Weston was gone.
The room was quiet. They could hear sounds outside of it; music, shouting, the sound of traffic; but inside it was quiet as they all looked at each other.
“Is that it?” Reg asked. “That isn’t it.” She didn’t need Harrison to answer. She already knew. Weston may have given up on that particular battle, but he would be back. None of them could know whether it would be an hour, a day, or a millennium, but sooner or later, he would be back causing more trouble than ever. Reg just hoped that they would have a break. After the stand-off, she really needed a good nap.
Reg looked at Corvin and realized she was still drawing on his powers. She hurriedly broke from him, and he staggered in place for an instant, his face a waxen gray.
“Sorry. Are you okay?”
“For someone who has been so vehement about me stealing powers, you are remarkably quick to use mine.”
“Uh…” Reg wasn’t sure what to say. “I wasn’t… I didn’t even think about that.”
“At least I get permission.”
“Well, sort of,” she pointed out, “some of the time. It isn’t like you can claim to have been that diligent about it. At least, not with me. I guess… I just didn’t think about it. I thought that since you came, you were on-board with what we were doing.”
“I didn’t exactly come of my own free choice.”
Reg looked at Harrison. “Did you bring him against his will?”
Harrison made a brushing-away gesture with his hand. “Humans have such weak wills; it is hard to say.”
“Harrison. Really. Did you bring him here without asking?”
“I told you what I was doing.”
“But… that’s not the same as asking.”
“I think it’s close enough,” he assured her.
Reg gave one bark of laughter and shook her head. She looked back at Corvin. “Immortals! I’m sorry. Will you be okay?”
“I just need a few minutes of recovery time. I’m not used to expending energy so quickly.”
“Yeah. Okay. Next time I’ll try to remember to ask.”
“I’m hoping there won’t be a next time.” Corvin wiped a dab of shaving cream off of his ear.
Reg turned her attention to the others. Norma Jean was staring at her, eyes glassy with shock. She had been happy when Weston had been flirting with her and paying her compliments, but the battle and Weston’s vanishing act had been too weird for her.
She had that look that Reg had seen in the eyes of others when they couldn’t believe what they had seen Reg do. Withdrawal, a blank aspect, and then, eventually, revision of those memories, rewriting them into something that made sense. Probably some version of Reg playing a prank on them.
Reg felt a kinship with Loki, the Norse god who was always referred to as a trickster. She hated being painted as the naughty girl who was always trying to trick people and pull something over on the adults who were her caregivers.
Then Reg looked at herself. The little girl who would grow up to be her, or some version of her. Being so young, she would be a lot more resilient than Norma Jean. She would probably believe what she had seen for years to come, until she was old enough to realize that it was impossible and must have just been something that she had come up with in her overactive imagination.
“Are you okay?” Reg asked.
The little girl nodded. Reg wet a thumb and rubbed away a smudge of dirt on the girl’s pale cheek. She tried to clean away another and found that it was not dirt, but a bruise. Reg stroked her hair instead, smoothing down the tangled red locks and hoping to soothe away the trauma of what she had just experienced.
“Everything is going to be okay. I don’t think he’ll come back here again. And Uncle Harrison will keep an eye on you. Won’t you, Harrison?”
Harrison nodded cheerfully. He was holding Starlight and petting him. Reg frowned. She didn’t think he’d been holding the cat a moment before. Had he disappeared, transporting back to Francesca’s house in the future, and then back again, all in the blink of an eye? Or had Starlight once lived there, right in little Reg’s own building, and she had never known it? It was all too confusing for Reg to sort out.
The little girl’s eyes sparkled when she saw the cat. “Oh, a kitty! Can I pat your kitty?”
She wriggled to get away from Reg. Reg put her down gently, and she hurried over to Harrison. Harrison obligingly stooped down to let her pet Starlight, and when the little girl showed that she could be gentle and pet him nicely, he sat down on the dirty carpet and released Starlight, letting him explore the room and wind his way around the little girl’s legs. She was in transports of delight, petting the cat and talking to him like a baby, then growing more serious and talking to him as if he were having an actual conversation with her.
Reg noticed that Starlight didn’t beg for food like he normally would have; maybe he knew that even if there were a few crumbs of food in the apartment, there wasn’t anything to spare for him.
“Look, Mommy!” The little girl tried to get her mother’s attention. “Look, Unca Harrison broughted a kitty! Can I keep him? He’s so nice!”
Norma Jean focused on the cat and shook her head. “You know you can’t have a cat, Regina. How many times do I have to tell you?”
“But this one is so nice. I take care’f him. He would catch mice!”
“I said no, Reg! Don’t argue with Mommy!”
The little girl shrank back and fell silent. She sat on the floor, petting Starlight when he rubbed against her and pulling him into her lap to cuddle him. Her face was sad and resigned.
Reg watched the cat and the little girl interact. Maybe that was how she and Starlight had recognized each other when Reg had gone to the shelter looking for a cat.
Except that wasn’t the way that things had happened in Reg’s past. Not in her timeline. But it would be in the revised thread of time.
She shook her head, deciding not to try to understand it.
Harrison must have had a little more understanding of humans than he pretended. He didn’t return everyone to Francesca’s house, but Reg found herself in her own cottage with just Starlight and Harrison. She bent down and picked Starlight up, holding his warm, soft fur against her face and trying to see Harrison’s blurred form through teary eyes.
“Will she be okay?” she asked.
Harrison’s laugh rumbled deep in his chest. “You’re here,” he pointed out. “And you got your tuxedo cat and cottage near the ocean.”
It took a few moments for Reg to realize that the little girl had grown up to be her, and wasn’t a scared, lonely child anymore. What had happened decades ago was part of the misty past, something she could barely remember anymore.
“That’s… just weird.”
Harrison smiled. “I think you turned out okay, Regina.”
“So nothing changed? It all happened the way I remember?”
“That depends what you remember.”
“Harrison…” Reg rubbed at the pain in her forehead. Too much psychic work in one day. The spot that Sarah referred to as her third eye was pulsing with pain and no matter whether it was day or night, she was going to climb into bed, pull the covers over her eyes, and sleep for at least eight hours.
“Go sleep it off,” he agreed, reaching out to take Starlight from her arms. “Temporal travel is always hard on human bodies. At least you didn’t throw up.”
“Weston is gone, right? He’s not going to be back tomorrow trying to take over the world?”
“He’s not gone. But he knows there are opposing forces and he won’t be too quick to interfere in humans’ affairs again. It’s easier to seek satisfaction on other planes.”
“And you don’t have to worry about those things? What do you do if there are no humans to oppose him? Why couldn’t you be the one to challenge him?”
“It is against the rules for me to harm one of my own kind.”
“But Corvin and I didn’t harm him. Why couldn’t you do what we could?”
“It’s not my world.” Harrison shrugged. He twisted the ends of his mustache. “You will sleep well.”
As usual, she didn’t know whether it was a command or a prediction. And she didn’t care.
“You going to come in, Star?”
Starlight made a soft purr-meow and Reg nodded. “Okay. See you in a bit.”