Suspended. He was suspended.
He put both hands out and braced himself against the hood of the cruiser for a minute, trying to make some kind of sense out of the last half an hour and failing miserably. The clicking of Baba’s high-heeled boots gave her away before she spoke.
“Well,” she said in a low, discouraged tone he’d never heard from her before. “That didn’t exactly go the way we thought it would, did it?”
Liam turned around, knowing he’d let down the woman he’d come to care for; knowing she had every right to condemn him for allowing Maya to be on the loose again.
“I guess I should have handed Maya over to you when you asked me to,” he said softly, shuffling the toe of one boot against the gravel. “I should have known she’d have some kind of a plan in place in case she got caught, although I never in million years would have seen this coming.”
Baba narrowed her eyes and said grimly, “I know exactly what you mean.”
He had a sinking feeling they weren’t talking about the same thing.
“Baba—”
She just shook her head, that cloud of hair moving through the air like silk flowing through water. “And you accused me of having secrets,” she said bitterly. “When were you going to tell me you were still married?”
TWENTY-FIVE
BABA SLAMMED THE door of the Airstream behind her and threw her boots one at a time against the far wall as hard as she could. Maybe if she broke something, she wouldn’t feel so much like crying. Not that she would cry. She never cried. But by golly, she was going to have to break a lot of stuff.
“Oh-oh,” Chudo-Yudo said, his head appearing from around the counter. “I know that look. What the hell happened?” He ambled over and head-butted Baba in the stomach affectionately, almost knocking her over and yet still perversely making her feel better.
“Do you want the long version or the short version?” she asked, tossing a small brown-and-red antique porcelain vase up and down in one hand as she tried to decide if it would make a large enough crash to be at all satisfying.
Chudo-Yudo eyed the motion dubiously. “Uh, better give me the short one. I kind of like that vase. It goes with my eyes.”
Baba snorted, but put the piece back down more or less gently. She walked over and plopped onto the couch, putting her head into her hands for a minute as she tried to figure out the best way to sum up the disastrous last couple of hours.
“Okay,” she said, finally. “Liam caught Maya in the act, trying to kidnap a little boy. He arrested her, brought her to the sheriff’s department, and summoned me using the amulet I gave him. By the time I got there, so had a bunch of other people. Including Liam’s wife, who accused him of murdering their baby three years ago, as well as all the children who have gone missing around here in the last six months. The board put Liam on suspension, and let Maya go. End of story.” She decided there was no point in mentioning that Liam had also refused to allow her to take Maya back to the Otherworld. The tale already sucked enough without that little tidbit.
Chudo-Yudo’s tongue lolled out of his mouth as he gazed at her in amazement. Eventually he curled it back up, shook his whole body from nose to tail and said, “That’s one hell of a story, all right. I think it’s time to call back the Riders, don’t you?”
*
“HE HAS A wife?” Alexei repeated. “Son of a bitch.” His massive arms flexed. “Do you want me to pound him into dust for you? It would be my pleasure.”
“Don’t bother,” Chudo-Yudo said with disgust. “I already offered to eat him, and she won’t let me do that either.”
“Let’s focus on the real issue here, shall we, boys?” Baba said, trying to ignore the gnawing in her gut that showed up every time anyone said that word. Wife. Gah.
“Maya is back on the loose and we have no idea where, or what she’ll do next. That’s a lot more important than the fact that our friend the sheriff has a wife whom he didn’t happen to mention. A wife, who after being out of the picture for two years, apparently, shows up and tells a huge lie that allowed Maya to go free.”
Grim doubt shadowed Gregori’s already serious expression. “Are you sure it is a lie, Baba?” he asked.
She swallowed hard. “Um, call it eighty percent sure that Maya and Melissa are both lying and Liam is innocent.” So, almost sure anyway. “I suppose it’s possible that Maya is using the doorway and causing havoc in the Otherworld but isn’t also involved in the children’s disappearances. After all, I clearly don’t know the sheriff as well as I thought I did. Hell, I didn’t even know he had a wife.” There’s that word again. Double gah.