Page 45 of Spelunking Through Hell

“Okay, wow, sexist much, assuming that he’d be willing to abandon the kids and I never would, just because I’m their mother? I genuinely think he’d have been a better parent if our situations had been reversed. More, it was fifty years ago. We don’t have kids anymore; we have adults who happen to be related to us. We’re on the verge of not having grandkids, either, since they’re all grown up.”

Thomas looked a little disappointed at that. I guess he’d been more excited about the opportunity to be a grandpa than I’d expected. Well, he’d be thrilled when I told him about Annie, and how much training she was going to need. We didn’t have another adult sorcerer around, unless they’d managed to find one after I left, and I somehow doubted that.

Squaring my shoulders, I walked past Sally to stand next to Thomas, leaning over to kiss him on the cheek. “Next time, wake me up,” I said.

He gave me a sidelong look, raising an eyebrow. “I expected you to be angrier about being drugged,” he confessed.

“Normally I would be, but under the circumstances...” I shook my head. “You asked, and I consented. Bromeliad sap was the easiest way to calm me down, and I’m not going to blame you for taking care of me. Although Iamgoing to ask why you’ve decided to start your gardening with swamp bromeliads. They seem like a dangerous begonia.”

“They have medicinal applications,” said Thomas. “We could all use a little help sleeping sometimes.”

“How did you get them? Is this where they come from?” Not everything on Earth that science hasn’t managed to nail down comes from another dimension, but a lot of the things that seem to have evolved according to a slightly different set of rules originated on the other side of the membrane. It makes for an interesting attempt to chart evolution across multiple worlds at the same time, and a nice headache for the traveling naturalist.

“No, they’re native to our world,” he said. “I was able to grab my wallet before Mary banished me here. I had some seeds in the billfold. Planting them gave me something to do in the early years, besides fighting, when we were still most focused on establishing and defending our territory. And then we realized how useful it was to have a natural sedative, for both medicinal and defensive reasons, and I encouraged more and more of them to grow. The smell always reminded me of you.” His smile was small, brief, and painfully fond. “They’re genuine Buckley bromeliads, if that makes you feel better about succumbing to them.”

“Wait, wait,” said Sally, with all apparent delight. “You mean you wereseriousabout that? You literally knocked her out with a swamp bromeliad? She’s been here less than a day and you’re already sedating her. How do you think this is going to work?”

I took a deep breath and turned to fully face Sally. “I think we may have gotten off on the wrong foot for some reason,” I said. “Let’s try and start over, okay? Hi. My name is Alice Price-Healy, and I’m a cryptozoologist who’s been looking for my missing husband since he was abducted by the cosmic incarnation of being a massive asshole roughly fifty years ago. We have two kids, both grown, six grandkids, and a colony of Aeslin mice and a troop of tailypo at home. I’m not here to take anything away from anyone, or to take anyone’s place. I’m here because I want to take my own.”

Sally blinked, several times, while Thomas made a small, half-muffled sound of surprise. I glanced at him. He was doing his best to hide a smile behind his hand. Well, whatever he found so funny was something we could deal with later.

“Hi,” she said, hesitantly. I snapped my attention back to her. “I’m Sally Henderson, and before you say anything about my name, I was adopted, I don’t speak Korean, I wish I did, but we didn’t really have any good language classes in the town I’m from. I was abducted by the same cosmic incarnation of being a massive asshole about seven years ago, give or take a few months, after I tried to bargain for the freedom of my best friend. They said they could make sure he got the money for college, if I’d just agree to pay them something of equal or greater value, and when I agreed, they snatched me, and I wound up here. I was seventeen, and I had my whole life ahead of me, and now I’m living in an arid hellscape with a warlord who’s turned out to be a pretty decent person, so you’ll please forgive me if I’m a little wary of the weird teenager who fell out of the sky and assaulted me for trying to protect him.”

I tilted my head, studying her. “Sally,” I said.

“That’s my name.”

“Yeah. That best friend you mentioned. His name wouldn’t happen to be James, would it?”

She moved with admirable speed. If she’d been a teenager from a small town when she landed here, Thomas must have been responsible for a remarkable amount of her training. Not all of it. Body language is like spoken language. People have dialects and accents, they use and repeat certain phrases, and they pass them along to the people they teach to “speak.” There were elements of Thomas in Sally’s stance, in the way she threaded herself though the needle of the open space between us, but they weren’t all his. Some of it was natural talent, and some of it was a conversational style I didn’t know, one which placed her directly in front of me in remarkably short order, her hand gripping the front of my shirt, her other hand pulled back like punching me in the face was the greatest idea she’d ever had.

“Where did you hear that name?” she demanded.

I remained perfectly still, watching her in mild silence. If I so much as breathed wrong, she was going to deck me, and then all hell was going to break loose. I can stand calmly while someone threatens me. Iwillreact if I’m assaulted.

And that didn’t even account for Thomas, who was staring at her like he’d never seen her before, like she was a stranger who had somehow managed to insert herself into his inner circle. He raised a hand, and I was relieved to see that he was holding some sort of throwing dart. Not relieved because he was threatening the woman who was threatening me—relieved because he was properly armed again. I’d been worried.

“It’s okay, honey,” I said to him, keeping my eyes on Sally. “She’s not going to hurt me.”

“Yes, I am,” Sally snarled.

“That’s what you think,” I countered. “Right now, we’re friends. As soon as you throw that punch, we’re not friends anymore. I don’t think that’s what you want. I think you want answers, and if you hit me, I’m not going to be inclined to give them to you. Now how about you let go before someone does something you’re going to regret?”

Slowly, Sally unhooked her fingers from the front of my shirt and let me go, stepping back. “Answer the question,” she said. “Now, please.”

“I’m here because my granddaughter said she’d spoken to the living spirit of our world, and she told me the crossroads weren’t killing thepeople they abducted, just putting them somewhere they wouldn’t be found,” I said implacably. “She was traveling with a boy.” Two boys, actually, but these people didn’t want to hear about Sam, and if I got too far off the point, I was afraid Sally was going toactuallytake a swing at me. That would change the situation, and not in a good way.

“What boy?” she asked warily.

“Dark hair, blue eyes, impressive eyebrows,” I said. “She said his name was James Smith, and he didn’t like it when I called him Jimmy, and he was a sorcerer.” I glanced at Thomas to measure his reaction. “Just like her.”

He blinked. “She’s asorcerer?” he asked. “How in the world—”

“Uh, think you had something to do with that, sport, since you told me it was genetic. Took two generations and five grandkids, but they finally threw a sorcerer, and she sets things on fire just like you do, and she looks so much like you that sometimes it hurts to look at her, and I hope you get to meet her.” I looked back to Sally. “Her friend James said the crossroads took his best friend, a girl named Sally, and because he never got what she bargained for on his behalf, they were able to use that as a loophole to reach the crossroads on their own ground and destroy them.”

Sally made a choked sound, putting her hand over her mouth, tears gleaming in her eyes.

“Is he still looking for me?” she asked. “That stupid, stupid boy. I left him anote...”

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