Truthseeker

Nineteen

The phone went dead, leaving Lara to stare sightlessly across the playground. Details filtered in, unattached from active recognition: things she’d noticed without thinking about them. The children wore shorts, T-shirts, sandals. The sun was high in the sky, pouring warmth over the city. There was no cold breeze, no slush, no leaden gray skies. The only dampness was in a ring around her.

Lara handed the phone back. “It’s summer, isn’t it.”

The woman gave her an odd look. “Yes.”

It had been winter when she’d left. Lara nodded, the action mechanical. “Thank you. And thank you for letting me borrow your phone.”

“You’re welcome.” The woman put her hand on her daughter’s shoulder and drew her away.

Lara watched them go, Cynthia’s angry words cutting through the rush of white static in her mind. Lara Jansen disappeared seventeen months ago. Tones of truth in the statement, deep melancholy bells that rang out slowly.

Seventeen months. She would no longer have an apartment. No clothes, no credit cards, no cash. Her mother would be mourning; Kelly would have moved on with only the occasional regretful look back. And Dafydd had lied, twice. First about his own part in the murder, then about the magic that would hold the passage of time in her world to match the time in his.

The music of truth flattened, souring with the last thoughts. Lied, Lara amended, or had been mistaken. She could bend that far, though doing so felt brittle. It hadn’t been his magic that sent her back home, but her own. Maybe truthseeker magic wasn’t meant to open paths between worlds, and had warped the spell.

The how didn’t matter. Cold with disbelief, Lara stepped out of the sandbox and shuffled away from the playground toward a life that no longer existed.

It took almost an hour to hail a taxi: most drivers looked right through her, and Lara, clad in Barrow-lands armor, couldn’t blame them. She wore a tunic and leggings under her armor, but she was reluctant to discard it: it was the sole tangible thing she could offer in explanation, or excuse, for her disappearance. She did tuck her gauntlets, awkwardly, into the belt meant for her sword.

The cabdriver who eventually picked her up regaled her with stories about fighting somewhere called “Pennsic” with a reenactment group specializing in medieval costuming. Lara, too grateful for words, listened silently and wondered what he would think of the real battle she’d seen.

He was now parked outside of the brassiere specialty shop Kelly had worked at a year and a half earlier, waiting for Lara, who pushed the door open with nerves making a pit of sickness in her stomach. A blond girl she didn’t know looked up with a smile that turned plastic with astonishment. “Um, hello. Can I help you?”

“Hi, I’m—” Lara blushed, stumbling over an explanation she knew wasn’t necessary, but couldn’t help offering. “I’m not here to shop. I don’t need a bra. I’m just a thirty-four B, it’s not like it’s hard to find bras that fit, and I know I look really weird—” She bit her lower lip, trying to stop babbling. “Sorry,” she said after a moment. “I was wondering if Kelly Richards still works here?”

The girl’s smile had turned increasingly panicked all the way through Lara’s fumbling explanation, and turned to a squeak of relief at the eventual question. “Yeah, she’s my manager. Hang on and I’ll get her.” She disappeared into the back and Lara returned to the door, waving to let her driver know she was still there. He was on his cell phone, chatting, she imagined, to some other reenactor, telling him about her armor.

“Hi!” Kelly’s voice came from behind her, loud and cheerful. Lara’s hands went cold and she turned jerkily. Nerves seemed ridiculous when it had been only a day or two since she’d seen Kelly, but she still heard Cynthia’s anger. Seventeen months.

Both color and cheer drained from Kelly’s face. She said nothing, only stared with disbelief so profound it didn’t even allow for hope. In her wake, Lara saw the shop assistant shift uncomfortably.

“I need to pay the cabdriver,” Lara finally whispered. “I’m sorry, I just—I don’t have any money, and I didn’t know who else to come to. Mom’s so far out of the city. …”

Kelly jolted like someone had run electricity through her, flipping from shock to business in an instant. “Right. Right, hold on.” She grabbed a purse from behind the counter and swept out of the shop.

Lara reached for a display rack as her knees failed, relief stronger than nerves had been. The assistant squeaked and scurried toward her in concern, but Lara waved her away. “I’m all right.” Polite fiction, not exactly a lie, but not true enough to sit comfortably on her tongue.

The shop doorbell jangled as Kelly charged back in. Lara turned halfway around and Kelly caught her by the shoulders, her color returned and burning hot in her cheeks. “What’ve you—Where’ve you—What’re you wearing? Oh my God, Lara, is it you?”

She burst into tears before Lara could answer. Heart aching, Lara pulled her into a hug and sought the shop assistant’s gaze. “Can we go in back?”

“Yeah. Yeah, of course.” The blond girl ushered them toward the back of the store, Lara guiding Kelly as she sobbed. The assistant—Ruth, Lara finally saw on her name tag—whispered, “I’ll get some coffee,” and rushed out again. A moment later the doorbell rang again, and the distinctive click of a lock told Lara they were safely alone and wouldn’t be disturbed.

With Ruth’s retreat, Kelly dragged in a hiccuping breath and swiped tears from her eyes. “I’m sorry. I just thought I’d never see you again. Lara, what happened? Where have you been?”

“It’s okay. And … Kel, this isn’t something I say a lot, but you wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”

Kelly grabbed her hands hard enough to hurt, eyes wide, like if she blinked Lara would disappear again. “Of course I’ll believe you. You never lie.”

“I know. It’s just that it’s unbelievable.”

“We thought you were dead,” Kelly whispered. “You’re not. Anything’s believable, if you’re alive. My God, Lara. What—You have to tell me. You have to tell me.” Then dismay contorted her features even more, words tumbling on top of one another: “Unless, I mean, unless you don’t want to. If it’s been horrible and of course it probably has been—”

“It’s only been a day,” Lara blurted, stemming Kelly’s apology more thoroughly than she’d imagined possible. “I know,” she said as confusion and worry overwrote the dismay on Kelly’s face. “I know, it’s impossible. But it’s not like I have amnesia or am missing a year and a half of my life. It’s been barely twenty-four hours since we helped Rachel move, as far as I’m concerned. Do you still have the Nissan?” she asked wistfully.

“Yeah, it’s been a great little … Lara, it’s been seventeen months. You can’t go around telling people it’s only been a day. That’s insane.”

“It’s true.”

“How?”

Lara pulled a smile into place, feeling it fracture around the edges. “David Kirwen turned out to be a prince of fairyland, and he brought me there for a day.”

“Da—” Kelly gaped at her, then grabbed her hands. “Lara, David Kirwen was arrested on kidnapping charges two days after you disappeared. They indicted him within a week, and flagged him as a flight risk because of his dual citizenship. He’s been in jail all this time. The trial’s coming up soon.”

Only then did what Lara had said seem to catch up with her. Her hands loosened, something Lara saw more than felt: her own fingers had gone cold. She whispered “Arrested?” at the same time Kelly said “Fairyland?”

“Two days after I disappeared?” Lara got up and began shedding her armor, an awkward enough task that she was glad she hadn’t tried it at the playground.

Kelly, visibly restraining herself from questions, got up to help. “The last anyone saw of you was at that AA meeting on Sunday morning. When you didn’t show up for work Cynthia was worried, and I went over to your apartment and no one was there. The door wasn’t even locked, Lara. The last person you’d called was David Kirwen, and the next morning you still weren’t anywhere, but he came parading down Cambridge Street in a ridiculous—”

Her hands flew from the binding straps on the armor to her mouth, eyes large above her fingertips. “In this ridiculous suit of armor,” she said through her fingers. “My God. It looked just like this, Lara. It was just like this.”

Lara unlatched the last bit that held the arm pieces in place and set them aside, then loosened the breastplate. Her next breath came easier, for all that the moonlit armor was as weightless as metal could be. “We’d been in battle.”

“Battle,” Kelly said after what felt like hours of silence. Lara heard the attempt to hold back disbelief and caught Kelly’s hands again, squeezing her fingers apologetically. Diamond glittered, catching the light and fading again as she made herself meet Kelly’s eyes.

“Go ahead. Say it.” Then her gaze jerked back down to the clear jewel in the ring on Kelly’s finger. “Oh my God, Kelly, are you engaged?”

“What?” Kelly looked at her own hands as if they belonged to a stranger, then pulled them back from Lara’s grip, hiding the solitaire ring. “No. I mean, yes, but this didn’t really seem like the time to mention it.”

Lara sat down in a clatter of armored legs, light-headedness sweeping her. The summertime heat, the phone call to Cynthia, Kelly’s reaction to her appearance—she had believed months had gone by, but the evidence presented by a half-carat ring brought home the passage of time in a way nothing else had. “It was only yesterday,” she said faintly, and it rang with a dichotomy of truth and falsehood. “Who is he? An undertaker?”

Color rushed along Kelly’s cheeks. “No. That stopped seeming funny after you disappeared. It’s Dickon, Lar. Dickon Collins, David’s cameraman. We were both looking for you, he was determined to find you to prove David was innocent, and I don’t know, I’d liked him in the first place and … I wasn’t going to have a maid of honor,” she whispered. “I wasn’t going to, because there wasn’t anybody but you I wanted to ask.”

“Oh, God, Kel.” Lara leaned forward to hug her friend. “Congratulations. And I would love to be your maid of honor, if you’re asking.”

“I am.” Kelly returned the hug hard, then sat back with tears staining her cheeks again. “I am, and I want to tell you everything about Dickon and the wedding and everything, but fairyland, Lara? Battle? I know you don’t lie, but that’s …”

“Delusional?”

“Crazy talk,” Kelly agreed. “Seriously, Lar. Fairyland?”

“I know. I do know, Kelly. But he was looking for me, for someone with my stupid ability to hear the truth. That’s what upset me so much a couple nights ago at Rachel’s. He’d asked me to go with him, to help him at home. He called me a ‘truthseeker,’ and it felt like it fit.” Lara muffled the words in her hands as she told the story of the past day, ending with the clarity of power that had allowed her to open a doorway back home. Kelly listened in expressive silence, her eyebrows and lips shaping comments she didn’t give voice to.

“Well,” she said eventually, “you’re going to have to come up with a different story for the papers. Yes, the papers,” she said before Lara asked. “Your disappearance, the kidnapping, it was huge, Lara. Kirwen’s a celebrity. Maybe just a local one, but still. Local weatherman arrested for kidnapping? Everybody was talking about it. So you’re going to need a story.”

“You believe me?” Lara asked through her fingers.

Kelly heaved a sigh. “No, but yes. If anybody else told me this, I’d never believe it. But it’s you, so.” She shrugged.

“Thank you.”

“Yeah, well, what are friends for?” She studied Lara, eyebrows drawn together. “So what do you do now, Lar?”

“I don’t know. I make up a story for the papers.” The idea sent atonal vibrations under her skin. “I get Dafydd out of jail.”

“Can you do that? I mean, with your …” Kelly trailed off, then, brightness coming into her eyes, giggled. “With your, um, your magic powers.” She laughed again, contagious enough to make Lara smile, too. “Sorry. I always kind of thought of it as your spooky power, but I never wanted to say that. And now it turns out it really is like magic.”

“Just like,” Lara said drily. “Don’t worry. I’m not used to it, either. What were you going to ask?”

“Oh! Can you do that, get him out of jail with your magic?”

Lara blinked. “I don’t know. I was more thinking that I’d just tell them I wasn’t kidnapped. I mean, I’m back and I—”

“Have no explanation for where you’ve been.” Kelly’s eyebrows rose. “It might not be that easy, Lara. David pled not guilty, but he wouldn’t say anything in his own defense. The only reason he wasn’t prosecuted for murder was nobody could find any evidence of foul play except that you were missing. And none of us wanted to have you declared dead,” she said more quietly. “It was too much like giving up hope.”

“Oh, Kel.” Lara leaned forward to hug her friend again, mumbling “I’m definitely not dead” against her shoulder. “I’m just going to have to make them believe me somehow.”

“Can you do that?” Kelly asked for the second time. Lara sat up, frowning, and Kelly spread her hands. “Look, all I’m saying is if you can make a path between Boston and fairyland, then just making somebody believe you weren’t kidnapped seems like small potatoes. Especially if it’s the truth.” A wobbly smile creased her face. “You’ve always been good with the truth.”

“I don’t know if I have that much power here.” Lara’s protest shriveled under a rising chorus of song that lent credence to Kelly’s suggestion.

Emyr and Dafydd had both made it clear that her magic was purely human, and even the little time she’d spent in the Barrow-lands had strengthened not just her ability, but her confidence in it. There was no reason an earth-born magic shouldn’t be as strong—perhaps stronger—here as it had been in the Barrow-lands. She pursed her lips, then turned her hands palm-up toward Kelly. “On the other hand, there’s really only one way to find out.”

Kelly got up decisively. “I’ll bring you down to the station. Dickon and I got to know the detective on your case, Reg Washington. He’ll be the best place to start.”

“What about—” Lara broke off both speech and action, stopping halfway to her feet, then sat back down abruptly, fingers steepled hollowly in front of her mouth. “What about my mom, I need to call her before I turn up on the evening news. And Cynthia, she didn’t believe me when I called. And … and look at what I’m wearing,” she whispered. The light woven shirt and breeches she still wore under the armored leggings would draw curious glances in the best of circumstances, which she didn’t foresee in her immediate future. “And I should call Dafydd. See him. Something. He must think I’m …” Dead. Lost. She wasn’t even certain what words to use. “Seventeen months,” she whispered into her palms, and Kelly, slowly, crouched to pull her hands away from her mouth. Lara let her, trying to control the trembling that rushed through her.

“Okay. It’s going to be okay, Lara. Look, you stay here for a minute, okay? I’m going to call my boss and see if I can leave Ruth in charge, or if she can come in, or if I can close the shop early. This is an emergency,” she said gently. “I’ll take you home, we’ll get you changed, and we’ll go from there. Okay? Okay.” Kelly squeezed Lara’s hands, then went into the front of the shop to make the necessary calls.

It was absolutely absurd, Lara thought, to fall apart now. She’d traveled between two worlds, ridden in battle, and commanded more power than she’d ever imagined possible. The prospect of dealing with a handful of mortal details shouldn’t be overwhelming enough to shut her down entirely, but even the endless music of truth was barely a static rush at the back of her mind. It was the disappearing time: that was the worst of it, the most bewildering. Lara put her face in her hands again, waiting silently for Kelly’s return.

It was preceded by “God, you look awful. Here,” and as Lara looked up, Kelly rustled a candy bar from her purse. “When was the last time you ate?”

Lara whispered, “Apparently about a year and a half ago,” and took the candy hungrily.

Kelly snorted laughter and sat, looking like she wanted to hug Lara again but was trying to let her eat. “Trish is on her way. We can leave Ruth in charge, so you eat that and we’ll go back to my place. I kept some of your clothes.” A wistful smile played over her lips. “I just kept thinking how sad you’d be if you came home and it was all gone. So I kept some of them, and look, you came home, and now you don’t have to be sad.” Her voice broke on the last words and, candy bar or not, Lara surged forward to give her an awkward hug.

“S’okay,” Kelly whispered into her hair. “S’okay, Lar. We’ll get it figured out. C’mon. C’mon, let’s go, okay, hon? It’s going to be okay.” She drew Lara to her feet and led her out of the back room, repeating, “It’ll be okay.”

And Lara, grateful, heard nothing but truth in the promise.