Time Thief: A Time Thief Novel (37 page)

“But wouldn’t that person then be punished by your shuvani person?”

“Yes.” Peter’s fingers tightened into a fist. “That’s why there were all those deaths of apparently unrelated mortals.” He explained briefly that whenever a Traveller-related death had occurred, not long after a mortal died of an unknown cause.

“That’s just so heinous,” I said, feeling suddenly cold.

“It’s beyond heinous.”

“It’s also the perfect crime, so far as the Otherworld is concerned,” Gregory said. “By transferring the guilt to a mortal, William was absolved, and the mortal ultimately punished by the shuvani had no link to William.”

“That’s why we never had so much as a hint that a Traveller was involved in those collateral deaths,” Peter agreed. “I should have known the circumstances were too coincidental, though.”

“I don’t see how you could without knowing about the whipping boys,” Gregory commented mildly, then
nodded toward his uncle and cousin. “What do you want done with them? They should be coming around soon.”

Peter pulled out a couple of thin plastic ties. “Bind their hands with these and dump them in the back of my car. Dalton is on his way here now with a couple of members of the Watch. They’ll be taken into custody and tried for their crimes. Along with the magician who sold Andrew the glamour and whipping boys.”

Gregory took the ties. I twined my fingers through Peter’s while William and Andrew were restrained and hauled over to Peter’s car. Sunil said something about overseeing the maneuver, and followed Gregory.

“Wrap up another case for Detective Elizabeth Taylor Eyes. Um. Speaking of Dalton…did he mention anything about me?”

One side of Peter’s mouth twitched. “As a matter of fact, he gave me an earful about the deranged woman he met at a doctor’s office, and how she kept going on about him dying, and other impossible things. Just what did you say to him?”

I waved it away. “I’ll tell you later. But you do owe me something.”

He pulled me up against his chest, his breath hot on my mouth. “My thanks? A kiss? A session with Mr. Beefy?”

I giggled, and nipped his lower lip. “You have to tell me you love me. In front of witnesses.”

“I love you in front of witnesses,” he duly repeated, his lovely eyes dancing with amusement.

“Peter!”

He laughed. “Very well, my demanding one. I love you body and soul, heart and head, breath and…and…”

“Butt. Thank you.” I looked over to where Mrs. Faa’s RV sat. “You know, I think I’m going to break the cycle.”

“What cycle?” Peter asked.

“This whole Traveller thing. You’re absolutely right that it’s bad, and it’s time we helped it stop.” I marched over to the RV, and flung open the door, leaning in to yell into it, “I’m going to marry your grandson, Mrs. Faa. Just so you know. And if you are mean to any children we happen to have, I will personally…I will…well, I don’t know what I’d do, because I don’t believe in beating up old people, but you can just bet your silver dollars that it won’t be pleasant. You got that?”

Silence greeted me. I was about to close the door when she said, “Peter Faa bears my blood, as well as my Piotr’s. I will go forth to the Scarboro faire in two months’ time, and I will announce that he is a member of the family.”

“Good!” I said, slamming shut the door. I got a bit misty-eyed as I looked at Peter. “Your grandma loves you. Deep down, she loves you. Way, way, way deep down. I don’t suppose you’d like to go give her a kiss and tell her you forgive her?”

He looked down at me in horror. “Kiya—”

“Too soon? I kinda thought so. It’s OK, we’ll take baby steps. Her acknowledging you is a start. We’ll work on developing affection, and forgiving old hurts.”

He sighed, pulling me into a kiss. “I will put up with your machinations only because I want you happy, and I know how much you want a family. And because you’ll make my life a living hell if I don’t.”

“You got that right,” I said, nipping his lower lip before kissing him as he deserved to be kissed.

He pinched my behind, then went off to help Gregory
stuff the two men into the minivan Gregory had appropriated from his cousins. I stood watching Peter and Gregory working together, feeling that the future held more wonder than I ever imagined it could.

“Peter-ji is all right now, popsy?” a voice asked at my shoulder.

“Yes, he’s all right. We’ve just acquired a family,” I told Sunil’s light blob, smiling and stepping forward when Peter gestured for me. “And a very, very bright future.”

“S
o?”

Kiya met him at the door of his apartment. Her hair was pulled back in a businesslike ponytail. Peter disliked businesslike hair, especially on his warm, delicious wife of three months. In her arms was a soft towel, and snuggled into the towel was a tiny, wet, wiggling potato.

“Is that a puppy?” he asked, squinting at it. “Or a larva?”

Her nostrils flared in that delightful way she had. “Of course it’s a puppy! It’s number two, actually. April is doing just fine, although she has another puppy to go. Speaking of which, I’d better get back to her and make sure that she and Dumas are OK.”

“Dumas?” he asked, following her as she hurried to one of the spare bedrooms, which April, the rescue pug he’d given Kiya for her birthday, had claimed as her boudoir. They hadn’t known when they adopted the little pug that she was pregnant, but Kiya had taken that news in stride.

“That’s what I named puppy number one. I thought we’d name this little girl Lenore, after your grandma. Do you think she’d like that? Mrs. Faa, not the puppy. And what did the Watch overlord thingie say?”

Kiya knelt by the wooden whelping box she’d managed to borrow from a dog rescue organization, gently placing the small squirming larva next to the fawn and black pug. April’s curled tail thumped a few times as he knelt next to her, groaning as he rubbed her tiny little black ears. “They said yes.”

“Now you see, April, Daddy is home, and you can stop fretting and just have that last puppy that the vet says you have in there, so that we can get you cleaned up and made more comfy.” Kiya froze for a second, and looked up at him, an expression of mingled surprise and joy on her face. “They said yes?”

“They did.” He touched the two minute puppies with a finger, guiding the smaller of the two to April’s teat. The puppy grunted in happiness.

“They really said yes? They’re going to reinstate Sunil?”

“Resurrect him is more appropriate a term. The L’au-dela committee and head of the Watch authorized the funds to hire a necromancer to locate and resurrect Sunil’s remains in recognition for his assistance in the capture of a serial mortal-murderer.”

She clasped her hands for a second, then, with a stifled yell of joy, threw herself on him and kissed his nose and chin and left cheek before he finally got her positioned properly so that she was kissing his mouth. “So he’s going to be a ghost?”

“No. He’ll be a lich, but one who is not bound to anyone.”

“A free-range lich!” She kissed him again, then asked, just as he knew she would, “What’s a lich?”

He laughed, filled with more happiness than he thought possible. “Kind of a revenant. One that doesn’t crave flesh, though.”

“Woot! He’ll be so happy. Have you told him yet?” Kiya glowed with happiness, the soft look of admiration in her eyes warming him more than anything else in the world.

“Not yet. I thought I’d wait until he’s back from his visit to Versailles.”

She glanced down at the dog. “Well, that should only be a few more hours. April should have her last puppy soon, and then Mr. Afraid of Blood and Birthing Juices can come home.”

“This also means that Sunil will be able to testify at William’s and Andrew’s trials next month,” he told her, settling with her on his lap, one hand still petting the pug’s head. “Animi are excluded from testimony, since they are bound to an individual, and thus their testimony could be rendered false by command of the person to whom they are bound, but an unbound lich is able to appear before the committee and testify as needed.”

“Ha! That means Sunil can tell the jury about all the stuff that he overheard William saying. And what he heard from the magician. This is awesome, Peter! With Gregory, you, and now Sunil testifying, they won’t have a chance to get off. Did you see Gregory at the Watch place?”

“I did. He sends his regards. He starts training next month. Dalton said that if all goes well, he will be able to shadow me in about two months.”

“The Faa cousins, defenders of the universe,” Kiya said, obviously pleased by that thought. “You know, if you guys ever wanted to go freelance, you could make a detective agency or something.”

“Actually, we talked about something like that.”

Her eyes opened wide. “You’re going to become a private eye? Won’t Dalton be pissed?”

“We talked about joining forces to bring the Travellers into the twenty-first century.” He looked out the window at the late-summer sunlight. The world did seem to be a brighter place now that Kiya filled his life. But there were still dark things out there, battles yet to be won. And for the first time in his life, he wasn’t going to have to face them alone. “We’re going to talk to the rest of our cousins. Others have to feel as we do. If we can band together, perhaps we can change the Traveller society, one family at a time.”

“You really are a hero,” Kiya said with one of those admiring looks that made him feel like a superman. “Everything turned out just perfect! Gregory will join the Watch and help you make Travellers less asshatty, Sunil will have his body back, Dalton is alive again, Mrs. Faa is going to tell all the other Travellers that we’re not stinky and untouchable, and your uncle and bastard cousin will get what they have coming to them.”

She leaned back against him, a solid presence that gave him more pleasure than he had ever thought possible.

“Yes,” he said into her hair, giving himself up to the wonder that was this new life. “Everything is perfect.”

From the
Otherworld Encyclopedia
, your source to all things beyond the mortal world

The Travellers are a mortal race that possesses immortal abilities. They live predominately in Europe, the Americas, and Australasia, and can trace their ancestry back to 500 AD.

TERMINOLOGY

Travellers are most often confused by the mortal world as being Romany (and thus frequently given the exonym of
Gypsies
), but that is a misconception that in part owes its origins to the shared term “Traveller” as a descriptor for both groups. We shall henceforth refer to the mortal beings as “Romani” and “Rom” in order to avoid any confusion.

Although it is unknown at what point the Travellers began to refer to themselves by that name, they have long claimed that the term is used to distinguish themselves from indigenous peoples, since their sense of cultural identity is strong, and thus it is very important to delineate
which people were members of their societal structure (Travellers), and which were outsiders (gadjos).

There is speculation that classifying individuals has less to do with culture and more to do with identifying suitable prey, but modern-day Travellers dismiss this idea.

ORIGINS

While it is true that Travellers and the Rom share an origin in the Indian subcontinent around 500 AD, the two peoples separated early in their respective developments. Where the Romany people spread out from India to Europe, western Asia, and northern Africa, the Travellers migrated in waves toward eastern and central Europe. It is believed that by 800 AD, the Travellers had completed their separation from the Romany peoples, in large part due to the Travellers’ discovery of abilities concerning the manipulation of time.

Certainly by 900 AD there are mentions in early Otherworld journals of
“travaillour theofs”
being prosecuted for thefts committed upon various members of the newly formed L’au-dela, as seen in this translation of an entry by the Dresden Watch dated 28 January 909:

SOCIETY AND TRADITIONAL CULTURE

One reason why many mortals confuse Travellers with Romany people is the similarity of their mobile lifestyle. Travellers seldom settled in any one location until recent times, preferring instead a nomadic life, one in which they were not bound to any land or country.

This insistence on retaining autonomy naturally has led to strong familial ties, to the point where
gadjos
—outsiders, or nonfamily—are excluded from all but the most trivial of matters.

This sense of familial containment is frequently accompanied by ostracism by both mortals and immortals alike, the former because of their incorrect belief that Travellers are Gypsies, and the latter because of an awareness of the Travellers’ abilities. Outright persecution against all Travellers within the Otherworld is a thing of the past, but recent records of the L’au-dela Watch indicate that a higher percentage of Travellers are convicted of theft than any other ethnic group within the Otherworld.

With regard to their culture itself, Travellers favor the color red, as it is perceived of being the color of luck. The concept of luck is most vital to Travellers, since they believe it influences their temporal abilities in either a positive or negative capacity. As the traditional Traveller proverb says, “All I need is good luck. With luck I would not mind sitting on two horses at once that were walking on a bent road.” Scholars have long debated what such a confusing proverb means, with theories varying from a reference to the long-suspected Traveller ability to be at two places at once via time manipulation, to the more commonplace belief that this proverb, like all other
known Traveller proverbs, is an inside joke intended to confuse and bewilder outsiders.

Travellers have an almost dragonlike fondness for gold, although they hold little value for other precious metals, feeling that anything but gold is unlucky. They are also reportedly believers in a unique form of karma, and believe that to take time from another without paying for it will result in much bad luck, the degree of which varies depending upon the quantity of time taken. The payment for time is usually made in silver, not gold, as silver is considered suitable only for gadjos.