Episode 140: Heist (Greg)

He woke up naked, alone, and married.

He’d done a really good job so far, with ignoring all the emotional bullshit that came with this, probably because he hadn’t had a minute alone until now.

What day was it? He didn’t know. He wasn’t even sure he cared. His obligations had gone from: stay sober enough to shut Mom up, to: support Aadya. He wasn’t even sure what that would entail, besides keeping that smile on her face. Distracting her.

Molly was gone. So gone, that he could talk to Aadya about her in the past tense, and it wasn’t like eviscerating himself. So gone, that he could look at Aadya and see forever, and mean it.

Molly was so gone that she was coming back, Aadya had said. Here.

What were the odds, that she would come back to here, of all places? It had to be about their kids.

But he’d have to face her. He’d have to look her in the eye and say, yes, I married someone else. In a forever, never-you-again way.

He’d have to do his first robbery, without her.

He found his pants, on the floor, and slid his hand into his pocket, the necklace. The last thing they’d stolen together. It was emerald and diamond, made just after the second world war. To him, it was the definition of opulence, the joke heist done because an auction house had made an ad on television, with a Titanic-style brag that no one could break into their facility. Your family jewels, no allusions intended, were safe with them.

Like the Titanic, the auction house had sunk.

Most, they’d sold on the black market. There were buyers, especially in Asia and the Middle East, who could be more discreet than any American.

This emerald one, he’d secretly kept. It wasn’t like they could get financial aid for Philip when it came time for college. Nobody gave loans to people who didn’t exist. The necklace had started as an insurance policy, but it had become something else…a symbol of what he’d lost.

What was there to plan for?

Now he had something. He held the necklace, the weight of it in his hand.

He’d give it to Molly, when she came. It was hers, he wanted her to have it.

And there, through that door on the other side of the room, he’d plan for other futures. Step children he never expected to have, let alone feel protective of. Whoever he was, whatever he did, they’d see him as a dad, in a way. Not the older ones, definitely not that Acheron, but the younger ones. His actions mattered. And maybe Acheron would come around.

He’d do this robbery alone, a transition. He picked the lock on Aadya’s little elixir cabinet and set the necklace inside. She ought to redo this cabinet with a double-layer, so that the safe wasn’t the real safe. It would be easy to build a false backing, since the cabinet was set into the wall. No one needed to know how deep it was.

The majority of petty thieves would never think that a safe would have a second safe within.

He’d suggest it to her later this week, discreetly.

For now, he shrank down to salamander form, as small as a bee, and used air magic to make his way to the treasury. He’d staked out most of the palace, under the guise of experiencing the festival, and he knew his way around.

A bee, he suspected, couldn’t get into the treasury without setting off whatever security Zero had put around it.

But when he’d talked to Zero, he’d learned that magic, in any quantity, worked the same way. Proportions, more than volume, mattered.

He had a travel pouch, which he’d modified into something as small as a pollen ball, something his salamander self could carry.

When he reached the air vent that led into the treasury, he set most of the pollen ball in a corner just behind the vent, concealed – who knew when he’d need to transport himself? And broke off a tiny, almost-microscopic piece.

He made himself smaller and broke the travel pouch into an even smaller clump, as small as he dared, and then he made his way through the vent shaft, using air magic to propel himself like a miniature bee.

At the outflow vent, he peered down into the treasury. Thousands, possibly millions of solid gold coins. He could smell all the gold in them, with his heightened salamander senses.

This would be his easiest robbery ever.

He put the travel pack portion against his foot and curled his toes around it. Then he gripped the metal grating and, very carefully, started growing only his tail.

That took immense focus, especially because he wasn’t used to having a tail.

He grew it, stretched it, lengthened it the three or so feet until the tip of it just grazed the top of the gold pile below him.

He smiled, and dropped the travel pouch from his foot.

The gold, and him with it, transported to a guest room with passage access.

It was one of the more beautiful things about security: Nobody ever wanted to keep the thieves once they’d made their way in. It was like they did a half-assed job and assumed there was no point in preventing escape, if no one could get in to begin with.

He returned to his human form and used luck magic to find the exact second he could open the door and take the key out of the latch without anyone passing by and noting him. He’d learned Aadya’s method of leaving keys the doors of any unclaimed guest rooms.

To him, it seemed like an inviting way for teenagers to get pregnant.

Then again, the fairies seemed to want teen pregnancies. They definitely didn’t discourage it.

He grabbed the key while the hallway was empty, filled one hand with gold, and then waited a few minutes for a second opportunity when he could use the passages back up to his bedroom.

His bedroom. The thought warmed him.

Sure, he’d stolen from Aadya, but it was all in good fun.

Her enemies must not be very inventive. If they were related to her, wouldn’t they have the same magic, the same ability to sneak around?

Maybe they used it. Maybe he should warn Spence or Mister Butterfly. About that, and about catching anyone who got past their egoist impenetrable protections he’d just robbed from.

He reached the bedroom and decided to go find Aadya. She had to be around here somewhere, and he was married to her. He needed to find out what the boundaries were. He thought there was a word for someone like him. Consort.

It made him sound like a man-whore. King Consort.

So how much did man-whores help, know? How much were they included or excluded in things. This man-whore wanted to know. It was the difference between already having a job, and needing to find one.

He was just reaching for his pants when that strange new intuition magic warned him that someone was coming. Kids. People who didn’t need to see him naked.

He dove under the covers and did a very fake, theatric, snore.

The door flew open, footsteps thudded across the room, and a round face, haloed in dark hair, peered down at him a second before the face’s body landed on the bed. “Where’s Mommy?” he demanded.

Merlyn. And here was his twin, Eowyn, with a matching face but darker hair and skin.

“He ate her,” Eowyn accused. “Let’s eat him!” She scrambled onto the bed and growled at Greg, so he growled back.

They were his stepkids. He needed to find out what they needed, and be that guy. Unless they needed Mister Divorce. Meldrick could be that all by himself.

“We should go on a treasure hunt for her,” Greg suggested. “Can you get supplies?”

This would be so much more appropriate and okay if he had clothes on instead of being trapped under blankets.

“What supplies?” Eowyn asked, a mix of eager and challenging. He bet she’d make an interesting teen.

She was one of the Mister Butterfly kids, he could see it in the set of her jaw.

“A map,” he listed. “A magnifying glass, good shoes, and…a backpack. Every treasure hunter needs a backpack to put the treasure in.”

“I got it!” she announced. She did some kind of flip off the bed and the boy chased her off, both of them trying to reach the door first. They banged heads in the doorway, but kept running so Greg decided they weren’t injured.

While they were gone, he slipped his clothes on and put the gold he’d stolen into his pocket, to show to Aadya when the time was right.

The kids were back way too fast, preceded by a series of grunts that turned out to be Eowyn lugging a blanket with the two youngest boys on it. “We got rid of Yishti and we got everything,” she announced.

They’d gotten more than everything, they’d added treasure hunters.

“Where are the other three treasure hunters?” he asked. The little blonde girl and the sandy-haired twins who seemed to be close and like-minded.

“Probably asleep,” Eowyn said, dismissive.

One of the things that fascinated Greg about Aadya’s kids was the way they seemed to come in sets. Rationally, they all came in sets because they were twins. But the twin sets were like working units.

Except for that oldest set. Something there was broken, and he wanted to fix it. He could see the way the other sets relied on each other, and in the set that needed it the most, they looked the other way.

It baffled him.

“Or,” Merlyn said. He executed a perfect somersault on the bed, “Or they had school or died.”

Greg laughed at the kids’ list of possibilities. It was so creative, so outside his sense of normal. He surveyed their collection of treasure-hunting supplies. “Magic carpet,” he listed, with a grin at the younger twins, “backpack…did you get everything else? How good is the magnifying glass?”

One of the younger twins – Landyn, he thought, because Ruskyn had bushier hair – chucked the magnifying glass at him and yelled, “Big glass!”

At least Greg had air magic. He encouraged the lens into his hand and studied it for a second while Eowyn held up a paper, way too close to his eyes. Why did kids never understand that shoving something into someone’s eyes didn’t help them see it?

“I drew you a map,” she announced. “We don’t have them.”

He moved it far enough away from his face that he could actually see it and grinned at her map, which was a rectangle with a few dozen lines and arrows drawn on it. He loved kids. This map was more insight into her mind than anything else he’d gotten so far. The colors, the way the lines all spiraled haphazardly toward one point up and to the right of the center…

“This is a good map,” he told her. “Where should we start?”

He used more air magic to lift the carpet into the air, with a lip on the sides so the twins wouldn’t fall. He hoped. Landyn tried to anyway, giggling, and then Ruskyn copied, but they stayed safely in the air.

Good. At that rate a five year old could drag a blanket with two toddlers on it, all the way from the top of the palace down into the gardens, he estimated they’d get there in about six weeks without help.

The magic carpet was perfect.

The garden, Eowyn dictated, pointing toward the door.

The map had a green line on it, with an enormous arrow on the end. “Is that here?” he asked her.

He knelt down so she could see where he thought might be the garden, but she put her index finger at the edge of some faintly-drawn rectangles outlined in pencil. “No, that’s the pool. There. That’s the garden.”

That made sense, the different flower beds. “I see,” he told her. “There first, then,” he suggested. He stood up again and folded the map. “We need a campaign leader, two lookouts, and a cartographer,” he listed off at random, enough jobs for everyone. He suspected the boy would want the leader job. He was quieter than his twin, but he watched.

“I’m the cartographer,” Eowyn said, and she grabbed a corner of the floating blanket and took off towards the doorway again.

“That makes me boss,” Merlyn confirmed, and Greg smiled.

He could do the dad thing. Just because they were someone else’s kids didn’t make them any harder to understand. Like all kids, they were mysteries, evolving puzzles,.

“We’re going swimming first,” Merlyn announced once they were in the hall.

Nope, nope. He didn’t know where any of their swimming clothes were, and he’d heard that one of the pools was safe and one was for giant cats, so until he figured out which was which…

“The garden has a fountain, right?” he encouraged them along. They probably wouldn’t get as messy in a fountain, either.

“Yeah, a big one,” Merlyn agreed. “We can climb to the top of it and jump off.”

They’d probably be fine.

“We can go through the secret tunnel, too,” Eowyn added.

He just couldn’t win. This was supposed to be safer than swimming. He decided these two didn’t want to be safe.

Aadya could sort out what to do with them, what they could handle at their ages.

They stepped out onto the brick patio at the edge of one of Aadya’s gardens. He could see her through the trees, graceful like a painting of a grecian goddess. She bent toward the ground – or tried to anyway, but this pregnant she was as graceful as a painting of a grecian penguin, as it turned out.

Still gorgeous.

He was briefly annoyed that she’d gotten out of bed this morning.

She was a queen. His wife, but still a queen, and she had responsibilities that went beyond him. Their mutual conquest of each other was over, and her life had to go back to normal, so she could die and come back.

Because that was normal.

It was, for her, somehow. He had a lot to learn.

He knelt down so he was at eye level with all the kids. “Okay, now use the magnifying glass and see if she’s here,” he suggested. He held the glass out, curious to see whether they’d fight over it.

“I want to see!” Eowyn demanded.

Merlyn had his hand on the glass already. “I think that’s the boss’s job.”

Eowyn reached for the glass. “Then I’m the boss,” she challenged.

“No,” Merlyn said. He was more patient than Greg expected after all that wrestling. “You carted that blanket around.”

Eowyn tackled him now, physically and with a shower of icy cold snow, right in the middle of a desert garden. Merlyn growled and forced her off with a blast of hot air, and Greg grabbed their arms  – gently, but in a way that made sure they’d be trapped. He hoped that elixir stuff did the job of keeping his hands safe rom whatever other magic they’d use against him.

“One of you gets to use it,” he told them, “one of you gets to be the announcer.”

Eowyn shoved Merlyn to the ground. “I want to be the announcer.”

“Fine!” he said.

Behind Greg, one of the boys on the carpet clapped his hands and requested, “Again!”

Merlyn held the glass up and looked, somehow, in every direction but Aadya’s. He probably knew right where she was and wanted to drag this out. After a few minutes, he finally lowered the glass and said, “Yep, she’s here.”

“That’s my job!” Eowyn protested. She stood upright and looked right at Greg and announced, “Yup, she’s here.”

“Now the announcer needs to tell her we’re here,” Greg explained.

Eowyn took off across the garden, with Merlyn hot on her heels.

“Mom!” Eowyn yelled, and then launched into a series of excited sounds Greg was pretty sure were just “mom” over and over again, in little girl voice.

Aadya turned, and as soon as she faced them all Merlyn bellowed, “We went on a treasure hunt!”

With a smile, Greg started the procession of flying the magic carpet towards Aadya. The cartographer had forgotten her job, which amused him probably more than it should.

“I’m the announcer!” Eowyn reminded Merlyn, with a pointed finger. She turned to Aadya: “We went on a treasure hunt!”

“Mamaaaaaa,” Ruskyn called, arms outstretched, so Aadya reached for him and squeezed him into a tight hug. “Good morning,” she said to the four kids. “Did you find anything else, or just me?”

“You were the treasure,” Merlyn told her, bouncing up and down while he talked. “Now we’re jumping off the fountain good morning!” He was gone in another second, racing toward the sound of water.

“Have fun!” Aadya called towards him. She gave Greg a good morning kiss, which was appropriately quick.

“Eww!” Eowyn complained. “That’s gross.”

Before she could run off too, Greg swept her into his arms and did a raspberry on her upper arm. She was still laughing when he put her down, and she ran off to join Merlyn. Greg lowered the carpet after about a half a second of whining from the twin boys, and they took off after the other two.

There were, somehow, no students around. Greg and Aadya were alone.

His pockets were full of her gold. It made him smile.

“Have you had breakfast?” Aadya asked him.

“We were busy,” he apologized. Treasure hunting. He buried a smile and felt the gold in his pocket again. Not here, in the garden; he’d have to do it later.

She was his wife. He marveled at that for a minute, because really…a week ago he never would have guessed. A day ago, he had an inkling, but to be married, to be secretly married, to someone his family hadn’t even met. His mom…

His mom was going to kill him.

Married to a pregnant woman he’d just met. His mom would never understand, the connection, the closeness and understanding, the way everything had been instantaneous.

If he could explain about telepathic dragons, which he suspected had played a large role in bringing them together the first day, his mom might listen.

Or maybe it wasn’t the dragons. Maybe he was just that into her. Everything about her…the smile, the laughter, the determination, the way she looked in bed under that domed ceiling of hers, her scent, the way she felt in his arms…

“What are you watering?” he asked. He had to force himself to think of something besides her. These pants were not designed to hide things, the way jeans did.

“Want to try?” she asked. She pulled a small white flower off the nearest bush. “It’s a plant like some berries you’re used to, but the flowers are sweeter.”

She fed it to him. Her fingers lingered on his lips and they locked eyes as a spark of hunger fired between them.

He needed jeans.

No, he didn’t. He needed to be able to survive five minutes alone with her, without wanting sex.

“It’s good,” he said.

It was good. It tasted like imperial icing, with a hint of cherry. “What’s it called?” he asked, as a way to avoid sex for at least another five seconds.

He caught her eyes again and before he knew he’d decided to do it, their lips met, and he pressed her against him, kicking babies and all.

He wanted that Yishti person to come watch the kids so he could take Aadya back upstairs and claim some semblance of a honeymoon before she spent the day working for others.

But.

They had a life to establish, a way of doing things, and she obviously worked mornings in the garden, by habit. He could tell from the way she moved through it, like she was part of it, not like she was awkwardly working there for show because of all the visiting festival guests. It was his responsibility, as not-the-queen, to absorb into her life with as little disruption as possible.

So he pulled away and cupped her shoulder in his hand and waited for the answer to his question.

It took her a minute of refocusing, but she got there. “Deeran berries,” she answered. “Yishti didn’t take the kids, then?”

Wouldn’t it be nice if she had.

“They said they got rid of her,” he apologized, and she laughed. He dropped his arm, letting the disappointment sink in, letting his body calm down. “How is your morning?

“Good,” she said with a dissatisfied sigh. “I tried to tell you I spend mornings here.” She rested the palm of her hand on his chest. “When I’m up, anyway,” she added, meeting his eyes. Matching his hunger. She reached her hand up to the edge of his sideburns and graced them lightly with her fingertips.

“How was yours?” she asked him.

Better now, with Aadya here.

“I’m sorry about the kids,” she added, before he could think of an answer that wasn’t about the fact that he’d robbed her but he hadn’t slept with her yet today and functioning was almost impossible.

“They’re fine,” he said, and then, because he hated himself and a pun seemed like a better idea than it probably was, he said, “Gregarious.” He grinned at her laughter. “Do you want help watering?”

It was the perfect excuse to step away again.

He could do it if he took it as a challenge, to get through the day without sleeping together, until they were both in bed. Like his little dare last night, only this time they’d stick to it.

“Maybe,” she mused. “Do you garden much?”

His mom did, but nothing like Aadya’s. His mom’s favored a wild, magical look, where Aadya’s – which was actually magical – was ordered. She kept lower plants in front, taller ones behind them. Everywhere there was a tree, it seemed to belong with the plants at its base.

“Not at all, but I like learning,” he offered. If his mom could find success with the mess she called their backyard, then he could help Aadya garden. “It’s harmless enough and I think Zero has plants here.”

He still needed to talk to Zero, fake an injury, gain access to Zero’s office so he could figure out where the life energy was hidden, if it was in his office.

He’d see.

“He does,” Aadya agreed. She started walking. “The deeran plants like to have damp soil plus a centimeter of flooding. Their soil takes time to absorb; the extra ensures it’s enough.”

He joined her watering, using magic to dampen the soil and give the centimeter of water beneath that. She explained that they used the berries, along with cocoa from trees they grew themselves, to make brownies served at the festival this week.

“Do you harvest, or are there workers for that?” he asked her.

“Both. I will help, but the next few days are busy.” Busy, like she was convinced she was about to die. Busy was an understatement. “So I try to get the last water in at least.”

That was going to make all kinds of rumors, her death. Talise’s, whoever else was expected to die. It would be a mess, and the way word of mouth worked, who knew what the story would be by the time it reached the outlying communities or even other kingdoms.

They needed better information control, like he’d dreamed of yesterday. “Have you ever thought about having a newspaper?” he suggested.

“A newspaper?” she asked, with a little surprise, but he could tell she was thinking about it because she focused on gardening more intently.

“If you have  enemies,” he pointed out, “it’s a good way to control information.”

She nodded her head, thoughtful. “That would be faster than whoever makes it to Maelvish.”

“What is that?” He pulled a little clover weed from the garden bed, and it turned out to be attached to an enormous strand of spidergrass with veins that ran under the soil.

“Our religious day. It was two days ago. On Maelvish, we have a breakfast at the church at sunrise. Then classes all day.”

Huh. So she was religious. He never would have guessed.

Greg had a really compact place for Jesus, in his heart, right next to the guilt-trip about not even going to church on Christmas. Seriously. Who wanted to spend Christmas trapped in a church listening to some boring guy at the front of the room go on and on about a baby’s birthday?

“So it’s a weekly thing?” he asked.

“Yes, and many guests stay a few nights, depending on when they arrive. Many who come from court, the day before, stay for Maelvish too.”

So if Maelvish was two days ago, then he’d met her on a Maelvish, and she was still allowed to have sex. That was something, at least. It couldn’t be a restrictive religion, if the queen was that casual about it.

He hoped.

Things he should have found out before marrying her…

Time. They had forever of it, after she died. Before then he needed to figure out more about this life here. He didn’t know how long a temporary death was, but he wanted everything to be as normal as possible for her when she came back. Like coming home after a vacation.

And before he could do that, he needed to deal with his mom. Clear his thoughts and his conscience so he could focus on what Aadya would need.

He cleared his throat. “Are you free at all today?” he asked Aadya.

“I have some time. What did you want to do?” She stopped watering and turned to look at him, curious and a little excited.

It was tempting to just suggest more sex and forget all about his mom. But then he’d be that son and he wasn’t that type of guy at all.

“I left my house unexpectedly a few days ago, without any explanation,” he confessed. “I need to let my mom know I’m alive.”

He watched the realization dawn on her, what he was asking: First a little disappointment that he wasn’t asking about sex; then relief that it wasn’t anything bad, then the comprehension that she had a mother-in-law.

“With me?” she asked.

She was doing an admirable job with the calm thing.

He, on the other hand…

Panicked wasn’t the word.

“I can go alone if that’s easier,” he offered. Go, and never come back because his mom held him hostage indefinitely. “If you’re not up for it,” he teased.

She was so tenacious. He wondered what she’d make of his mom.

Aadya grinned. “I happen to have some free time. Should I change into some more Babylon-like clothes?”

Just imagine if she showed up like this, in her kelly green dress and her hair done up like the grecian penguin goddess that she was…not to mention the penguin part.

His mom was going to flip.

He felt like a teenager again, bringing a girl home to meet his parents. Except his parents had always known Molly.

This was an intimidating first.

He touched the strap of her dress thoughtfully. “Probably,” he muttered. He kissed her, a thank-you he promised himself he’d follow up on more intensely later. “Your kids are fun in the morning,” he said.

She didn’t bat an eye at the change in subject, which was nice. It gave him time to panic alone before she joined in.

If she didn’t panic about meeting his mom, it was because she didn’t know any better yet. She’d learn.

“Not annoying?” Aadya teased, about her kids.

“Except for the little ones,” he joked. It earned another laugh.

She used water magic to wash her hands, so he followed suit and then dried them.

“Do you need breakfast before we go?” she asked, once they’d cleaned up.

He thought about the worst inedible food his mom made and settled on, “Unless you like jellied pigs feet.”

“Do you like those?” she asked, curious.

He shrugged his shoulders. “I’m sure someone does.” Otherwise his mom wouldn’t bother making it.

Aadya smiled and then called to her kids to come eat. “Dry off!” she added. “Breakfast time.”

The kids argued and tumbled over each other and fought to be first at every single thing, and the smaller ones were little roly balls of curiosity Aadya carried one, and the next thing Greg knew the other one was tugging at his hand with a hopeful expression.

Well. Why not. Step kids and all.

He lifted Landyn into his right arm, put his left arm around Aadya’s back while they walked, and pretended he didn’t feel any of the emotions that washed over him.

Family, home, happiness.

Even the L-word.

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