WICCA
FOURTEEN
(Chapter 31 of Senses)
Rand and Constance returned to Rand's hotel room, laughing together for the first time in eight months. The experience had been a rough one, but it allowed Rand to make a concession he would never have made before.
"I did learn a lesson here," he said to Constance. "Perhaps fate isn't all it's cracked up to be."
Constance nodded. "I'm glad you see that now," she replied. "I hated you for that."
"I hated losing you for that. I hated me for losing you."
"I know."
"This leaves us with a question. Where do we stand now?"
Constance paced around the room. "Close to starting over, I should think. It's been an awful long time."
Rand sat on the bed, and noticed the medallion, which hadn't been moved. He sighed. "Yes," he finally acknowledged, "it has been a long time. Problem with that, however, is that the emotions are still as strong. At least for me."
"And what does that mean?"
"It means I still love you."
Now it was Constance's turn to be silent for a moment. "And I'm supposed to say I love you back, right? This isn't a movie, Rand. This has been a long, emotional day. We've had a long, emotional break from a long, emotional relationship. I need you to prove it to me."
Rand looked at Constance for a long moment, then at the medallion. "Courage," he said, "is something I'm not lacking today." He grabbed the medallion, which was still attached to Constance by spell.
And then he knew how Constance felt.
And he wept. With joy.
Larry, Morgana and Detective Dylan went back to Larry's shop. Now that the case was closed, Larry was cleared to return home, at nearly sunrise.
Morgana had regained consciousness only moments after her collapse. The day had finally become too much for her, with all of the killing and excitement going on. Dylan commented at the time that she was lucky. No one comes away from death unscarred, and the longer it gets held in, the harder recovery would be. Dylan arranged for all of the people involved to have counseling available.
Regarding the "lucky" comment, Morgana called Dylan a sexist. Dylan acknowledged that some bias might exist, "And can't you take a joke?" he added.
"It's good to be home again," Larry said.
"It's good to have this mess behind us," Morgana added.
"It's not over," Dylan said. "There's going to be court cases and other shit over the next months, unless they confess to their crimes, which I doubt will happen."
"At least Rand neutralized them," Larry replied. "They won't be bothering anyone again."
"Nor are they likely to get bail," Dylan said. "With that boat, even if they got bail, they couldn't escape town. With it's size it sure would be noticeable. No one's in danger anymore."
"Well, it's just paperwork now," Larry responded.
Dylan groaned. "I still don't know how I'm going to explain all of this," he said.
"Let's all get ourselves some sleep first, all right?" Morgana said. "We can all get together in the morning, the three of us and Rand and Constance. If we leave magic out of it and stick with the crimes committed we should do well enough. All Ms. Tomlinson knows is that she was kidnapped."
"True," Dylan replied. "Let's meet at say, noon? Larry, you call the others. For now, I'd like to get some sleep."
"As would we all," Morgana added. "Escort me home?"
Dylan smiled. "With pleasure."
"Detective," Larry said, "before you go, might I have a word with my employee?"
"Please, everyone, the name's Allen!"
Larry laughed. "All right, Allen, may we have a moment alone?"
"Certainly. I'll be waiting in the car." With that Allen walked out of the shop.
Morgana faced Larry. "I assume it's about my passing out," she said.
"You assume correctly," Larry replied. "You kept up with the rest of us all day and all night, and you were even stronger than the rest of us at some points. You must have had one hell of a vision just then."
Morgana nodded. "I did. It's Allen. He's going to ask me out."
Larry laughed the strongest laugh he'd had all day. "So what are you going to do about it?"
Morgana smiled. "Say yes, of course. What did you think?"
Larry laughed again. "Go," he finally got out.
"I didn't need your permission," Morgana said, "but thank you. See you at noon?"
Larry nodded. "See you at noon."
Before going to sleep, Larry went to his files. It took him an hour to add all of the observations from the day, including several additions to one file in particular, his own.
He would have to share these files with Morgana now, now that she knew about them and understood. But that was all okay. As he discovered to his own surprise, he cared for Morgana, just as he had cared for Constance. And as before, he had let her go, this time without even expressing himself.
That was the biggest surprise of the whole day, and why he had laughed so hard at finding out about Allen's interest and Morgana's willingness. Perhaps he would never get the hang of this. He could tell anyone volumes of information about anyone else, but could not analyze himself too well.
So once again, as he had for most of the nights of his life, Larry went to bed alone. Very much unlike his brothers, he was sure. That was all right. That didn't bother him. He could wait to find a lover.
After all, it's friendship that really counts, and Larry
liked being everybody's best friend.
This concludes Book three of SENSES. In book four we return to the mind of Jim Christopher, the featured star of book one. He's gotten even stranger, but it's allowed. Someone's trying to take over his mind...