Diplomat

10 June 2007

Results had been disappointing so far. It wasn’t particularly difficult to find spells to do what she wanted, but they didn’t seem to get me anywhere. Michael had even managed to open a portal into the Deeper Realms, and the two of us spent a week there with tracking spells and a relic that all just led us in circles. Roderick believed that Rick had either been unmade or was being actively hidden from us; I refused to believe the former, and Michael believed we could muster up enough power between us to punch through whatever was doing the latter. There was little evidence to date to suggest he was right.

Melinda was concerned. A few days after we returned from the Deeper Realms, she took me out for a spa day and refused to let me talk about Rick or magic while we were out. I didn’t realize until I was halfway through a massage how obsessed I’d been recently over the matter. Not that it didn’t warrant dedication, but maybe Melinda was right when she insisted I couldn’t let this become my whole life. So I started taking more breaks, and seeing my other cousins, and putting the work aside to get some sleep with more frequency. And the less time I spent obsessing over a solution, the more time I found myself mourning him as if he was never coming back. I needed to find some distractions. I started browsing the library more, and found there was a considerable fiction collection I hadn’t even thought to explore when I was last here. I was on my fourth period romance before I realized that I had narrowed onto a specific subject, but I really didn’t have time to think about why that would be right now.

“A visitor for you, ma’am,” Hendricks said.

I blinked in surprise and turned my attention to him. I hadn’t even heard him enter the parlor, and now wondered how long he’d been standing there. “For me?”

“Yes, ma’am. An Amanda Stow. Shall I send her in?”

“Mandy’s here!?” I set Jane Eyre down and stood, straightening out my skirt. “Yes, yes, definitely send her in!”
He nodded and slipped out of the room, and after a few moments he returned to hold the door open as Mandy walked in. I ran over and gave her a hug, thanked Hendricks, and then showed her to the chairs.

“This place is so much nicer than I was expecting!” she said, softly, as if it was a secret. I chuckled.

“Yes, well. That’s what being a lord will get you.”

“Well. If that cousin of yours is single…” We both laughed as Hendricks returned and set a platter with two cups of tea and a small plate of cookies on the table between us. We both thanked him again, and he was gone.

“Why did you come all the way to England? Why didn’t you tell me you were coming?”

She sighed and picked up a cookie, looking at it absently. “I’m worried about you.”

“That could have been a text, Mandy.” I added a bit of sugar to one of the teas and laid back in my chair while I stirred. “Why are you here?”

“To bring you back.” She took a bite from her cookie and relaxed into the chair. “And maybe some of these cookies, too.”

“I can’t go back right now. There’s so much work to do on this.”

“Hm, yeah,” she said, leaning forward and picking up the book and turning it over in her hand, “looks very important.”

“Everyone needs a break sometimes.”

“Yes, but that’s my point, Alice.” She leaned forward and rested her elbows on her knees. “You have shut yourself off from friends and family who care about you to go chasing after some solution to Rick’s disappearance. Which is fine, for a little while, but there needs to be a point where you come home and let people be there for you.”

“It’s not so simple—”

“Of course it isn’t. Nothing ever is. He’s my cousin, I promise, I understand.”

“No, there’s so much more than that to it.”

“Is it magic?”

“Yes.”

She leaned back in her chair and we were silent for a minute. “The official report is that he was taken by a cult. How accurate is that?”

“Very.”

“And?”

“He…threw himself and their leader into a portal to stop them summoning something terrible.”

“And have you made any progress on finding him?”

“No. I haven’t.”

“Then come home.”

“Mandy…”

“Look. I get why you guys didn’t say all that to the police. I get why you didn’t tell me right away. But if this is really a magic problem, and a month of magic research hasn’t yielded any results, then maybe it’s time to do something else. And you’re going to need a support network to get through that.”

“I can’t. I can’t just…” I paused and set my tea down.

“You can’t just accept that he’s gone.” A tear ran down her cheek.

“There has to be a way.”

“And maybe there is. I hope there is. But if there aren’t answers here, then why stay, except to isolate yourself?”

I nodded, and wiped a tear away. Mandy got up from the chair and walked over, offering me her hand. I accepted and stood, and we held each other for a long while as we both started to cry. “I saw it,” I choked out, eventually. “I saw him go and couldn’t do anything to help him.”

“That’s not your fault.”

“I brought them there. I ran when we were confronted by the cult. I—”

“It’s not your fault, Alice.”

My legs went out from under me, and we ended up on the floor, crying into each other’s shoulders. I had tried so hard for the last month to bury these feelings, and now nothing was able to stop them coming out. I don’t know how long we stayed there, but we managed to get calmed down and cleaned up in time for dinner. We went into town that evening, and she spent the night in one of the rooms in the wing where I was staying, and in the morning, Melinda saw us both to the airport to fly back to the States.

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