Charm His Pants Off by Cate Martin

Author:Cate Martin [Martin, Cate]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781946552969
Publisher: Ratatoskr Press

Chapter 13

We all started asking questions at once, Brianna managing two or three to Sophie and mine's one each, but it didn't matter since Z couldn't make sense of any of it.

"Children, children," she said, making settle-down gestures with her hands. "One at a time, please."

"Tell it all," I said. "From the beginning."

"Not the very beginning!" Brianna quickly interjected.

"Start with the time portal falling apart. Explain that," Sophie said.

Z looked thoughtful for a moment, as if accessing her memory like an old computer. I could almost hear the whir and whine of a hard drive booting up. Then she gave us an apologetic smile. "I don't contain all the answers."

"Just tell us what you do know," Brianna said. "We can take it from there."

"I was called away," Z said. "I don't know by who, to where, or for what purpose. I just know I wasn't here. There is a gap of about a week in my entries that lines up with that point."

"Are pages missing?" Brianna asked.

"No, nothing sinister," Z said. "My last entry is very rushed. I think I left out a lot because there simply wasn't time."

"Do you think you were called away deliberately?" I asked. "Like it was a distraction?"

"No," Z said after a moment's thought. "If that had been true, I would have noted it. I'm sure of that."

"So what happened while you were away?" Brianna asked.

"I had left my students in charge," Z said. "Kathleen was the oldest, but she was expecting a baby."

"Does that affect magic?" I asked.

"Yes, but in unpredictable ways," Brianna answered me. "One spell will fizzle, another will have ten times the effect. It varies by witch and by spell and by how far along she is and by time of day."

"Unpredictable," I said, nodding.

"Indeed, and so I asked her to rely on Patricia if anything should come up that she couldn't deal with," Z said. "There shouldn't have been any problems."

"The bridge across time was stable?" Brianna asked.

"What do you mean by stable?" Z asked.

"Well, after…" Brianna started to say, then quickly decided that 'you died' was a tactless thing to say. "After we arrived here, when the bridge had been untended for a time, there were weak points. Places where things could slip through. Gaps in the spells."

"Oh dear," Z said, putting her hands to her mouth. "No, that was just what I was afraid would happen. Oh, dear."

"So that was after all this happened?" Sophie asked.

"Yes. At the time I left, the time portal was as strong as Juno and I could make it. It extended from me to her, although her end tended to move through time. I never quite knew if she did that deliberately or if there was something else going on. Juno was the one with time powers, not me. I barely understood it. I felt sure she should be able to control it."

"You and Juno built it together?" Brianna asked.

"Yes. I was here, in my standard time. I never much cared for time

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