He squeezed her hands. “No matter what.”
She released his hands again and smiled. “That makes me feel much better. But we have to leave here. It’s too dangerous to stay. The demon will be tracking you, and you can’t wait around for it to find you. Besides, we have to discover if there is any way we can help Phryne. Do you have an idea how we might do that?”
“I don’t. I just know we have to try. Pogue Kray wanted me to search for Hadrian Esselline to make sure he helps us defend Declan Reach, but Aislinne told me she would send Brickey instead. She said nothing I say or do will persuade somebody like Esselline to honor a promise to a dead man, but Brickey is from that country and might have better luck. I think what you and I should do is go to the Elves and speak before the High Council about what’s happened with Phryne.”
“Better start by speaking with the Orullians,” she said. “They might be able to give us a better idea of what we’re walking into. Even if we can’t do anything about Phryne right away, we need to make sure the Queen listens to what we have to say about the Drouj. She won’t ignore the threat of an invasion, no matter the extent of her complicity in the killing of the King. She’s in as much danger as everyone else.”
Pan nodded, rising. “Let’s pack and leave.”
They set about the task of preparing for their departure, stuffing their backpacks with clothes, tying on rolled-up blankets, and adding medicines and weapons from Panterra’s locker. Preferring not to return to her own house, Prue selected clothes from the extras she always kept at Pan’s cottage. Her parents might have returned from their travels by now, but as yet they knew nothing about what had happened to her. If they saw her eyes, their reaction would be much worse than Pan’s. They would pull her from the Tracker ranks in a millisecond, no matter how hard she tried to explain things. Better that they remain ignorant of everything for a little while longer.
“I don’t like doing this,” Pan said at one point. “Deceiving your parents feels wrong.”
He paused. “Of course, telling them the truth doesn’t feel like the right thing, either.”
She stopped what she was doing and looked him in the eye. “I’ve been a Tracker long enough that I have the right to make that decision. So let’s not talk about it.”
They continued with their preparations in silence. Prue was glad for the excuse to keep busy, not wanting to think too hard about what lay ahead, still uncertain in her own mind that they were doing the right thing. Going to the Elves might create fresh complications since it meant getting involved with Phryne again. But abandoning her wasn’t something that she was prepared to do, either. Even knowing that things were likely to be much more difficult than they expected, she was in agreement with Pan that they had to do something.
She worked quietly in her world of grays and shadows, trying not to think about how dreary it all was. She imagined the colors she wasn’t seeing, tried to remember the intensity of hues when she began selecting from her clothes and pleased with herself when she could do so and irritated when she couldn’t. She pictured the colors of the
furniture and wood moldings, of walls, floors, and ceiling, of the rendition of the little painting of a woman at a well that Pan’s mother had loved so much and that he kept on the wall even after she was gone. She tried to guess the color of his clothes, then of curtains and his old comforter.
Stop it! she admonished herself finally. Let it alone!
She caught herself crying again and brushed the tears away roughly. This was not the time or place. She’d had her cry. She was bigger than this, stronger. Pan shouldn’t have to see her cry anymore.
When they were finished and had shouldered their packs, they took a moment to look around the cottage, ostensibly to determine if they had missed anything, but on a deeper level to consider the possibility that it might be the last time they would ever be here.
“Don’t worry,” Pan told her, as if needing to voice a response to what they were both thinking. “Now that we’re back together again, we can handle anything that comes our way.”
Prue nodded, smiled encouragingly. It was the right thing to say and the right attitude to take. “Anything,” she echoed.
Moments later, they were out the door and walking through the predawn darkness.