Chapter 5 - Early Morning Goodbyes

The next morning, a few minutes before six, Jacky and Olivia were outside, on the front drive, picking the route and double checking Noctis’s car before we left. I decided to head into the kitchen to kidnap some coffee and say goodbye to Igor.

The master chef was there—as usual—and already working in his slow, methodical way, grumbling under his breath the whole time. Kappa was squatting up against the oven, trying to stay warm.

Iset had once tried to explain to me that Kappa was neither warm-blooded, nor cold-blooded, and that those weren’t great terms anyway. My takeaway from the whole conversation was that Kappa needed a lot more sleep in the winter than he did in the summer, so I was surprised to see him out of his nest that early. I wasn’t surprised to see he was struggling to keep his eyelids open.

“Mera!” Kappa cried.

He oozed toward me while I laughed and made sympathetic noises. I knew exactly how he felt. Six in the morning was early, especially on a cold February morning. When the bog-monster finally reached me, I scooped him up and pulled him to my chest. I wasn’t as warm as the oven, but my body heat had to be better than nothing.

“What are you doing up so early?” I asked.

“Goodbye,” Kappa said while trying to squirm as close as possible.

“He’s been camped there for a half hour,” Igor said.

“Why’s the oven on?” I asked. “Are you cooking something?”

“It’s preheating. I’m making scones.”

“But yesterday, you said—”

“I decided to make scones.” Igor sniffed. “On a morning like this we could all use something warm.”

I smiled.

Kappa insisted on staying with me when I went to say goodbye to Iset. After leaving the library, I was standing in front of the grand staircase, trying to decide whether to put Kappa back in his nest or in front of the oven, when Conrad came down the stairs.

“Ah,” he said as he stepped onto the ground floor, “I wondered if Kappa’d be able to wake up in time.”

“Conrad!” Kappa burbled.

“You knew he’d be up?” I asked.

“Yesterday he asked me when you were leaving. He wanted to say goodbye. I thought I’d come down to make sure he had the chance.” The wolfman shrugged. “I guess he beat me to it.”

My heart gave a happy jump. I had not one but two sappy, weirdo friends who were willing to get up early to make sure I had a proper send-off. That was an embarrassment of riches. I needed to change the subject, or I might get all mushy and sentimental. Emotions before breakfast were never a good idea.

“He was waiting for me in the kitchen,” I said, “and you, lucky duck—lucky pup? Ha!—you, lucky pup, get scones for breakfast.”

Conrad’s brow creased, causing the fur over it to mush into a series of fine ripples. “I thought—”

“Igor didn’t turn on the oven for Kappa,” I explained. “He’s preheating it for scones.”

Conrad turned his head and let out a chuff. “Ah.” He turned back to me. “Take care of yourself, Mera, and at least try to stay out of trouble.”

“You make it sound like I’m planning something.”

“I don’t think you plan anything. If something happens to my bag—”

I rolled my eyes. “Nothing’s going to happen to your bag.”

Any day now, I’d be forced to buy my own luggage, but since Conrad wasn’t coming along on this trip, I’d been able to borrow his top-loading, military-style duffel bag. It was sitting by the door, next to Olivia’s carry-on bag. The new one. The one the Albion Torr had purchased to replace the old carry-on bag that had burned to ashes while I was borrowing it to do a job for them.

“Uh-huh,” Conrad said. “And if anything happens to my bag, I want one just like it.”

“Yeah, yeah.”

The door behind me opened, letting in a blast of cold air. Kappa yelped and tried to burrow into my chest.

Big Jacky came inside and picked up the duffel and the carry-on bag.

“Good morning, Kappa, Conrad,” he said.

“Good morning, Mr. Noctis,” Conrad said.

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“Emerra, we’re ready to go, and Olivia is eager to get started.”

“I’ll be there in a second,” I said.

He took the bags and closed the door behind him as he left.

“All right, Kappa,” I said, turning back, “I have a very important job for you.”

“Yes!” he cried.

“You have to take care of Conrad while I’m gone. Look after him, okay?”

“Kay!”

I held him out, and he crawled from my arms, up onto Conrad’s arm. The wolfman bent his elbow so Kappa would have somewhere to perch.

“And don’t let him watch any anime without me,” I added.

“This’ll be the first time in months I can watch an American show that isn’t a cartoon,” Conrad said. “You think I’m going to waste it?”

I shifted my weight from foot to foot while fidgeting with my own fingers.

“Um…” I, the ever-articulate, said. “Do…do you want a hug?”

The edge of Conrad’s black lips turned up. “I’d love a hug.”

I’m as bad as Igor, I thought as I wrapped my arms around Conrad. It can’t be that I want a hug. No, I’m doing this as a favor for Conrad.

And, like Igor, I probably wasn’t fooling anyone.

I took a deep breath, inhaling the strange scent of Conrad’s fur. Kappa reached down and rubbed my bald head the way he’d seen Conrad do it. It was less pleasant since Kappa had clammy little webbed hands instead of massive padded palms with fur around the edges, but it was just as endearing.

“Bye, Mera!” Kappa said.

“I’ll see you soon, buddy.” I looked up at Conrad. “Later, wolf-boy.”

“Later, zombie-girl.”

I picked up the two thermoses of coffee I’d left on the hall table, grabbed my coat, and headed out to the car.

Olivia was already in the back seat. Her seatbelt was on, and notebooks were sprawled across the rest of the bench. Her ears were covered by a huge set of headphones. When I knocked on her window, she didn’t respond.

Well, if she didn’t want the front seat, I’d be happy to take it.

Once I was settled in, I turned around and shoved the second thermos of coffee between her and the notebook she was reading. She looked up and lifted the headphones from one ear.

“It’s black, but it’s hot,” I said. “Would you like it?”

She took it from me. A half-second later, she grumbled, “Thanks.”

I turned around. “So how do you take your coffee?”

No answer.

I glanced over my shoulder. The headphones were back in place, and she was once again concentrating on her notebook.

I wondered what my life would have been like if I’d worked up to her level of focus.

Meh. It’s not like it would have been any longer.

Jacky got in the driver’s seat and started the car. I automatically reached out to adjust the heat settings so Olivia and I wouldn’t freeze. Livable temperatures were not details that Jack Noctis ever thought about. He still had to be reminded that we weren’t burning coal to heat the mansion.

We pulled out of the long drive and headed toward the road that would eventually get us to the highway.

“Hey, Jacky?” I said.

“Yes?”

“When you’re alone in the car, do the windows ever fog up?”

There was a long thoughtful pause.

“I don’t know,” he said.

“You never noticed?”

“I rarely drive when I’m alone. It’s faster for me to travel”—he hesitated—“in the other way.”

“What way is that?”

“It’s like walking, only…”

“Only what?”

“Only faster.”

I took a sip of coffee to hide my smile. That was probably the best explanation I could expect from Big Jacky. The man was not a poet. Or a scientist. Or a man, really. He was a single-minded, skeletonized obsession that had adopted a few hobbies to fill up the endless time of his immortal life. He collected strategy games and stray supernaturals.

“I try to make my home comfortable for beings that might not otherwise have a place in this world,” he’d told me.

I knew that included me, and it made sense it would include Iset. I’d asked her once how many mummies there were in the world. She’d said, to the best of her knowledge, she was the only one left.

I thought about the other residents of the mansion and wondered how many of them were strays.

“Jacky,” I said, “how did you become Olivia’s master?”

“She wrote me a letter, asking if I would take her on as an apprentice.”

“Did you know her?”

“Not at the time.” There was a soft noise. I never saw his chest move when he breathed, so it took me a moment to realize that Jack Noctis was sighing. “There was a great deal I didn’t know at the time.”

There was a story there. The embodiment of death didn’t sigh often. I had a five-hour drive ahead of me and no reason to avoid prying.

“The way you said that makes it sound like you regret taking her on,” I said.

His skull briefly turned to me before he returned his attention to the road. “I have no regrets. I’ve benefited more from the role than I could have imagined possible. Perhaps that’s the problem.”

“What do you mean?”

“When I received the letter, I asked Iset to tell me more about the master-apprentice relationship. She said that the apprentice agrees to help for free or for greatly reduced pay so that they have the opportunity to observe and learn from a master.”

I ran that definition through my head. It tallied with what little I knew. “Okay. And?”

“It’s possible to observe me, and I knew that by observing you could learn a great deal from other people. What I didn’t understand was that for someone to be considered a ‘master,’ there was an implied mastery of some trade or skill.”

“You mean—”

“When Olivia wrote to me, she knew that I held a special position in multiple Torrs. She assumed that I was a magician.”

“She came to you hoping that you could teach her magic?” I pressed my lips together to keep from laughing.

Jacky may have been a bunch of ill-disguised mysteries wrapped up in a nice suit, but he was not a magician.

“I gained the assistance of a talented and powerful witch. Olivia gained a master that could teach her nothing.”

His voice sounded so solemn that all my humor bled away.

He went on, “I’ve tried to do my duty by her—what little I can do—but I’m afraid she’s gotten the uncooked side of the agreement.”

That particular mis-idiom took me a moment to work out. “You mean ‘the raw end of the deal?’”

“Isn’t that what I said?”

“But once she knew you weren’t a magician, why didn’t she go find another master?”

“I don’t know. I offered to help find her another place, but she refused. If you want to know her reasoning, you’d have to ask her.”

I looked over my shoulder. Olivia’s thin fingers were resting on the notebook, as if she needed her eyes and her hands to absorb all that information. A lock of her red hair was pressed between her lips. Maybe Kappa had seen her chewing on her own hair and had wondered what it tasted like.

I smiled at the thought.

It would make sense for strawberry-blond hair to taste like strawberries. What would that shade of fiery copper red taste like? Smelted metal?

I faced forward. “Maybe later. She looks busy right now. What’s she doing anyway?”

“Studying.”

“Is there going to be a test?”

“For her, there might be.”