Cat watched from her kitchen window as Lelani buried the dog under the small plot of grass behind the building. The patio umbrella was strategically positioned over her to block the centaur from the only other building with a bird’s-eye view of the backyard. She was a beautiful woman in a turtleneck knit, with the ass end of a horse where her legs should have been. Her tail, which was also scarlet, was neatly banded by three gold ringlets one foot apart, forming spheres of hair with a tassel at the end. The fence and bushes around the backyard were high, but still, Cat wanted the horse-girl back inside as soon as possible. Things were already hard enough to explain without the neighbors spotting Lelani.
Seth made several phone attempts to get his photography career back. Someone named Carmine, with a cruel voice that the little plastic earpiece could not contain, made it clear that Seth would not only never work again, but that there were men combing the five boroughs ready to serve him his knees on a platter plus a court summons for breach of contract. To take his mind off his troubles, Seth tried boarding up the bedroom windows. He did everything badly.
Cat finished calling the contractors, then vacuumed for an hour, picking up glass and other debris from the fight. Bree was sleeping off the aftermath of her outbursts over Maggie’s death. They all needed a time-out from life until everything was back to normal. Would anything ever be normal again? Cat wondered. How would this genie go back into the bottle? In all the years she pondered her husband’s origin, nothing like this had crossed her mind. Was Cal really a knight, just like in the storybooks? A member of his country’s nobility, heir to lands and a fortune? Did that make her Lady MacDonnell? She chuckled at the notion. No one ever mistook her for a lady. She soaped up a sponge and began washing the dishes.
When Cat was a little girl, she beat up boys, climbed trees, and spat farther than a camel. Her older sister Vanessa dressed in Barbie pink and pretended the decrepit jungle gym in the backyard was a castle tower from which a mysterious prince would rescue her. Vanessa ended up with Vinnie, an electrician from Fort Lee and her first child six months after the wedding. Cat allowed herself a second chuckle. Turned out she was getting the castle. Life was full of little ironies.
“Cut that out,” she whispered to herself. “There’s no castle. You need a reality check.”
The monotony of the dishes caused her mind to wander, and she considered the lives of Cal’s mother and sisters. Would it be like the movies-long gowns for the ladies and chivalry coming from every sword-wielding dork? A million rules of etiquette for every function: how to curtsy, present oneself to those of higher rank, where to sit at a table, how to hold in a fart and scratch one’s ass properly. Cat did not know the first thing about being an aristocrat, nor did she want to. Cat avoided caviar, ballroom dancing, and hobnobbing with the pretentiously dull. She struggled to remember which side of the plate the utensils were set on when she had her own guests for dinner. She couldn’t imagine putting Bree through all that.
“Ow!” she yelped, nicking herself on a chipped glass. “Serves me right for thinking nonsense.”
She rinsed the cut in cold water and wrapped a paper towel around it. She went to the bathroom to find a Band-Aid and spotted the pregnancy test dissolving in a puddle in the tub. She’d forgotten it in the excitement. The result was ruined. Cat felt ready to vomit, but she didn’t know if it was the cut, morning sickness, or the realization that Cal now had a family she’d have to meet-a family who had never gotten the chance to approve of her-that lived in a castle, had its own crest, traced its lineage for generations and had never heard of the Equal Rights Amendment. My God, she realized. They’re Republicans!
“Excuse me, my lady…”
Lelani startled her. For a four-footed being, the horse-girl was surprisingly silent. Cat was also jumpier than usual. It would be some time before her nerves settled.
“Please, don’t call me that,” Cat said.
“How should I address you?”
“‘Cat’ is fine.”
Lelani looked uncomfortable with the notion but pushed on regardless. “I was curious as to the duration of the captain’s interrogation?”
“A few hours. It doesn’t get more serious than a dead cop. He has to explain how and why he left the scene, without implicating you or Seth. He has to convince them that he was dazed and injured. That he got the jump on his assailants, but was too injured to pursue or radio for help. Otherwise there’ll be disciplinary action.”
“I see.”
Cat found the centaur hard to read; she was so guarded with her emotions. She thought the girl might be judging Cal. “He’ll bend the truth to its limits,” Cat added, defensively. “It’s not in his nature to lie outright.”
“I know,” the centaur responded.
Again, Cat couldn’t make heads or tails of Lelani’s enigmatic responses. She went to the kitchen and put a pot of water on the burner. This time Cat could hear soft clopping on the hardwood as Lelani followed her. For a large creature, the centaur was amazingly graceful navigating the cramped living space of bipedal humans. She wasn’t as big as an actual horse, but big enough to have caused Cat some concern when Cal left her behind in their home. She had yet to knock over a lamp or break a piece of furniture. Cat wished she could say the same for the other one, as something, probably porcelain, just hit the ground and shattered in her bedroom. A weak, “Sorry!” emanated from the back of her apartment.
“Some tea?” Cat asked Lelani.
“Yes, thank you,” the centaur responded. This time, Cat noted a smidgeon of pleasure in her response.
The horse-girl-horse- woman — was very polite. For some reason, Cat expected someone who was half horse to behave more like an animal. Was it even housebroken? Where would she do her business? Cat took out a few days’ worth of old newspaper from the recycling bin and placed it on the kitchen table, just in case. There were a million questions Cat wanted to ask but didn’t know how to begin. She prepared the tea and brought it into the living room on a tray with biscuits. She sat on the couch while Lelani lowered herself on the floor next to the coffee table. Folding her legs beneath her, the centaur still came up to eye level. If Cat concentrated on the woman’s chest and up, she looked like any other gorgeous redhead in an olive-green turtleneck knit.
“Isn’t that dangerous?” Cat asked.
“Is what dangerous, my lady?”
“Squatting like that. I seldom see horses lie down, unless they’re sick. Something to do with twisting their intestines or delicate leg bones. Do you sleep standing?”
“I am not a horse,” Lelani responded, with a slight edge.
“Oh,” Cat said. She scratched the house-training question from her list. “I’ve never met a centaur before.”
“Clearly.”
“I’m sorry if I offended you.”
“My intelligence quotient measures in the top two percent of my class. I attend one of the finest schools in the Twelve Kingdoms. My family can trace its lineage for a thousand years.”
Cal was right. These things were very proud-and very defensive.
Cat was off to a bad start. This being, strange as it was, had saved her family and restored her husband’s past to him. Lelani was important to Cal. Whatever her trepidation about the future, Cat would try to remain on friendly terms with the centaur.
“Does your family also live in Aandor?” Cat asked. “If you don’t mind my asking?”
“My tribe lives in the Blue Forest. We are hunter-gatherers. Archduke Athelstan has granted the forest safe haven from hunting and logging by humans. Centaurs patrol the single road that runs through it and keep it free of highwaymen. Traders breathe easily once their caravans reach the Blue. The road to Aandor City is the safest and most profitable in the Twelve Kingdoms.”
“Is that where all centaurs live?”
“It is now. We numbered in the millions, once.”
“What happened?”
“War. But nature, too. Our females need twelve months to carry a foal to term and almost two years before they can have another. Beyond a few hundred residents, our villages become burdened. Humans build sewers and aqueducts. They farm and produce enough goods to support large cities. My people cannot-or will not-adapt to a faster pace of life. Without treaties like the Blue Forest Accord and leaders like Athelstan, centaurs will fade from Aandor as they did from this world.”
“Centaurs lived here?”
“Many races lived here who now no longer exist.”
“Why?”
“No one is sure. Fear. Racism. I suspect peace was tenuous. Perhaps I’ll research it and write a thesis one day.”
“Is that what’s happening on your world… why you came here? To escape?”
“Many are in jeopardy, not just centaurs, not just Aandor. Aandor is the anchor that steadies the ships of state in the Twelve Kingdoms. Our courts are fair, our economy strong, and the rights of minorities are protected. Through trade and diplomacy, we maintain peace with, and between, the kingdoms around us. Coming here was a desperate attempt to keep Archduke Athelstan’s claim to Aandor viable. Both the captain and I stand to lose everything if we fail.”
The word “everything” unsettled Cat. She and Bree had once been Cal’s everything. Her place in his life had diminished overnight.
“Ain’t it funny?” Seth said from the hall. “Laws of physics might change from universe to universe, but the laws of human nature are exactly the same.”
Cat didn’t realize he had come into the room to eavesdrop. She poured more tea into both their cups and offered some to Seth.
“Thanks, I’ll stick with beer,” he said. “So what exactly happened on your world?”
“The concord between the kingdoms had loopholes,” Lelani explained. “Many chose to exploit them.”
“The fine print-another constant across multiple universes,” Seth snorted. He sat down and put his feet on the coffee table. “Notice how charity and goodwill toward men are in short supply everywhere in creation? And people wonder why I’m a cynic.”
“Let her finish,” Cat said. “Get your feet off the table.”
“In Aandor, titles are passed through sons,” Lelani continued. “Women are valued for their pedigree and dowries. All the ruling families conspired to breed a boy with the blood of twelve kings, who, according to the continental treaty, would have the rightful claim to the title of emperor. A race began.”
“A race?” Cat asked.
Seth shook his head and laughed. “A breeding contest. A royal fuckfest. ‘Think of England’ and all that.”
“Because of his pedigree, and the bylaws of the continental accord, the boy who was your husband’s charge is the rightful prince regent of the Twelve Kingdoms. He will have more ruling powers than his father Duke Athelstan, the first regent, and he will most likely father the next true emperor of the Twelve Kingdoms. There isn’t a family on the continent with the right lineage who would deny him a daughter for marriage. The boy is the penultimate step to House Athelstan reclaiming its empire.”
“See, this is what happens when a society doesn’t have soap operas,” Seth said. “All this aristocratic sperm flying around, trying to find the right hole like a golf ball at the PGA Masters…”
“Please, shut up! I want to know what my husband is mixed up in.”
“There’s not much else,” Lelani continued. “Certain factions had lost the breeding race. The most powerful of them, Farrenheil, became desperate, and rejected the treaty. Aandor was caught off guard. The castle was under siege. Magnus Proust, the court mage, devised a plan to spirit the child here, away from his enemies. A dozen guardians were sent along to care for the boy until he reached manhood. But he was lost. The archduke himself may already be dead. There are neutral kingdoms among the twelve that are staying out of the fight until they are sure Aandor’s claim is still viable. There’s no point in making war with Farrenheil over a dead prince. Everything in Aandor depends on finding this boy.”
“Un-fucking-believable,” Seth said. “This is why I’m homeless? Why Joe’s dead? Our lives are turned inside out because of a handful of privileged brats with supercharged family trees playing pass-the-chromosomes. Who else bought the farm so these creeps can act like the Kennedys of Tolkien land? I ought to wring the little freak’s neck if we ever find him.”
Lelani vaulted the couch, a blur of rapidity, and hurled Seth against the wall. She braced him with her forearm pressed against his throat. Seth’s feet dangled as he gasped for air.
Cat sprang up, unsure of what to do. How did one stop a four-hundred-pound angry horse-woman?
“You insignificant flea,” Lelani hissed. “Proust picked you for the mission out of an unreasonable fondness, not because of your skills. My people have one haven left to them on our world and it exists by the grace of Duke Athelstan. Returning his child safe and unharmed means more to me than words can convey, so I’ll give you this warning out of respect for our teacher-should you make any attempt to harm the boy, ever, I will burn you alive. That is not an exaggeration.”
Cat put her hand on Lelani’s arm. “Please, aren’t we in enough of a mess without fighting among ourselves?” she said gently.
Lelani let go. Seth tumbled to the floor. His breath came in rasps.
“Is there a problem?” Cal asked, from the front door.
Cat rushed to give Cal a warm hug. “How’d it go?”
“Like spending four hours with the Spanish Inquisition. Thank God for my PBA representative… and for this,” he said, holding up Lelani’s silver pin. “Everyone’s glad I’m okay, but the dazed-and-confused story has stretched my credibility to its limit. If I didn’t have that pin, even my reputation couldn’t have helped me square things with the brass. I arranged to have police stationed at your mother’s house around the clock. I’m also scheduled to report for bereavement counseling in a few days. My PBA rep got me a few days to grieve for Erin before my next round of questioning.” Cal stopped a second. “I haven’t… I haven’t had a second to think about Erin since… since she…”
Pride struggled to dam Cal’s tears. Cat gave him another hug and found herself unable to let go.
“I need to call her life partner and offer condolences,” he said. “God, so much to do.”
He pulled away from her, took out a scrap of paper from his shirt pocket, and picked up the phone. “I’m hoping that since Seth and I kept our actual names, the rest of the guardians will also have kept theirs. Someone at the station looked up Tristan McLeod for me while I was being debriefed. He was my lieutenant in Aandor. We found one in Brooklyn that was the right age. If we can get Tristan back, it’ll help with the search for the rest. Heck, maybe we’ll catch a break and he’s raising the prince himself.”
The phone on the other end rang, and a woman picked up. Another wife that was about to have her world turned upside down, Cat thought. Cal introduced himself and asked to speak to Tristan. Then her husband’s face went ashen. “How?” he said. “I’m sorry for your loss,” he concluded, and hung up the phone.
Cal sat at the kitchen table in a daze, unaware that everyone was hanging on his next word.
“Cal?” Cat said, and placed her hand on his shoulder.
“Tristan was murdered two days ago,” Cal said. “A mugging gone bad.”
Cat looked to Lelani. The centaur was sad. She shook her head to say It wasn’t a mugging.
“I was alone before today,” Lelani said to Cal. “I had to make finding you and Seth my priorities.”
Cal looked at Seth with disgust. Cat was sure he’d trade him for this Tristan in a heartbeat.
“My God,” Cal said. “None of the others even know they’re being hunted by these psychopaths. They’re helpless. We’ve got to find them. Where do we even start?”
Lelani approached with a handful of maps. “Perhaps at the beginning,” she said. She opened a map of New York State. Notes, circles, equations, and runes were drawn throughout it. “The only way to travel between Branes is through lay lines, the rivers of magical energy that emanate from the core of the multiverse. In Aandor, magical energy moves similar to radio waves here. It’s in the air and everywhere where people attuned to it can access it. One cannot walk fifty yards without encountering a lay line, much like those Starbucks in Manhattan. Using magic on this earth is akin to a landline telephone. You have to find a line to tap into. They are spread miles apart. These energy lines vary in potency. Some are like rivers; some like streams, brooks, and so forth. The more energy that flows through a line, the easier and safer the transfer is between worlds.” Lelani pointed to a zone north of the city. “This was the point of entry for your group.”
“Dutchess County?” Cal said. “That’s about two hours’ drive from here. Is that where you came in?”
“No. Dorn may have posted guards at that transfer point. I used a smaller lay line running deep under Central Park. It was dangerous, but I was alone and thought I could navigate it. I would prefer not to use it again.”
“You think going back to the original transfer point up north will give us a lead?”
“More than that, my lord.”
Cat flinched as the horse-woman called Cal her lord. She looked for any sign of embarrassment in her husband’s face. He barely noticed it. The ten-year veteran of the NYPD-this pretender to peasantry-was at home at the top of the food chain. He had an air about him now, like he expected others to serve him and his cause. Cat didn’t like it.
“The last remaining magus on this earth resides somewhere near there,” Lelani said. “An old friend of Master Proust’s named Rosencrantz. He might know a way to give the others their memories back no matter where they are on this world. We should seek his aid.”
“Okay. That’s a start. What about you? You can’t travel looking-well, like you are now.”
“If I cast another illusion spell, I will deplete the last of my energy supplies. As I tried to explain earlier, bending photons is not simple. Illusion has a high-energy initiation cost.”
“Can you recharge at the lay line?”
“Yes… but should we encounter sorceries on the way…”
“Do it. There isn’t any choice.”
He was a soldier again, Cat concluded-a commander. Do it, he says, and he expected it done. Would this change the partnership they had created?
“We’re off to see the wizard, are we?” Cat said.
“Cat, I’ll drop you and Bree off at your mother’s…”
“I’m coming with you.”
“No.”
“I’m sorry. I meant, may I come with you… your lordship. ” Cat attempted a curtsy.
“Catherine…”
“Should I bend lower? This is my first curtsy.”
“It’s dangerous.”
“No fucking kidding, Cal. Did you think I didn’t notice the giant and the swordsman trying to cut our throats a few hours ago? Wizards and trolls? Where the hell is safe? You tell me.”
Cal pursed his lips into a tight line. He looked taller. More rigid. Confident. He was still the man she loved and still just as much of a stranger. She had always held more ground in the marriage. He had spoiled her with power. She was not used to butting heads on serious decisions. Cat wondered how he saw her now. Was it through a new spectrum… his mother, his sisters, the kaleidoscope of women from his past? She owed him a victory, or three, for years of acquiescing. But this would not be one of them. He had left his family once before and it cost him thirteen years of his life. Cat could not stand to lose Cal for thirteen years or thirteen minutes. He had accepted a piece of her soul on the day they exchanged vows, and he could not just disappear with it. She would defend it.
“Bree goes to Mom,” she said. “I go with you. Discussion closed.”
“Fine.”
“Hey, do I have to come?” Seth asked.
“Yes!” said the other three in unison.