“That was so much smoother. No offence,” I told Gabriel once the plane taxied into its spot and the seatbelt sign went off. I’m sure he was an excellent pilot, and it wasn’t like we crashed, but the crop duster he flew us to Terrence’s in was near the bottom of my favorite modes of transportation list. Barely a step above boats.
“It’s a very different plane,” he pointed out.
“My first real plane ride,” I smiled despite the terrible circumstances. “Again, no offence.”
“None taken,” he assured me, grabbing his bag of weapons so we could make our way through the crowded airport.
Embry joined us not long after, with one of the flight attendants smiling at him. It wasn’t a flirtatious smile, more like she was grateful.
“I take it you had a pleasant flight?” I asked him.
“She’s going through a very hard time. She’s flying all over the place while her son lives with her parents and she’s trying to pay her way through school so she can support him, and… it was an interesting flight,” he stopped himself from sharing her entire life story, but I understood that he made her feel better, if only for a while.
“What do we do now?” I asked once we were outside. There was a line of taxis waiting to bring passengers to hotels, buses to tourist destinations, rental car services… “Do we just go to his place and ring the doorbell?”
“I had an old friend look into it. As far as the government is concerned, the property is owned by a Ric Dawson, who’s been there since 2000,” Embry shared.
“Does that mean we don’t know how to find him?” I asked.
“It would. Only Ric inherited it from a great uncle, so he might just be a Gifted who is on top of his paperwork.”
Embry used a fake driver’s license to rent us a black sedan, so Gabriel used the map they gave us to locate Dawes Estate. I knew I was naïve and too trusting, but I really didn’t get the impression that the man from Cassie’s memory would ever want to hurt me.
It was a three-hour drive before we stopped at a bed-and-breakfast. It was charming and rustic, giving the impression that there was no internet and probably not even cable, but it was welcoming and felt safe. Not to say that I trusted it, but it was a lot better than the motel.
Embry used his fake name and got us two adjoining rooms, which he paid for in cash.
“How far are we from the estate?” I asked Gabriel while Embry had a conversation with the woman who owned the B and B about the history of the area.
“Five or ten minutes. There are a couple more houses, then it’s the property, but he has as much land as you do.”
“What’s your feeling about him?” I asked.
“I haven’t met him yet.”
“But we’re here, in England, for no other reason than…”
“Than to get things from your ancestors so we can save you. If he can help us, great, but I won’t be trusting him.”
We walked up to the front door with the two of them standing in front of me, forming a wall in case he wasn’t friendly. His manor was a lot like ours, in the sense that it seemed cold from the outside, but I heard laughter when we got close, and wondered if it was just as warm as my home used to be.
“How can I help you?” A woman in her thirties opened the door, covered in glitter, still smiling from whatever adventures we interrupted.
“We were looking for—”
“Ric!” As soon as she spotted me, she called into the room on her left, where all the laughter was coming from.
Embry and Gabriel both put their arms out to hold me back. I could feel the tension in their bodies. Friend or foe, we were definitely in the right place.
“What is it?” Ric asked, a little blonde girl giggling over his shoulder while another was wrapped around his leg. I could tell it was him, but there were wisps of gray in his hair that definitely hadn’t been there in the memory. He smiled at the guys before his eyes landed on me. I tensed up, knowing he would react, but I relaxed when he looked at me like I looked at Gabriel when he showed up in the field behind the gas station after I thought he died. “You’re not Judith, or Cassie,” he gave me a sad smile.
“Lucy,” I agreed.
“Come on in,” he handed the smaller of the girls to the woman and lifted the one from his leg up into his arms.
Gabriel and Embry exchanged a look before following him into the house.
The inside looked like a real estate agent staged it. Then a mini tornado ran through it. The decor was elegant and beautiful, but there were books and pictures and teddies and things that turned houses into homes strewn all over. Not that it was messy, just… lived in.
“You are Alaric Dawes, right?” I asked once we got to the kitchen. He motioned for us to sit, then put a kettle on the stove.
“Older than you expected?” He asked me, still smiling. The constant happiness would worry me, but I didn’t have to be Embry to know it was genuine.
“You’ve done pretty well since I saw in you in 1840, but I was under the impression you wouldn’t age.”
“I didn’t. Until one day I did,” he looked over to the woman, probably his wife, and they exchanged a smile that reminded me of Sam and Deanna.
“What were you supposed to do?” I asked.
“All I thought I had was money, so I’ve spent many lives running charities, doing aid trips to Africa, sponsoring children and rainforests and doing everything I could imagine that would be helpful to the world. I long ago resigned myself to living forever alone, but then I met Sarah,” he smiled over at her. “I had no intentions of falling in love, so I kept my distance until one night, I selfishly accept her offer for pizza and a play at the Globe with some friends who worked with us. By the end of the night, I knew I was done for, but I had no idea how to tell her. Not even five minutes after I left her house, I came across a mugging. A pregnant woman. The guy had a gun, she was terrified, he looked like he might use it… I couldn’t die anyway, so I stopped it and then, suddenly, I had grey hairs,” he shared.
“Who was she?” I asked, noting that both my guys were apprehensive, not at all ready to trust this man spilling his guts in front of us.
“I don’t know, but some day, either she or her son will do something hopefully wonderful, and I just had to be in that place at that time.”
“When you say you just got grey hairs…” I let it linger, hoping he would elaborate on the process. “I’ve never met anyone who was Gifted and isn’t anymore,” I admitted.
“I don’t think it’s the same for everyone, but I was given a choice. The light was there, and I knew I could walk into it and be reunited with everyone I loved… but Sarah was a few blocks away, and the way my heart skipped a beat at the thought of her, I knew I had to see where it went,” he explained. “You call us Gifted?” he asked.
“You don’t?” I turned it on him.
“Jude always called people like me supernaturals,” he shrugged.
“Jude being Judith?”
“She was brilliant, in every sense of the word,” he agreed before the kettle sang. “Tea?”
“Thank you.”
The guys declined, so he poured milk into three mugs, added tea, then handed one to me, one to Sarah and kept the last for himself.
“I’m here because I need to find something of hers. I don’t know how well you knew her, but I was hoping you could help.” It wasn’t exactly true. I knew from Cassie’s memory that he knew her very well, but I wasn’t going to tell him that.
“Why do you need something of hers?” he asked.
“It’s a long story,” I dismissed his question.
“Forgive me if I see you and talk like you’re her. I imagine saying you can trust me won’t mean much?”
“Not really,” I apologized.
“How did you know her?” Gabriel asked.
“She was my wife.”
I could tell that the guys were just as shocked as I was.
“That makes you…”
“Your ancestor,” he agreed. “Jude was my best friend and my first love. I was ready to marry her the day I met her, this beautiful and insanely smart woman who didn’t take no for an answer… but she had no intentions of settling down until she conquered the world. I waited through school, her crush on an asshole from her class, even her running away to study under a private tutor in Spain. She wrote, but I didn’t know if being her friend was worse than being nothing, so I never responded. When she came home, she was furious, and after telling me so, she proposed to me.”
“Very progressive,” I commented.
“She knew what she wanted and usually went after it,” he explained. “It was only a few months after we got married that I died on a hunting trip with my brother. I was just as shocked as my nephew who shot me a second time, this one on purpose. Jude came immediately, did hours of research, sat by my side while my brother, a physician, ran test after test without figuring out what was wrong with me. I told her to leave me, that she deserved a husband, not an abomination, but she told me she just wanted someone who would love her and her child, and really hoped that person would be me,” he was beaming. “They were born a few months later, and we lived happily ever after for a few years, until we lost her.”
“When you say ‘they’ were born?” It was Embry who asked. I also wondered if there was a whole other branch to my family tree, another me out there that needed protecting.
“We had twins. Josephine and Oliver, after my father,” he shared.
“Did they take your last name?” I asked, since all my ancestors after Annabelle took their mother’s name.
“They did,” he agreed. “We lost Oliver to measles when the twins were eight. Josephine never quite got over it, but she insisted on doing all the things he made her promise she would do. We had many adventures before I had to let her go.”
“You didn’t keep track of them?” Gabriel asked, with a slight accusation to his tone.
“I did, until Esther told me they were moving to the colonies. I wanted to come with her, but my little Esther said it was her adventure and promised she would write. Which she did, but her daughter, Annabelle, didn’t know me and didn’t carry on the tradition,” the guys perked up at the mention of Annabelle.
“How old was Judith when she died?” I asked, trying to be delicate, because I was pretty sure I knew the answer.
“Almost twenty-nine,” he shared. “Cancer.”
“I’m so sorry,” I told him.
“Thank you,” he said, though the words were meaningless. “Why do you ask?”
“All of us who looked like her… we’ve all been dying at the same age. That’s why I need something of hers.”
“For a spell?” He asked.
“Judith was a witch?”
“Sometimes. She had an unpleasant experience before we got together, so she mostly stayed away from it, but the twins got sick when they were barely a year old and she did some kind of protection spell that required something from each of them.”
“This is like that,” I agreed.
“I have her portrait in the attic, which would be how my wife recognized you,” he answered a question I was definitely going to get to. “But as far as something that belonged to her…” he brought his hand to his chin, trying to think of something. “I gave her ring to John when he proposed to Josephine, who got all of her jewelry… I have a box in the attic, but it’s mostly papers… I’ll go get it,” he went off, leaving the three of us with his wife.
“You’re taking this really well,” I said to her after a minute of us sitting there awkwardly.
“It was difficult to believe that he used to wake up every time he died and was alive when my great-great-grandparents were born, but he’s worth it,” she told me. “I asked about the painting when he showed me the attic. He explained that she was his wife, who died, but he ran into one of their descendants who was the spitting image of her and nearly had a heart attack.”
“At least you were prepared.”
“Oh, nothing surprises me now,” she assured me.
Alaric came down with a round hat box that held their marriage license, partially disintegrated letters, and an old pair of glasses.
“Were these hers?” I asked hopefully.
“Oliver’s,” he said sadly, picking them up. “But this was hers,” he found a handkerchief underneath them. “Her something blue,” he smiled.
“Do you mind if I take it?” I asked. “I don’t know if you’ll be able to get it back after I’m done with it,” I warned.
“A decade ago, I might have held on, but I’m good now,” he looked over to Sarah.
“Thank you. You have no idea what this means.”
“It means someone else won’t have to lose you like I lost her,” he let me know he understood.
“Daddy, we’re hungry,” one of the girls came in and tugged on Alaric’s sleeve.
“Is that so?” he asked her.
“Yes, and it’s nearly supper time, and Poppy was thinking we could maybe have chicken nuggets.”
“Poppy thought that?” he questioned her.
“Yes,” the girl lied, but she was committed.
“Would you like to stay for supper?” Sarah offered.
“We wouldn’t want to impose,” I argued.
“It would be our pleasure,” she told me. “We don’t entertain nearly enough, and Ric always makes industrious quantities of chicken nuggets.”
“We can stay,” Embry assured me.
“Did you know Judith’s parents?” I asked Alaric once he put the nuggets in the oven. Sarah was making a salad, and the guys were talking in hushed voices.
“I did,” there was a question to his answer.
“We thought Annabelle was the earliest one who looked like me. I’m wondering if there was another one before Judith.”
“When I met Cassandra, she wondered the same thing,” he admitted.
“Did she find out?”
“She left before we could do any research, but I tried to look into it for her.”
“What did you discover?”
“This was centuries ago, so I was working with a very limited paper trail, but I found a few generations at the County Records Office in town.”
“That’s really helpful. I’ll check it out in the morning,” I told him.
“Do you already have a place to stay?”
“We do, but thank you for the offer.”
“You’re always welcome here,” he assured me.
The nuggets were delicious. Alaric’s daughters, Poppy and Violet, were hilarious and adorable with their British accents. I could tell the guys were uncomfortable and only said we could stay to let me find out more about Judith’s ancestry, so I declined Sarah’s offer of cake.
“Thank you so much for everything,” I told Alaric, giving him a hug. It was nice to find out about a decent male ancestor of mine for a change.
“It was my pleasure,” he smiled. I believed he meant it, even though I brought up so many sad moments of his life. “And Lucy, I hope you succeed,” he told me.
“Me too,” I agreed.
Gabriel drove us back to the bed-and-breakfast, with neither of us talking much.
“How many do you think we have left?” Embry wondered as we climbed the stairs.
“I don’t know, but we’ll have to make sure before we attempt the spell. It said all of them, and I don’t want to see what happens if we only have some,” Gabriel was concerned.
“Ric says there were records at the County Records Office. We could go there and trace back from Judith, like researching a family tree,” I suggested.
“Keep going back until we can’t go back any further,” Embry shrugged, which didn’t sound good to anyone.
“I also have the dreams… hopefully they can help steer us in the right direction.”
“We’ll head out first thing in the morning,” Gabriel decided.
“After breakfast?” I asked with a smile. “The brochure says that her clotted cream is the best in the country.”
“We can grab a quick bite,” Embry smiled and ruffled my hair before we went to the rooms. The guys were sharing one with two double beds, while I got the king to myself. I closed the adjoining door while I changed and got ready for bed, but left it open for the night, in case anything happened.
It was weird, because everything was still scary, and I was hunting down an unknown number of needles in a field of haystacks, but Sam being alive and finding Judith’s handkerchief made me feel like somehow, I might get through this.