeled danger electric third rah.. There was a sound like faraway thunder, and then a train came whizzing up like a sleek futuristic white dragon. It stopped and a few people got on and off in the distance. She waited until it left again to answer.
"He... wasn't very happy at first. But then he kind of got used to it. I don't think he's going to make any trouble-unless he finds out, you know."
She wasn't sure what else to say. She didn't want to talk to Hugh about Morgead-and she certainly didn't want to explain what had happened. Especially not when she was so confused about it all herself.
"You still think he'd hate you if he found out you were half human?" Hugh's voice was quiet.
Jez laughed shortly. "Believe it. He would."
There was a silence, while Hugh looked at her. Suddenly Jez found her mind posing an odd question. If it were Hugh or Morgead, which would she take?
Of course, it was a completely ridiculous question. She couldn't have either of them. Hugh was an Old Soul, and beyond her reach. Not to mention that he only thought of her as a friend. And Morgead might be her soulmate, but he would murder her if he ever discovered the truth.
But still, if she did have a choice... Hugh or Morgead?
A day ago she'd have said Hugh without question. How strange that now it came up the other way.
Because, impossible as it was, deadly as she knew it to be, it was Morgead she was in love with. And she had only just understood that this moment.
What a pity that there was no hope in the world for them.
Jez found herself giving another short laugh- and then she realized that Hugh was still looking at her. She could feel color rise to her cheeks.
"You were miles away again."
Tm just foggy. Not enough sleep, I guess." Plus all that fun yesterday. She was still sore from the stick
fight and the fall with Iona. But that wasn't Hugh's problem.
She took a breath, groping for another subject. "You know, there was something I wanted to ask
you. Morgead said the Council had dug up another prophecy-about where each of the Wild Powers is from. Have you heard it?" When he shook his head, she quoted:
"One from the land of kings long forgotten; One from the hearth which still holds the spark; One from the Day World where two eyes are watching; One from the twilight to be one with the dark."
"Interesting." Hugh's gray eyes had lit up. " 'One from the hearth'... that's got to be the Harman witches. Their last name was originally 'Hearth-Woman.' "
"Yeah. But the line about the one from the Day World-that one's a human, right?"