With this, Braeden slipped through the concealed door that led into the Smoking Room, and then on through the next concealed door into the Billiard Room. Serafina followed him just long enough to see him walk out into the main corridor and rejoin his aunt and uncle at the ball.
When she returned to Rowena in the Gun Room, she said, “Well, we did it. We convinced him.”
“It seems we did,” Rowena agreed with satisfaction.
“Now, there’s just one more person we need to convince, and he’s not going to be so easy.”
“Oh, no, we don’t need him!”
“He saved your life!”
“He’s still a cat! There’s no getting around that!” Rowena shot back, feigning annoyance, but her voice betrayed the nervous uncertainty of meeting someone she owed a debt that she knew she could not repay.
“We include him or it’s off,” Serafina said fiercely.
“You’re turning into quite a stubborn little grimalkin,” Rowena said.
“Better stubborn than dead,” Serafina retorted.
“You’re already dead.”
“I thought we agreed I wasn’t totally dead quite yet.”
“My characterization of you being dead was less a comment on your current state than on your future prospects.”
“Enough of that,” Serafina said in annoyance. “Let’s go find him.”
A short time later that same night, after Rowena had shifted back to her normal appearance, Serafina guided her to the dell of ferns where she and Waysa sometimes rested. He wasn’t there, or in the next place they checked, but they kept looking.
She finally spotted her friend standing in human form gazing at a rocky gully in the forest where a powerful gush of water had rushed through, ripping at the earth and trees, tearing away everything in its path. The flooding was getting worse each night.
Serafina led Rowena to an area of open, rocky ground out of sight from Waysa.
“I don’t know how he’s going to respond when I approach him,” Rowena said. “He may be angry or violent. He helped me when I was wounded, but he’s not going to trust me now.”
“You can’t approach him. He’s a catamount. You have to get him to approach you,” Serafina said. “Let him know you’re here, from this distance, but don’t scare him off.”
“How do I do that?” Rowena asked.
Serafina knew that Waysa’s reflexes were incredibly strong, that if they approached or surprised him in any way, his first instinct would be to fight or flee. That was how he’d survived so long. She needed to get his attention in a way to get him to think before he reacted.
“Make the sound of a blackbird and then wait,” Serafina said.
“But your blackbirds here don’t come out at night.”
“Exactly. When Waysa and I are in human form in the daytime forest, the blackbird’s click is one of the secret calls we use, so if he hears it at night, he’ll not know what to make of it.”
Rowena nodded, then made the clicking sound of a blackbird.
Within a few seconds, Waysa began moving toward them through the forest. He stopped at the edge of the trees when he saw Rowena standing alone out in the middle of the open area.
“Good. Now stay perfectly still,” Serafina whispered to Rowena. “No threatening movements.”
Doing exactly what Serafina said, Rowena did not move.
Waysa studied her from a distance, and Rowena studied him, the two of them gauging whether they could trust the other. It was as if the two of them were looking for the marks of their shared past, the battles they had fought against each other, and the care he had shown her.
“You’ve come back,” he said warily to her from his position in the trees.
“Talk to him, convince him,” Serafina said.
Rowena slowly nodded to Waysa. “Yes,” she said quietly. “I came to thank you for what you did.”
Waysa did not move or speak. He just watched her.
“No one has ever helped me like that before,” Rowena said, and then paused.
After a long time, Waysa finally emerged from the trees. He walked slowly toward her until he stood some twenty feet away.
“Why did you save me, Waysa?” Rowena asked gently, her voice soft and uncertain.
Waysa frowned at the question, looked at the ground to collect his thoughts, and then looked back at her. “I do not wish to get lost,” he said.
“What do you mean?” she asked him.
“I will destroy the conjurer and make sure those I love are safe, but then I will cleanse myself of blood and fight no more. My heart is on a journey from where it lives. But I must remember my way home.”
Rowena stared at Waysa, seeming to understand what he was saying. “I’ve come here tonight to help you,” she said finally. “And to ask for your help once more.”
“I’ve already helped you,” Waysa said, as if, despite what he had just said, there was still a part of him that regretted the foolishness of giving aid to his sworn enemy.
“I know you helped me,” Rowena said, “and you have no reason to trust me, but I have a plan to help your friends.”
“What are you talking about?” Waysa said, his eyes narrowing.
“Tell him what I told you,” Serafina said to Rowena.
“If you need me, winter, spring, or fall, come where what you climbed is floor, and rain is wall,” Rowena said. It was the riddle that Waysa had written to Serafina so that she could find him.
“Where did you get those words?” Waysa asked, stepping toward her.
“This is good,” Serafina said.
Waysa stared at Rowena, his brown eyes blazing with intensity. He was ready to fight her if he had to, but there was curiosity in his expression as well.
“I want you to tell me. Where did you get those words?” Waysa pressed her again. “And the clicking sound you made…”
“I will explain why I’ve come, and how I know these things,” Rowena said. “But first, I want to tell you what I have seen in the past of your people.”
“What are you talking about?” Waysa asked again.
“Long ago, many members of your tribe were driven by force away from their homes to the barren lands in the west, but a few stayed behind in these mountains, unwilling to leave their homeland. And you came into this world from them.”
“You speak my grandmother’s truth,” Waysa said, “but how do you know this?”
“When you were taking care of me, I used my powers to look into your heart, to see your past and the past of your people. I know that my father killed your mother, your father, your brothers—”
“And my sister,” Waysa said bitterly.
“And your sister,” Rowena said, nodding. “I saw it all. I felt it all, for it is cut deep into the print of time. And once you see something with your own eyes, once you feel something, it becomes part of you. But my father didn’t just kill your family. He killed many of the catamounts in your tribe. You may be the only one of your clan who survived. But you must remember what your grandmother taught you about injury and rebirth. It is the way of our kind—the catamounts and the owls and the other shifters—that when we are severely injured, we fight through it, we suffer, but we come back stronger than we were before, changed, but more powerful…more who we are.”