49

GUESS I’LL NEED A FAMILY PLAN

Everything that happened after that is a feverish blur. Sig came around and was pretty upset at finding me in that kind of condition again. “Molly?” I asked.

Sig told me that she’d captured Molly’s shadow, and then her lips were moving but I kept losing the words as I slipped in and out of consciousness. At one point, I gestured for her to bend closer, and I whispered what might be my last words to her: “Loot this place.”

I guess I’m just a romantic at heart.

Stuart showed up too, or maybe I was the one who showed up, since they were carrying me past him on an improvised stretcher by that point. Stuart motioned for the people carrying the stretcher to slow down and then looked at me for a long moment. “We’ve never formally met,” he said.

I tried to say something flip and couldn’t make words.

“My name is Charming,” he said. “Stuart Charming.”

I was pretty sure the poison had me hallucinating.

The next thing I remember is waking up in a hospital bed, but I wasn’t in a hospital. The Templars have a lot of rooms like that. Sig was sitting in an armchair that was way more comfortable than anything an ordinary hospital provides, and a woman was standing next to my bed. The woman was middle-aged, but it was a smooth-skinned, hair-dyed, bright-eyed, and slender middle age. She had been pretty once. Now she had a kind of severe beauty, and she dressed it well.

Sig smiled. “Welcome back, sleeping beauty.”

“Who’s this woman, Sig?”

“I’m Laurel Charming. I see you’re as tough to kill as everyone says you are.” She sounded a little disappointed.

Well, I wasn’t overjoyed myself. “No offense, but if this is the part where you say you’re my daughter, I’m going to need some pretty compelling evidence.”

She smiled a meaningless smile. “It’s not like that.”

“Okay,” I said. “But first, what happened with the Book of Am? Or books?”

“I set John Dee Junior’s Book of Am on fire,” Sig said. “We’d been stuck in that dead place for a day, and I was sick of it. I almost gave some merlin a heart attack, but it worked. Molly’s shadow disappeared too. We went back to Detroit, and the things that had been transformed started changing back, even if a lot of them were broken or dead.”

“A day? How long have I been out?”

“The doctors wanted to break it to you in stages, but I told them you’d want the truth as soon as you woke up.” Sig came over and took my hand. “John, it’s been ten years.”

“You’ve got bruises you picked up in the tower.”

“Oh. Maybe it’s only been two days, then.” That’s one of the problems with being a smartass. What goes around comes around.

“Did we set Reader X’s copy of the Book of Am on fire, too?” I asked.

Laurel answered for her. “Yes. We’re debating whether or not to do the same to the original.” We? Laurel spoke like someone fairly high up in the Templar power structure, or at least like someone with connections.

“What about the people that book transformed?” I asked.

“They’ve changed back as well,” Laurel said crisply. “Simon’s dealing with them.”

That probably wasn’t as ominous as it sounded. Probably.

“So, how is your last name Charming?” I asked. “I thought I was the last one.”

Her face made that empty shell of a smile again. “That’s what I’m here to talk about. Would you ask your Valkyrie to leave the room?”

“My Valkyrie can stay if she wants to,” I said. “But if it’s going to be that kind of a discussion, I need to pee first.”

Biology doesn’t pay much attention to dignity. When I made it to the bathroom, and I made it on my own after a few wobbly moments, I discovered that I was wearing a diaper. Finally, we got it all settled. I was sitting on my bed fully dressed in clothes that didn’t have blood and God knows what else on them, drinking some orange juice. Sig was back in the armchair. Laurel remained standing.

“My mother, Emily Dunn, was married to a knight. He died after you became an exile in the sixties, and my mother went back to her maiden name. Charming.”

I couldn’t remember any cousins or second or third cousins named Emily, but I had grown up in an orphanage. “And she changed your name back, too?” I asked.

“No,” Laurel said. “My mother was determined to keep our family name alive. She was forty years old, but she had three more children after that without marrying. It was quite the scandal at the time. We grew up illegitimate, but we still had a last name. Your last name. It just made us more determined to earn respect.”

It was a lot to take in, and I was still a bit out of it. “And you went forth and multiplied?”

“My four children are legitimate, but I made my husband take my last name.” Something about the glint in her blue eyes … my blue eyes … made me believe it. “You’ve met Stuart and Janine.”

“Janine?”

“The female knight who carries a crossbow around with her like some sort of absurd good luck charm,” Laurel said. “She hasn’t shown much interest in assuming her part of making sure our family survives yet.”

“You all took your time introducing yourselves,” Sig observed from the corner.

Laurel answered her but spoke to me. “I’d still be taking my time if Stuart hadn’t taken matters into his own hands. I’m only here to clarify my position: I’ve spent my entire life being tainted by you just through association. I’ve been trying to make the name Charming something to be proud of again, and you’ve spent most of that time not having the decency to commit suicide or get killed. Do you know that Bernard Wright was committing atrocities and making the knights think that you were responsible?”

“I found out about that later,” I said. “Before I killed him.”

That made her nod. “You’ve made strides in restoring your honor despite your …” She hesitated.

“Lycanthropy?” I suggested. It sounded more clinical than hell-spawned infection.

“Yes. And God knows you’re not the first Charming to be cursed.” This was true. We’d been blinded, turned to statues, had our memories stolen, and been transformed into at least three different kinds of were-beings if half the stories were true. Or even true-ish.

“So what now?” I asked. “Should I buy an ugly sweater and bring a casserole for Thanksgiving?”

“No.” At least she wasn’t pretending to smile. “But regaining our influence and completely avoiding you might not be practical any longer. Simon seems intent on bringing you closer to the center of things.”

“Batten down the hatches,” I said. “Tie down the loose cannons.”

“I suppose so,” she agreed. “So I won’t forbid my children to interact with you.” That was big of her. I hadn’t really gotten to know Stuart or this Janine, but I had the impression that forbidding things wasn’t the right tactic to take with them anyhow. “But I have no intention of sending you a Christmas card. If it’s all the same to you, I think I’ll just quietly stand aside and hope you die while you’re still barely in the plus column.”

“It better be damned quietly,” Sig said. “And you’d better not do more than hope. John isn’t alone anymore.”

Laurel gave Sig a look as if she were humoring her. That wasn’t going anyplace good, and I was too tired to deal with it. “You’ve given me a lot to think about and gotten a few cheap shots in, Laurel. You should probably go while I’m still on medication.”

“Then I’ll take my leave.” And she did.

“Sorry about that,” I told Sig. “If I’d known she was going to get all weepy and sentimental, I would have asked you to leave after all.”

She took my hand again. “We’re family now.”

I raised Sig’s hand to my lips and kissed her knuckles gently. I didn’t trust myself to say anything else.