The Twins of Noremway Parish (30 page)

“
He looks like such a jolly old man,” Decon said and laughed. Plague joined in the laughter. “Oh, it’s so great to finally have those twins separated! I’ll tell you, there is not a better feeling.”

“
I can imagine,” said Plague. “When Pamela and I first found out we were going to have our little Nora, she was initially quite scared, but after several months we couldn’t imagine not having this child in our lives.” He stopped, choking on emotion. The thoughts of Pamela’s death haunted him. “I failed her,” he said and broke down. He didn’t need to explain to Decon what he meant; he knew. He had comforted Plague throughout the whole ordeal, and so had Teret. She even helped care for Nora when she was young.

“
Isn’t it amazing meeting you two here?” Franz Phoenix said, coming up to their table. Next to him was a bald man in a grey and green cloak. Decon didn’t recognize him, but Plague jumped at the sight of him.

“
Who are you?” he asked

“
This is my new deputy. His name is Zuriz Falcon.”

“
How do you do?” Falcon said with a little bow.

“
You two have met?” Decon asked.

“
I don’t know. He seems familiar.” Plague sat back down and motioned the two men to join them. “Franz, where did this guy come from?” And without giving the sheriff a chance to answer, “Falcon, where did you come from?”

“
Bassingway Parish, of course,” Falcon said with a smile. “My wife died and I decided it was time to leave it all behind me. I came here and a funny thing happened: your deputy died. I thought to myself ‘You know, I could be a deputy’. So I spoke to the chancellor, and then I met with Franz over a couple of glasses of apple beer. Delicious stuff, if I you allow me to say so.”

“
Welcome to the parish,” Decon said and held out his hand. Falcon smiled when he grabbed the friar’s hand. Decon felt a surge that he would have thought of as “electricity” if he had known about such a thing.

Falcon smiled again. It was a Joker-like grin spreading from ear to ear. “So the twins are separated, huh?”

“
Excuse me?” Decon said.

“
Julian and Gaylen–lovely names.”

“
How did you know—?”

Franz Phoenix spoke up. “I told him, of course. The twins have been the talk of the parish.”

“
But we never told anyone their names.”

“
Oh, you told me,” Phoenix said. “Otherwise, how would I have known when I spoke to Falcon?”

Peyton Morgan came back with two apple beers and asked the sheriff and his new deputy if they wanted anything, then he headed back to the bar to fill their orders.

“
I love this place,” Phoenix said. Peyton came by and dropped off his drink. He was smiling, likely because he heard the sheriff’s praise.

Franz took a large mouthful of apple beer and swallowed it quickly. “You know, with that eye patch, you look like a pirate when you drink,” Falcon said with a laugh. None of the other people at the table laughed, but Phoenix retorted that it was a lame joke that not only didn’t make sense (he asked “what is a ‘pirate’?”), but it had already been used. Wasn’t that the first thing he had said to him? Or at least one of the first things?

“
Think of a new joke, man,” he said. Falcon, remarkably, looked hurt. “Anyway, the twins–they’re separated?”

“
Aye, of course. Just this afternoon,” said Plague.

Franz looked over to Falcon then back to Decon and Plague. “Be seeing the both of you. Brother, Doctor.”

Decon and Plague watched as Phoenix and Falcon walked out of the pub. “What do you think that was about?” Decon asked.

“
Not sure. They have some interest in the twins, it would appear.”

“
Aye, no doubt.”

***

That night, the chancellor stood on the portico outside his house, smoking a cigar. He loved the sweet taste of a cigar on a moonlit night. The stars burned brilliantly against the blackness. He drew in a fresh breath of the night air, and knew immediately that the cigar’s exquisite taste couldn’t come close to rivaling it. Another thing that he loved, but would never admit to anyone but himself, was the fact that during the past week, Rita Morgan had all but locked herself away. She hadn’t come out of her house to make a peep or complaint to anyone about anything.

As he thought about the majestic beauty of life, a man emerged from the darkness.

“
Hello, Franz,” the chancellor said, recognizing his visitor. “Sorry about your face.”

“
No worries,” Phoenix said. “I just need to talk. Listen, the twins. We weren’t supposed to allow them to be separated. What are we going to do?”

Urey thought for a moment. He wasn’t sure what orders they had been given. For the life of him, he couldn’t remember what had occurred in the Waterman House where they had apparently received this order. He barely had memories of the fact he was a werewolf, or a Great Wolf, or whatever the correct term was. He was as in the dark as a lowly speck of dust against the backdrop of the night. “Makes no difference, Franz,” he said.

“
I suppose that’s true.”

The sheriff left and the chancellor continued smoking his cigar and tugging on his beard. Something about the brief exchange just didn’t seem right.

Then a voice from the darkness spoke in answer to his thoughts as if reading them. His light-sensitive eyes picked up one of the imps. The voice was mocking. “He’s trying to run you down, Urey. Are you going to let him?”

“
I’m sorry, what?”

“
Oh, he knows now that you’re in control. I think you proved that when you nearly tore his face off.”

“
Do you have a reason to be talking to me, imp? If not, leave me to my cigar.”

“
I forget my manners. I just wanted to inform you about the situation concerning the twins. We are ready to take them. Falcon is weak–he will always be weak. He isn’t the father we wanted. The twins though, now they have potential. Ah, yes.”

The chancellor puffed on his cigar and gave his beard a healthy tug.

“
But they have been separated, I hear.”

“
It matters not. Just bring them to me. Certainly at least one can be turned to the Darkness. The other will just as soon be discarded.”

“
When do you want them?”

Chapter 20

Over the next several weeks, the twins of Noremway Parish were cared for in their respective homes. Nurses from Plague’s Lair cared for the children as Decon and Teret went about their daily responsibilities. Decon continued to teach Noremway Parish’s religious heritage in the cathedral as Teret Finley taught the history in the schoolhouse. They were apart during the day, but their separation was temporary as they came back together at night, under Teret Finley’s roof.

This continued for weeks and, as it did, Teret and Decon, who were already close, felt the bond between them strengthen.

As they grew closer, the public perception in the parish grew more suspicious of their actions.
The friar and the parochial vicar are having an affair
, was the scuttlebutt of the town. Posters displayed on various buildings on official parchment and fliers distributed to residences all said similar things. They just wanted to get away from it all.

“
How are your eyes?” Decon said out of the blue one day, referring to the “time travel” incident.

“
Fine,” she said.

“
Your eyes,” he said looking into them with a smile, “are magical.”

“
As strange as that sounds, I think you’re right,” she with a laugh, and he joined her. “Unfortunately, it’s nothing I can control. If I could, I would go back to that place with you right now. We’d take the twins and leave everything else and never come back.”

One couldn’t blame her for wanting to leave all this behind. All the talk about how they were violating their sacred oaths was becoming more visceral. Day by day, the hate seemed to mount.

Even the chancellor paid them a visit one day to inquire about their affair.

“
I’m not accusing, I’m just warning you to be careful. People think what they want, and if there is a grain of truth in this, someone will discover the evidence and use it against you. People are calling for heads to roll, and witches to burn. We can’t have Noremway Parish’s two religious leaders compromised by something like this.” Then the chancellor was on his way. Decon and Teret looked at each other, disgusted with the chancellor. They couldn’t tell him how angry they were with him because that would be akin to admitting guilt, just as he couldn’t tell
them
that he was a werewolf.

“
If it’s such a problem, change the damn law,” Decon said to the chancellor’s back as he walked away.

“
Nothing simple is ever simple,” Teret said. No aphorism held more truth than that.

In the cathedral and schoolhouse, Decon and Teret began facing challenges to their authority justified by the accusation that they had violated their oaths. No one seemed to think about the twins, the well-being of these children with two parents who loved each other. What was wrong with that?

“
Traditions be damned!” the friar exclaimed to the empty cathedral after a particularly hostile service. In their minds they hadn’t done anything besides love each other and love their children.

Being the authorities on
The Book of Ragas
, they would be the ones to know if there was any true religious prohibition concerning friars and parochial vicars having intimate relationships. Neither Decon nor Teret were aware of any such prohibition within the book itself. It was just something that had fallen into practice over the years, and something strictly under the control of the chancellor (although he probably was unaware of this fact). Possibly just the fact that friars and parochial vicars kept their private and their public lives strictly separate had something to do with it. A precedent rather than a commandment; something the chancellor could easily over turn.

Why didn’t the chancellor quell these rumors or overturn the law? He could remind everyone that Decon and Teret were raising these twins together because that was what was best for them. As far as a blossoming relationship went, it was no one’s business but their own, and they would come clean about it as soon as they figured out a way to make it socially acceptable. At this point it wasn’t, and with the hysteria surrounding even the idea of it, he didn’t see acceptance coming anytime soon. Couldn’t they just raise these children in peace?

Any illusions they had about keeping the fact that they were truly physically intimate under wraps flew out the window when it became apparent that Teret, while wearing her figure-hugging suit, was with child.

***

Night after night, the chancellor continued the secretive late night chats with the imps. It was always the same thing: get the twins. He hadn’t had any transformations into a werewolf in a while, and he hoped that maybe it was a thing of the past.

“
Chancellor,” came a rasping whisper emanating from the dark, startling him as he smoked a cigar outside on the portico.

The chancellor just had to know, so he asked, “Am I cured?”

“
Cured?” the imp asked. “Cured of what?”

“
Being a werewolf.”

“
There is no cure. You do not have a disease. It is as much of a disease as being human or an imp. You just are. That is all you can ask for. You are the Great Wolf, leader of the wolves. It is a gift, not a disease.”

***

At Teret Finley’s house, Julian and Gaylen were lying on a small blanket on the floor, both nearly completely recovered from the ordeal of the separation. Decon laughed as he tickled Julian, watching him squirm and smile his toothless grin. The red poof of hair was matted against his head, but he imagined Julian wearing a long mane of red locks as an adult, just as Ragas had. Teret pinched Gaylen’s cheeks and tickled underneath his chin, and told him he was the best baby in the world. He giggled excessively, which made her smile. She kissed his forehead. “You are so good with him,” Decon said, honestly impressed at her maternal instinct. She smiled but didn’t say anything. She didn’t need to; her eyes said it all.

“
I should probably go. It’s getting late,” he said. Indeed, it was getting very late. “I should go before I end up walking in the dark among the wolves.”

“
In that case, you’re staying,” Teret said. “What? Don’t give me that look. You aren’t taking Julian out there when the wolves are around. What kind of mother do you think I am?”

“
A better question is ‘what kind of father does that make me?’ That is a wonderful point, darling, and I’m embarrassed I didn’t consider it. I’m a preacher from the pulpit. I can talk the talk but—”

“
You’re too hard on yourself.” She kissed him. They were sitting on the floor together, the twins in front of them. As they kissed, her fingers stroked his leg just above his knee and they slowly moved up his inner thigh.

“
I say we put the kids to bed and then…” he trailed off.

“
There’s something I need to talk to you about, Decon, and I don’t want you to hate me.”

“
What is it? I could never…why would you say that?”

“
I’m pregnant.”