The River of No Return by Bee Ridgway (mobi ebook reader .txt) 📗

supernatural. The relationship of interdependence, of mutual debt, between human beings and the unknown. Gods, or ancestors, or even the future. So, like, yin-yang is that kind of talisman. Or like when a fairy gives you a magical jewel in exchange for your baby.”

Miss Blomgren shook her head slowly. “Do not go all fairies and warlocks on me, Peter. I can’t take it.”

“No.” The girl put up a hand. “Stop treating me like a child and listen. A tally is a calculation of human debt. A talisman is one half of a magical deal between humans and otherness. The talisman that we see and can hold might be a word or a symbol or a stone or something. The other half is usually your soul or your firstborn child or something really horrifying like that.”

Julia swallowed; her throat was so dry it was painful. A talisman. A magical character. A mark, a stamp, a representation. A symbol. But . . . she was just a young woman from Devon. She wasn’t one half of a deal with the devil.

For her part, Miss Blomgren shook her head. “I need to wake these two girls up and get on with my day, Peter. We’re done here.”

Peter grabbed Miss Blomgren’s hand as she moved away. “When we’re looking for the Talisman, we’re looking for half of something. At least get that through your head. Something that’s been torn or broken. Some sort of relic of a really intense debt that was never paid, and so now the Pale is coming to kill us all. Who knows what the hell this Talisman is—but I bet you when we find it, it has a jagged edge.”

* * *

Julia would have reversed time as she had when Eamon tried to kill her and started it again a few seconds before Peter had appeared in the room. But for some reason Miss Blomgren and Peter didn’t think to do that. They got back into the positions they had been in when Miss Blomgren first froze time, and then Miss Blomgren started it up again. Julia did her best to come to life as if in mid-gesture, but she felt very awkward. Luckily she had been feeling very awkward before, when all she knew about Miss Blomgren was that she was Nick’s lover. Now she knew much, much more, and was even less confident about what steps she should take. Meanwhile, Miss Blomgren explained to Julia and Bella that “Petra” was a servant who had thought it would be a good joke to dress up and surprise her mistress; she had snuck in the door. Hadn’t the girls heard her enter? No? Well, Petra was a tricky one.

Peter, much less gracefully, played the part of the contrite subordinate and left as quickly as she had arrived, but using her feet and the door this time.

When Peter was gone, Miss Blomgren didn’t mention tea and lemon cake again, nor did she try to hide that she was suddenly in a bad mood. “Time for you to go,” she said, and made short work of bustling Julia and Bella out of her house. Bella protested—it wasn’t fair that she should be shut away from friendships because of inane social conventions, she didn’t mind that Miss Blomgren was Nick’s mistress, in fact, Alva could marry Nick, and become respectable!

Miss Blomgren became quite short with Bella then, and scolded her. “You are hurting Julia’s feelings, Lady Arabella. You have said that she is in love with your brother. Not only that, but you are being rude to me.”

“Rude? How?” Bella protested as she and Julia and Solvig were propelled up the basement stairs.

“I have made it clear that I cannot be your friend, my lady, and you persist in pursuing an unwanted connection.” Miss Blomgren got them down the hallway and out of the front door. “Go and do not come back.” She stood with her hands on her hips.

Bella lifted a tragic face to her idol. “I am sorry,” she said. “I enjoyed talking to you so much that day when we met. You told me you believed in education and equality. And I wanted . . .” She stopped, unable to continue.

At that Miss Blomgren’s face softened. “I know, my dear,” she said gently. “But dreams and reality are at odds in this case. You are a lady and I am the opposite. It is the way of the Natural world. I wish you all the very best, and I hope that you find what you crave. Now good-bye.” She turned and disappeared inside her house, the door snapping shut behind her.

Bella turned to Julia, her face red. “I am mortified,” she said. “I had no idea. And I liked her so much. It is unfair!”

Julia put her arm around her shoulder. “Hush,” she said. “She was right, you know, to turn us out. But I am glad you brought me to meet her.”

“Even though she is Nick’s mistress? You seemed horrified.”

“It is the way of the Natural world.” Julia smiled at her friend.

“You would just accept that? A man with a mistress?”

“That is not what I said.” Julia squeezed Bella’s shoulders and grieved for the look of confusion in her friend’s eyes. The gulf between them was widening. Poor, hungry Bella had been entirely unaware of the feast that Julia had just attended; Julia had learned more from Alva and Peter in fifteen minutes than she had in an entire lifetime. And Bella, who craved nothing more than knowledge and freedom, had been frozen stiff.

Naturals, Guild, Ofans. It was beginning to make a crazy sort of sense. Ofans could travel in time. Members of the Guild probably could, too. Julia felt the thrill down her limbs, the rushing in her head; so could she. She knew it. She could feel that she could, if only she knew how.

As for Nick, what was he? He was partly Guild, for he was bound in some relationship to Lebedev. But Alva was Ofan, and she knew Nick. She