Episode 120: The Dells (Liam)

“Well, guess a magic cat isn’t the only thing surprising about today.” Turned out the whole universe was magic, only they hadn’t known.

Mim grinned at him, so happy to have some kind of answer, even if it made no sense. “Or you did go crazy.”

Stir crazy. About her, maybe. “Or you did,” he teased.

“Me? Crazy?” She looked down at their hands, where he still held on real tight to hers. He squeezed her hand, like Is this okay? And she squeezed back. “Maybe I’ve been mixing too many of your mom’s testers,” she joked.

All he wanted right now was to kiss her, because either they’d both gone crazy together or things for them were about to get a lot better.

Either way, she wouldn’t need him anymore, not in the same way. He’d thought they’d have more time.

The tall guy – Zero? – looked right at them both. He looked at their hands, but he didn’t say much about that. “The king will help you two get settled.”

“Thank you,” Liam said.

It felt weird, thinking about kings in the world. That was like…made-up, or history, or something that happened in a movie. Not in real life.

The bombing had felt that way too, and it’d taken him a long time to sort that it was real. He’d better adjust to this one quicker or he was going to run into trouble.

“It’s not a problem,” Zero said. “Indigo knew your dad,” he added to Mim.

The lady nodded her head. She was looking at Mim like she was some kind of alien, which Liam guessed was pretty much how he was looking at them.

Someone walked over. He was even paler than Mim, with hair that stood up and eyes so pale you could see the blood vessels in them. He stuck his hand out at them with a smile on his face. “Welcome. I’m Meldrick.”

Zero kind of stepped back. Wasn’t much, but it was enough to make Liam guess this guy was the king.

“Mim Whitaker,” Mim said.

This other lady came out, elegant and understated. He would’ve thought she was all southern charm, but when she talked her voice didn’t come out all smooth and phony. “And I’m Giana,” she said.

Meldrick put his arm on her back. The queen, then.

They looked like it. If there was going to be a magic king and queen, they definitely fit the stereotype of weird-looking and elegant and seeming like they weren’t American.

Of course they weren’t American.

Mim shook her hand too, and then Liam shook both their hands.

“You’re from Babylon?” Meldrick asked them.

“Yessir,” Liam said. Your majesty? Highness? He had no idea what he was doing, but he figured if Europeans could get over Americans being rude by accident, so could these folks.

“We’re happy to have you here,” Meldrick said. “Would you like rooms near one another?”

Oh, hell no. They weren’t separating him from Mim until he knew they were safe. “Same room, please,” he said.

She opened her eyes real wide. “Same room?” she asked.

He grinned. He knew what same room probably meant to her and the thought made his skin sizzle. “Same tent?” he teased, pointed.

He wanted her safe.

“Same room,” Mim agreed.

The queen gave this little half smile thing to the king. “Right this way,” he said, and they all started walking through this real organized garden thing. There were trees with trunks so twisted they looked like a bunch of cords in a cable tie, and birds that sang weird song, and big bright purple flowers like he’d never seen before.

“What brings you two here?” the king asked.

“My cat,” Mim said. She ran her fingers down Onyx’s back, real tense.

“We got lost looking for her house, ended up here,” Liam explained, catching up after he’d stopped to look at some kind of deserty-looking fern plant.

“Her house?” the king asked.

“Yep. We heard it got moved here somewhere.” They were the ones that knew all about magic, right? Why were they asking him to make that more clear? Shouldn’t they have been…explaining it or something? Like, Oh yeah, that evil king in the next country over, he likes to steal houses, or something that made magic sense.

Not asking the damned questions, that was Liam’s job.

“It vanished, all of it, including our cats,” Mim added. She laced her fingers with Liam’s and his skin sizzled again.

“How many cats?” Zero asked.

“Seven,” Mim said.

“Seven?” Zero echoed. He sounded like he was trying not to sound upset about that, which made Liam upset. Why were the cats a big deal? If this place was magic, shouldn’t they be used to talking cats?

“Two cheetahs, two lions, and two tigers, and Onyx.”

“Do all of them talk?” Zero’s wife asked. She was looking at the cat now, like it was the alien. He guessed that was better than her looking at Mim that way.

“None of them could talk before today,” Mim said.

That Onyx talked again. Liam figured he might get used to that, someday. “She means yes,” the cat gravelled. “We all are capable of speaking. Mated pairs.”

Yeah? If that was so then where was his mated pair? “Her dad ran a rescue,” Liam told the Zero-wife. Indigo. He needed to keep better track of all these new names.

“Those cats all originated from my realm,” Zero explained. “Sylem.”

So there was other realms besides this one. Made sense. The world was a lot bigger place than he’d ever guessed it could be.

“Someone used magic to make them,” Indigo said.

Onyx rubbed his body against hers. “Someone?” he pressured her, like he knew some secret she was keeping.

“It wasn’t me,” Indigo said, forceful like.

The cat looked like he thought about that for a minute. His ears kind of relaxed a little and his eyes stopped watching everything they walked past. “You do smell different,” he decided.

“Why would anyone make talking cats?” Mim asked everyone.

“Power, mostly,” Zero said. “An experiment.”

Mim reached down and petted Onyx some more with her right hand. Her left hand still gripped Liam’s like she might fall off the face of the earth if she let go of him.

“The palace can be difficult to navigate,” Meldrick said, while he opened a big heavy door that led into some kind of room with tile floors and plants even bigger than the ones in that garden. “But your room key has the number on it. The rooms are in order, at least. We have a festival going on that will help you become acclimated to the palace grounds.”

They talked all formal, too, that was something different about them. Liam liked talking to Mim because her voice sounded like it was always summer. These people didn’t have that. They sounded like they’d gone and stuck cotton in their throats to filter all the relaxed out of their words.

“What about her family?” Liam asked Zero and Indigo, and maybe Onyx a little too. “You said they were here too?

Meldrick looked at Zero and Indigo, and Zero provided, “Gramm.”

Yep. That was her dad’s name.

“He’s traveling,” Onyx told the king.

“To where?”

“The Senât Gile.”

That place sounded like it mattered. Important. Liam was glad her dad was somewhere important, because maybe that meant someone was taking care of him too. He wondered if this place was important.

“His wife is me, more or less,” Indigo told the king and queen. “The old me.” Right, because they looked nothing alike.

“Do you think we need to find him?” the king asked. “You should transport to him directly.”

“Why would I want to do that?” She looked like she might punch someone. Zero put his arm around her.

“To ensure he isn’t a threat,” the king said.

Now that was interesting. What if Mim’s family was enemies with these people? They could be prisoners here, for all they knew. No one had said they were, but no one had said they weren’t. He stepped a little bit closer to Mim just right when she said, “He’s not a threat to anyone.”

“He is an ascended king and his kingdom has been absorbed into this one,” the king said, flat like there was no arguing with that.

Enemies, then.

“My kingdom,” Indigo whispered.

So Gramm wasn’t the only problem for them. Sounded like three different people had a claim on this kingdom.

“You were married,” Meldrick said.

Liam looked at her and tried to picture her married to Gramm, instead of Jade being married to him. He couldn’t see it. Gramm and Jade were a set, everything about them went together. Some couples fought all the time, some couples complemented each other, some couples moved together.

Gramm and Jade were the third kind. He couldn’t see Gramm ever being with anybody else.

Meldrick stopped at one of the doors, a random one in the hall, that still had the key stuck in the lock. “This room is available for as long as you’d like it. You can move to your own apartment soon, but it will take a few days.”

Apartment? Living together, he could do that with Mim. Her dad was going to kill him though, when he found out.

“Thank you, sir.” Liam took the key from the guy and unlocked the door. The room inside had buttery walls and a yellow and green bedspread. Two dressers, a tv and a couch, but not much furniture besides.

“Do you need anything else at the moment?” Meldrick offered. “A tour?”

Mim looked at Liam. Her pupils were real wide, her face maybe a little uncertain. He bet she was having the same trouble he was, thinking about an apartment together. “I think we both need a minute,” she told the king.

“I might be willing to transport after Rhyss’s brunch,” Indigo offered. Her face was all turned down.

“Think about it as a favor for your kingdom’s future,” the king said.

Indigo just scowled. He wondered if she and Zero were prisoners here like it seemed, and if they were, how they’d managed to get off to America to get them.

“She said she would consider it,” Zero told Meldrick.

Alright, they could do their politics somewhere else, not bothering Mim. Liam needed to talk to her anyway, figure out some kind of plan. “‘Kay,” he said to them all, “you need anything else?”

“I will find your father,” Onyx promised Mim, “with or without them.” He walked off down the hall alone.

“I think we’re set for now,” the king said, smiling. “Enjoy your room.”

“Thank you.” Liam shut the door right on them and stepped a little closer to Mim. They were alone, in a room with a pretty decent-sized bed. He walked over to the window and looked out it onto some kind of big lake.

“So,” he said after a minute. “They’re upset about something.”

He saw another door that went off to a bathroom. Good, this place had plumbing. Right now, he really wanted a shower. He wanted one so bad it made his skin itch to think about.

“Do you think my dad’s in trouble?” She sat down on the bed

“I don’t know,” he said. He thought maybe, yeah. “Maybe we can get ourselves there, whatever that place is, if we can find a map. The senate place.”

“Okay,” she said. She stood up again and went over to the window, right next to him, except she looked at him and not the lake. “So are we dating?” she asked him.

“What?”

He hadn’t expected this, the way she just asked out of the blue. He should have, because it was a very Mim thing to do, but he wasn’t ready for this talk. Yet.

“We’re not just on the run anymore,” she said. “My parents are going to find out we’re sharing a room.”

And her dad was going to decide they were sleeping together and who knew what he’d do to Liam. Probably nothing good.

“You want me to get my own?” he offered.

She let out a hot little huff of air that flipped her bangs up for a minute. “No, this is fine.” She stepped away from him. “Maps.”

Damn, it was now or never he bet. “Mim…”

“Yeah?”

He stepped closer to her. “You’re…” he didn’t know how to say this. He needed to figure out some kind of goodbye to Maria, a real goodbye that let go of her and moved right along. He swallowed. “Did you want to be dating?”

She shook her head, maybe like a half an inch off center, and back again. “I don’t want to rush you into anything.”

“Rush?” he teased. He put his thumb on her chin. It felt so breakable under his big hands, but he liked touching her face. “How many months you been putting holes in that fence?”

She looked down as blood rushed into her face. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Sure she didn’t.

It was his own fault for offering to get his own room. He ran his fingertips up her cheek. “Alright then,” he said real soft. “Maps?”

She closed her eyes. “Or. It could wait.”

Damn, but he wanted to kiss her.

“Yeah,” he said. He felt a smirk on his own face. “We need time to figure out which one of us is sleeping on the floor.”

She laughed, and her face got even redder. “Liam,” she said, voice husky all of a sudden. “Would you just tell me what you want?”

He took her hand and looked at it. How skinny the bones between her knuckles were, the way they bulged and got red at each joint. The way they shook in his grasp.

“I’d like to try dating, if that’s alright with you.”

She kissed him. First just lips, but he moaned and pulled her real close. He didn’t think he’d ever let go.

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