Girls Can't Be Knights: (Spirit Knights Book 1) (3 page)

They kept going and going. The city thinned into suburbs, then they turned down a street and saw nothing but trees and shrubs. Tariel sped up again, turning down another street. From there, they took an unpaved road that led to a faded red house squatting among the trees with an ancient white truck parked in front of it. Well-tended gravel paths led deeper into the property. Scalloped white trim and a tidy flower and herb garden created the impression of a welcoming, friendly farmhouse.

When Tariel stopped next to the truck, Justin helped Claire climb off the horse, then hopped down beside her. “Welcome to the Brady Farm.”

“It kinda reminds me of the place where I grew up,” Claire said with a wistful sigh.

Justin smacked Tariel on the rump. “I’ll be out later,” he told the horse. Giving Claire a smile, he held out his hand. “Can I have the hat back?”

“Oh, yeah. Sorry.” She shoved it at him, and he took it. “What do you farm here?”

“Me? Nothing.” He beckoned for her to follow him down the path to the left. “The in-laws keep goats and pigs and chickens, and they grow vegetables. If you go a short way from the house, you’ll run into an apple orchard, and there’s a cranberry bog and a blueberry thicket.” They passed through a clearing with an old, dead stump in the center and a lean-to against the wall of the farmhouse filled with neatly stacked firewood. An axe lay under it, and a few dozen logs still in need of splitting had been left in a pile.

Beyond the clearing was a smaller house, this one painted green with bright white trim. It had its own garden, with orange flowers around the edge and most of the plants cut back. Claire guessed they’d been vegetables until a recent harvest. Justin led her to the door and wiped his boots on the mat before walking in without knocking.

“Come on in,” he said, holding the door for her. She entered a small mud room and slipped her cheap old sneakers off while Justin unlaced his boots and left them behind. He hung his cloak on one hook and his sword belt on the next. The hat went on the same hook as the cloak. He opened the inner door for her. “I’m home,” he called through it. “I brought a guest.”

They walked into a tiny kitchen made smaller by a round table with four chairs in the middle of it. Claire figured the scratched and dented white appliances must be older than her, and the decorating too. Peeling pale yellow wallpaper with a tiny, dingy white, heart pattern clashed with the brown and white linoleum and the white-speckled, golden-yellow countertop. When it had all been new, it had probably matched and created a pleasantly warm room.

No wall divided the kitchen from the family room. The linoleum stopped and beige carpet began, the wallpaper stopped and wood paneling began. A sagging brown couch sat opposite a boxy TV resting on stacked metal milk crates whose open sides served double duty as bookshelves. Fuzzy pink blankets lay everywhere, along with pink and lavender dolls and stuffed animals. Two young girls erupted from the explosion of girly toys, both in homemade, satiny princess dresses, and ran to Justin.

Claire noticed pictures on the walls of these two girls and of the beautiful woman who walked in through the door leading deeper into the house. The family portrait, with Justin sitting and holding his daughters close while his wife hugged his shoulders from behind, struck her heart. She remembered a similar picture on her family’s wall, a photo she no longer had. The sight of it made her rub a thumb over her locket.

Justin picked up both girls, one in each arm. “This is Claire. Tariel found her, and she needs a place to stay tonight. Claire, this is Missy.” He nodded to the toddler with white-blonde curly hair. “And Lisa.” The older girl also had blonde hair, in waves instead of curls. “And this is Marie, my wife.” Like Justin, Marie didn’t seem old enough to have two kids, a house, and responsibilities. At most, Justin couldn’t be older than twenty-five, and his wife had to be younger than that.

“Goodness.” Her face drawn with concern, Marie went to Claire and put an arm around her shoulders. Wisps of platinum-blonde hair that had escaped from her ponytail brushed against Claire’s cheek. “Had a rough day, it looks like. Let’s get you cleaned up.”

Marie’s concern made everything hurt again. Claire’s leg throbbed, her hands stung, and her eyes ached. She nodded and let Marie escort her to a bathroom in the back. After pulling out some towels, bandages, and ointment, Marie left her alone in the tiny room. She shut the door, leaving Claire staring at herself in the mirror. The smeared makeup and blood made her look like a strung-out tramp. Panic warred with hope in her mind and both tangled with confusion. How did today turn into this? What would tomorrow be like? She had no idea.

It would take an awful lot of soap to wash all this away.

Chapter 4

Justin

“Daddy, will you play?” Missy leaned against his shoulder.

Lisa wriggled to get down. “We’re having a tea party.”

Justin crouched and set Lisa’s feet on the floor. Two years ago, when Lisa turned three and Missy joined the family, he resigned himself to tea parties, unicorns, princesses, and pink. Any other day, he’d accept the invitation and enjoy the time with his daughters. “Sorry, I can’t right now.” Pulling Missy away from him required firm conviction and not looking at her big eyes and skilled pout. “I have to go see Kurt, and then I have to change out of my armor.”

Missy sniffled, signaling the start of a bout of fake crying that he didn’t have time to deal with right now. “Daddy, play,” she whined.

Fixing his attention on Lisa as he pried the toddler from his side, he sighed. “Can I count on you both to help me out with something important?”

Missy stopped pouting and set her feet on the floor, gazing at him with interest and adoration. Lisa perked up and gave him her attention too.

He smiled at them both. “Claire is sad right now because some bad things happened to her this morning. If she comes out before I’m back, can you see what you can do to cheer her up a little?”

“Yes, Daddy.” Both girls gave him solemn nods.

“I knew I could count on you.” He pulled a glove off and tousled Missy’s hair. Marie had returned to working on dinner and he went to her side. Leaning in to kiss her cheek, he told her, “I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

Marie nodded. “Who is she?”

“A kid I found in Portland who needed help. She can sleep on the couch tonight.”

“Jay,” Marie said with a frown in her voice, “you can’t just pick up stray teenagers and bring them home. She’s not a puppy.”

“Tariel found her. I can’t explain why, but I feel like I have a connection to her somehow.”

She took her attention away from the bowl she’d been whisking and gave him a mild look of concern and suspicion. “Oh. Really.”

He snorted, then kissed her ear and brushed it with his nose. “Not like that. More like kinship: a sister or a daughter. Besides, she’s maybe fifteen, and I’ve already got plenty of woman right here.” He rubbed her butt and brushed his thigh against hers.

“Mmhmm.” She turned and kissed his nose. “Make sure you remember that, Sir Knight.”

“Yes, My Lady.”

She nudged him away with her hip. “Go on, Kurt is waiting.”

He pushed his leg against her, unwilling to leave yet. Holding her cheek, he kissed her. She deserved to be kissed, often and with interest. He offered it as a small token of his appreciation whenever he could. Besides, Kurt
could
wait and so could the rest of the world.

Marie broke it off before he wanted her to and smiled at him. “You’re forgiven. Get moving. Dinner will be ready in half an hour.”

He brushed his thumb down her cheek and grinned, pleased to have put that sparkle in her eyes. After slipping on rubber boots in the mud room, he grabbed the hat and jogged up the gravel path, then through the wood chopping clearing. Instead of heading to the farmhouse, he plunged into the trees. Stupid bad luck made him need a quiet, forested spot to go see Kurt. He hopped over bulging roots and skirted shallow mud pits with practiced ease.

Five minutes of jogging later, he stopped beside an old sycamore with a tattered yellow ribbon hanging from the lowest branch. The place had proven perfect every time, and he’d tied that ribbon five years ago himself. Back then, he’d wandered for hours to reach a spot that worked for him. Now, he’d been here so many times he could find it blindfolded.

Holding his hand out, he took a deep breath and let the rich, earthy scent of the dirt, moss, and trees wash over him. With a tiny effort of will, he flexed his fingers open in a sharp movement and watched as the expected small white spark flared into existence two feet in front of him. It grew until it filled his vision, then he stepped forward.

His rubber boot hit stone and his vision cleared to show him the Palace. This room, with a battered old armchair and thick mattress on a cot, belonged to him. No one else could ever enter it unless he allowed them to. So he’d been told, anyway, and nothing had ever proved that wrong. He checked the shelves lining the wall and found everything in order. To be on the safe side, he always kept a change of clothes, a spare pair of boots, and a stack of books here.

Not caring about leaving muddy tracks on the woven rug and stone floor, he crossed the room to the main door and strode out into the hallway. Doors lined the stone corridor, each made of something different. His happened to be sycamore wood, with the number 557 burned into it and painted with silver. The door opposite had been assembled from old car parts; Mr. 556 had found his doorway in a junkyard.

In something of a hurry, Justin jogged up the hall to the central hub of the dormitory wing and hopped down the stairs to the fourth floor. Kurt lived in number 462, behind yellow aluminum siding with cedar shingles. The lucky bastard had found his doorway for the first time inside his own house.

Justin rapped on the door and tossed it open. “I got the hat.”

“Come in, come in,” Kurt wheezed from around the corner.

All the rooms in the dormitory had the same flag shape and size, and the same stone floors and walls. The old man sat in his wide, reclining chair, covered by a blanket. When Justin, then a fresh-faced, eighteen-year-old idiot, had first met Kurt, the older man had already slowed down and couldn’t do the job anymore. Over the years, he’d shriveled and lost mobility. He lived here permanently now. His children and grandchildren could have taken him in, but he preferred not to be a burden on them while he waited to die.

Justin brought the hat to the frail old man’s side and set it on his hand. “I think they want it back.”

“They can have it when I’m gone,” Kurt sneered. He clasped the brim with gnarled fingers and closed his eyes with a sigh. “My poor Emmy.” His shaking arm lifted the hat to his nose and he inhaled deeply. “It still smells like her. She used lavender soap on her hair. Anna went and gave it away without even asking me.”

Justin crouched at Kurt’s side and patted his knee. “I’m sure she thought she was doing the right thing. Why’d you want it now, though? It’s been there for a while.”

Kurt sighed and sniffed the hat again. “I want to make an illusion of her before I go, of how she looked when I first met her. All I can remember of her is a saggy old broad that smelled like cookies. But what a gorgeous dame she was back then. That Liz Taylor tramp couldn’t even come close to my Emmy. None of those movie star hussies could.”

“She sounds like a knockout.”

“Damned straight, she’d knock you out. Leave you lying on your rump for a day with how stunning she was.”

Chuckling, Justin stood up. “I’ve got to get back. We’ve got company tonight. Keep the hat as long as you like.”

“Not as if you could take it from me, you hulking brute.”

“Nope, I sure couldn’t. You’d throw me over your knee and give me a spanking for even trying.”

“You know it, boy, and don’t you forget it.”

Chapter 5

Claire

If she stopped to think, Claire might wind up crying in the bathtub. She tossed her shirt at the door and washed her face and all the scratches and scrapes. When she checked herself in the mirror again, after using soap and hot water, her face seemed plain and ordinary. This was the Claire who woke up every morning and sat down and tried to change herself with makeup. Why did she do that? Her shrink might say she didn’t like Ordinary Claire for some reason. Exotic Claire was more interesting, more mysterious, more capable of punching stupid boys in the face for being jerks.

Someone knocked on the door. “Are you okay in there?” Marie’s muffled voice held genuine concern.

“I dunno.” The words slipped out of her mouth. She wanted to take them back. “I mean, yeah.”

After a long pause, Marie said, “I can wash the blood out of everything. Just bring it to the kitchen. I’m leaving a spare shirt hanging on the doorknob.”

“Okay, thanks. I’ll be out in a minute.” She realized that a small place like this probably only had the one cramped bathroom, and she’d been tying it up for the past ten or fifteen minutes. They had a training potty in here with the toilet, and a toddler out there who might need to use it at any moment. She rubbed her face with the towel and opened the door a crack to grab the fresh shirt to throw it on. Unwilling to leave a mess, she picked up after herself, carrying the dirty shirt and towel out.

Back in the family room, she found Justin sitting on the couch with his daughters on his lap, wearing a faded green T-shirt instead of his armor. Lisa held a pink book with sparkly blue lettering up for him, and he read it to them in an animated voice, telling them about a kitten’s misadventure with a ball of yarn. Bespelled by the sight, she stopped and leaned against the wall, listening to his baritone voice rumble the words of a story he couldn’t possibly be interested in. Like her father had done for her and her little brother.

Marie took the towel and shirt, breaking the spell and causing Claire to follow the older woman into the kitchen. Marie tucked the bundle in a corner and pulled a pot out of a cabinet. “Are you allergic to any foods?” She set the pot in the sink and turned the water on to fill it.