The Art of Stealing Time t-2 Read online

  “He’s a lawyer, Gwen. I’m sure it was illegal.”

  “Where are you?” I changed the subject, knowing the argument was going to go nowhere. We’d had it several times during the last few days, and it always ended up the same way: my mothers refused to admit that they’d done anything wrong. “The siren sounds louder. Can you pull over and cast a spell to escape the mortal police?”

  “Of course we can cast an escape spell. Any third-year pupil of Lambfreckle can cast a basic escape spell, and your other mother and I are more than two hundred years old, so we certainly know—”

  “Mom,” I interrupted. “You know what I mean.”

  “I do, and much as I love you, Gwenny, I’m insulted that you think we can’t take care of ourselves and get away from mortals. Oh, dear, Alice, Mrs. Vanilla is on the floor again. Perhaps if you pulled over I could right her—”

  I stood up, and without even one poignant glance at the plane that was being fueled so that it could fly me back home, collected my luggage and started the long journey back to the train station that connected to the airport. “Where are you?” I asked as I wove my way through the people who milled around the shops and the airline kiosks.

  “Outside of Emylwn,” she answered, naming the small coastal town where they had lived since before I was born.

  I thought for a few minutes while I continued to forge my way against the stream of people arriving for evening flights to the Continent, then said, “They are going to know you’re in that area.”

  “Pah. I told you that we can escape the police.”

  “No, not them. I’m not worried about the mortals. The Watch found me in Malwod-Upon-Ooze, and that’s only, what, ten miles away from Emylwn?” I shook my head. “That’s too close for comfort.”

  I glanced up at the sign at the entrance to the airport, and made a swift decision while my mother was protesting that the Watch didn’t even have an inkling of what was going on.

  “The mortal police don’t know that the Otherworld Watch even exists, Gwenny. There’s no reason to worry that they’ll call them. Besides, they—the mortal police, that is—have no idea who we are. Or rather, what we are.”

  Evidently, Mom had put me on speakerphone, because I could hear Mom Two say, “That’s right. Mrs. Vanilla was in a mortal retirement home when we snatched her.”

  “Snatched?” I said, freezing in the act of going through a door to the escalator that led down to the trains.

  “Rescued,” my mother amended. “We rescued her. We didn’t kidnap her at all.”

  “Then why are the police chasing you?” I hefted my massive bag and bumped my way down the escalator, apologizing to the people it smacked. One or two people looked askance at me as I descended, but I sent up a silent blessing for stoic Brits who wouldn’t be caught dead blatantly listening to someone’s phone conversation.

  “There was a little issue with the rescue,” Mom Two admitted in her usual brusque voice. “We had to change one or two attendants into frogs.”

  “MOMS!”

  “Just temporarily,” my mother hurriedly added. “Just for the time it took to rescue Mrs. Vanilla from her captors.”

  I shoved some coins into a machine and accepted the ticket it spat out at me, hauling my luggage down another level to the train I wanted. “Do you have any idea of how bad this is? Not only have you kidnapped a mortal woman—yes, I said ‘kidnapped’!” I ignored the sputtered protests from both mothers. “Not only did you do something as completely heinous as to take an old lady from her caregivers, but you also magicked up mortals. You know how dangerous that is! What were you thinking? That no one would notice that people had suddenly been turned into frogs?”

  “No one did notice that,” Mom Two said in a disapproving tone. “Your mother told you it was a temporary spell. Only lasted two or three minutes.”

  “Then why”—I parked my luggage at a grimy bench and took a deep, acidic-scented breath—“why are the police chasing you? Why didn’t you just go home?”

  “We might have forgotten that mortals have those spy cameras everywhere,” my mother admitted.

  “Big Brother!” Mom Two added righteously. “He’s everywhere, watching us all!”

  I rubbed my hand over my face, wondering how on earth I was going to pull my mothers out of the hole into which they’d managed to dig themselves. It was possible, just barely possible, that they could magic their way out of trouble with the mortal police, if the thing was planned properly. But once the Watch got wind of it . . . I groaned aloud. “We are so doomed. They’re already in the area. The blond guy is looking for you. They’ll hear that you stole a mortal and used magic in front of other mortals, and that’ll be all she wrote.”

  “Who wrote what?” Mom asked with benign interest.

  “We have to meet up,” I said quickly, glancing down the platform and noting at least three security cameras. Even now I was being filmed. I had to get somewhere out of sight of those cameras, had to get my mothers tucked away someplace where we could talk. I needed all the details of their latest shenanigans before I could put things right. But where could we meet? Where could we find the anonymity we needed?

  A dirt-encrusted woman shuffled past me to the nearest trash can, digging through it and muttering to herself under her breath. Her coat was matted and filthy, having long ago given up any pretense at color. She extracted several pieces of trash and shoved them deep into a plastic carrier bag clutched in one of her grubby hands. A piece of paper fluttered out of her bag as she moved off.

  I stared at the leaflet advertising a tourist event, then sat up straighter. “Mom, go to Bute.”

  “Go where, dear?”

  “Bute Park.”

  “But it’s nighttime. One should never go to the park at night. I’ve warned you about the bad people who can be found there after dark.”

  “They’re doing illuminations of the castle this week. All week, while they celebrate the history of Cardiff. There will be fireworks, and music, and hordes of people. It’s the perfect place to hide in plain sight. I’ll meet you at the Animal Wall in”—I glanced at my watch and did some quick mental calculations—“forty minutes. OK?”

  “I don’t think we—”

  “Meet me there,” I said in a growl that should have scared the pants off her. A whoosh of air from the arched tunnel at the end of the platform warned of the near arrival of a train. “Or else.”

  “Or else what?” she asked, clearly curious.

  “Or else I’ll invoke some very bad magic!”

  “Oh, Gwenny,” she said with a dismissive laugh, “you couldn’t do bad magic if you had a spell book in front of you.”

  “Try me,” I snarled, and hung up my phone.

  I had a lot of things to do, and little time to do them.

  TWO

  “Hello, my old friend.”

  The stone Animal Wall is one of my favorite places in Cardiff city proper. I was just a child when it was first carved, and I have vague memories of being taken to see the original painted animals. Sometime in the early 1920s, about thirty years after it was placed outside of Cardiff Castle, it was moved to the edge of Bute Park, where it still resides.

  “You’re looking as placid as usual,” I told my favorite animal where he sat atop the wall, the stone images illuminated by the floodlights planted along the base of the wall. Directly in front of me, a stone seal gazed serenely into the distance, his flippers poised as if he were about to leap off the wall. “You know, Mr. Seal, I used to think that a spell would turn you to flesh and blood, and I’d beg my moms to give it to me so that you could slip out into the bay and swim away. They never did.”

  The statue said nothing, for which I was extremely thankful—the last thing I needed was an animated statue, or a nervous breakdown. Although at times, I was ready to swear that the latter had some good points to it . . .

  Around me, music sounded from a stage across the park, where a local Welsh band was entertaining folks who wer
e out enjoying the history festival.

  The air was filled with scents as well as sounds: the cooling of the sun-warmed lawn had a pleasant earthy note that mingled nicely with the salty tang wafting in from the bay. A more artificial, but no less pleasing, aroma came from the food stalls that had been set up for the festival, selling everything from Indian food to fish cakes to Welsh beef burgers. I salivated, my stomach rumbling uncomfortably while I contemplated enduring the crowds to feed my soon-to-be-uncontrollable hunger.

  Common sense prevailed. I would never find my mothers in the throngs of people who queued up in front of the food area. Blue and red and gold lights lit Cardiff Castle beyond the Animal Wall, but I turned my gaze from its familiar ramparts to the crowd that moved like so many fireflies in a random pattern around the park. Fake torches lined pathways, while vendors in small pushcarts sold the inevitable glow sticks, bracelets, and necklaces. Soft neon glows of green, blue, and orange lit up faces old and young, but I ignored them to try to pick out the familiar shapes of my mothers: Mom, short and somewhat round (unfortunately, I inherited her propensity to abundance, although not her lack of height), and Mom Two, as tall and angular as Mom was the opposite.

  I glanced at my watch, tilting it to catch illumination from a nearby faux torch. The fireworks would start in about fifteen minutes. “I swear, if I have to come and find you—” I started to grumble under my breath, pulling out my phone to call one of my mothers, but at that moment my peripheral vision caught the flicker of a familiar form.

  “Mom!” I raised my hand and moved toward the three shapes. “It’s about time. I’ve been waiting for almost fifteen minutes. Hello.”

  The last was spoken to the tiny old lady that both moms held in a firm grip.

  “Gwenny, dear, we’re late, aren’t we? We had to stop for a wee. You know how your mother is.”

  Mom Two made a grimace. “Pessary, you know. Makes me have to go sometimes. Must have shifted. Will have to have it checked out again.”

  I wrinkled my nose. “Yeah, we don’t really need to talk about your bladder-holder-upper device right out here in the park. Is this Mrs. Vanilla?”

  “Yes, it is. Oooh, is that Chicken Korma I smell?”

  I grabbed my mother’s nearest arm and held on, as she was about to head straight for the food booths. “Yes, it is, and if I have to starve myself, so do you. It’s not on our diets.”

  She sighed, and her shoulders slumped. “I know. But it smells so very delicious, and we’ve had a very stressful day, what with you returning to the States, and then the rescue of Mrs. Vanilla. Oh, I haven’t introduced you. Dear, this is my daughter, Gwenhwyfar. Mrs. Vanilla is our student, as I think I told you.”

  I eyed the old lady between my mothers, trying to assess how likely she was to lodge a charge against them. If she was as confused as my mother made her sound, perhaps she wouldn’t remember anything that happened once she was returned to her nursing home. She was a tiny little thing, smaller even than my five-foot-three mother, but as delicate as a bird. She had narrow little hands that flitted about with graceful darting gestures that reminded me for some reason of shorebirds as they ran up and down the beach looking for food. Her hair was mostly white, cropped short, but there was an unusual black stripe right down the middle. A cowlick in the back made the tip of the stripe stand up on end, giving her a somewhat comical appearance. Her eyes were dark, but clouded with cataracts, and her hands had the faintest tremor to them. A thick greenish-black dressing gown covered her from neck to ankles, embroidered with what looked to be fanciful creatures from mythology. All in all, she looked like a perfectly nice little old lady.

  I sighed, shaking my head at my moms, noting that a short distance away a family that was in possession of a bench had gathered up the remains of their dinner and moved off to a trash can. I steered my mothers’ captive over to the bench and turned to give both mothers the eye. “You two know you’ve gone way over the line this time, yes?”

  Mom startled to bristle, while Mom Two looked haughtily down her long nose at me. “We have a duty to our students, Gwen,” the latter told me. “Not to mention a duty to save those who are under the protection of the god and goddess. We couldn’t hold up our heads if we were to let Mrs. Vanilla languish away in the mortal old-person prison.”

  “OK, first, it’s a nursing home, not a prison. And second, you are not supposed to steal mortals. Third, and most important of all, you have no right taking this nice old lady from the people who care for her. What if she needs special medicines? Or stuff like adult diapers?” I gave the little old woman a twisted smile. “Sorry. Don’t mean to imply you need them. For all I know, your bladder is stronger than my mothers’ is.”

  “It’s not,” Mom said with a wry look. “We thought of that, naturally, Gwenny. We’re not monsters, you know. We brought all of her medicines, and bought her a jumbo pack of bladder pants, as well as a pair of really warm wool socks in case her feet get cold at night like Alice’s do.”

  “Always had poor circulation,” Mom Two said with a nod. “Got that from my father. He was a mage. Mages are notorious for their cold feet.”

  “Regardless,” I said, attempting to keep the conversation from wandering, which I knew full well it would do if I didn’t keep the strictest control over it. “The fact remains that you stole a mortal woman. You can’t keep her, Moms. You have to take her back.”

  “We will naturally take the very best care of her—” Mom Two started to say, but I cut her off with a sharp gesture. Mrs. Vanilla made little eeping noises of distress, her hands fluttering like the wings of tiny doves.

  “She is not a pet! She’s a person, a mortal, an innocent woman who needs the care of the people who are paid to take care of her.”

  “Pah,” Mom Two said, while my mother added, “We don’t want money to take care of her. We will do it because she is our student, and is in need of help, and the god and goddess have charged us to take care of others whenever possible.”

  I took a deep breath. “I know full well what the Wiccan creed is, so don’t try to blow smoke up my ass.”

  “Gwen!” my mother said, waving a hand at the old woman. “Not in front of Mrs. Vanilla!”

  I glanced at her. She had stopped squeaking, but her hands were still flittering a few inches off her lap, almost as if she was trying to use sign language. “Sorry, ma’am. Mother, might I have a word with you?”

  “What do you need?” Mom Two asked the old lady, bending over her to bellow. “Do you need to use the toilet again? No? Paper? You want paper?”

  “Gwenny, I think you’re being very close-minded about this whole thing—” my mother started to say when I pulled her a few yards away.

  Mom Two was digging through the messenger bag she always had strapped across her torso, pulling out a tattered notebook with pen attached by means of a grubby bit of string. She gave that to Mrs. Vanilla.

  “I am through explaining why you can’t kidnap a mortal and keep her. What I need from you and Mom Two is your plan on how to return her. She doesn’t look like the sort of woman who remembers much, so we’ll have to trust that once you get her back to where she belongs, she won’t file a charge with the police. But the fact remains that she has to go back.”

  “We can’t take her back,” Mom Two said, moving over to stand with us. The old lady was busily drawing on the notebook, which I gathered was her thing to do in spare moments.

  “If you’re worried about that video of you and Mom taking Mrs. Vanilla, then you could throw a glamour or something on yourselves so the mortals wouldn’t recognize it was you bringing her back.”

  She raised one eyebrow. “I’m surprised to hear you suggest that we should do something so illegal as to use magic to fool a mortal being, Gwen.”

  “Balanced against abduction? Yeah, not such a big worry, especially when it’s done in order to return the old biddy.”

  My mother whapped me on the arm. “It’s not nice to refer to the elderly by that term
.”

  “Kidnapping isn’t nice, either.” I took a deep breath, wondering if I’d be able to change my ticket for one the following day, and said, “OK, here’s the deal: you guys clearly don’t want to take her back. Yes, I know, you rescued her. That’s not the point. She has to go back to her home, and since you won’t take her, I will. Keys.” I held out my hand.

  Mom Two looked mulish for a moment, but dug into her pocket and pulled out a set of car keys. “I do this under protest, Gwen.”

  “Duly recorded. Where’d you leave the car?”

  She described the parking lot where she had taken the car after dropping off Mom and Mrs. Vanilla at the entrance to the park.

  “All righty. I’ll bring the car around to the disabled people’s entrance and will meet you there to pick her up. Once I have her back at her place, I’ll come back here for you two. We’ll have to stop by the train station for the luggage I left there, but that shouldn’t take long.”

  “And then?” Mom asked, sniffing like I’d said something mean to her.

  “And then we’ll find somewhere safe to park both of you while the dust settles.”

  “Where, exactly, would that be? We can’t go home, not with the mortal police seeing us. And don’t say that we should wear a glamour for however many months or years it will take the police to forget about us.” Mom Two gestured toward my mother. “Mags dislikes glamours. She couldn’t tolerate one for longer than a few hours.”

  I slapped my hands on my legs, frustrated but aware that I owed them some sort of an answer. “Well . . . maybe you could go away. Go to the U.S. with me?”

  “We don’t have passports. The authorities want passports nowadays. You remember the trouble we had getting you one?”

  “Yes, well, the people at the passport office just don’t expect to see people born in 1888 needing a passport. Besides, we ended up getting me a fake one. We could just do the same for you two.”