The Heart of the Phoenix (42 page)

“I never did like him,” Flanna confided.

“He doesn’t seem to be a likable guy,” Janet said. “The sooner the Reds clear out the happier I’ll be.”

Penny and Flanna turned in unison to regard her and found her smiling at them.

“Present company excluded,” Janet said with a wink down at them and drifted away.

Penny went outside, Flanna following, the Phoenix’s staff still clutched in one hand. They found Jaiden and her father waiting.

“Jade told me what you did for her.” He put a hand out and clasped each of theirs in turn. “I owe you.”

“If you can keep them,” Penny nodded toward the rest of the carnival workers, “from talking about any of this, then we’re even.”

He laughed.

“Sweetheart, we traveled with the Reds for a lot of years.” He ruffled her short shock of hair. “We know how to keep a secret.”

He pointed at Yaegar.

“As long as I never see his face in the troupe again, I’ll be happy to keep working with them.”

A few of the others nodded their agreement.

“He’s a nasty piece of work,” an older man said. Penny remembered him from the ticket booth the year before. “The others aren’t so bad.”

Jaiden separated from her father long enough to give Flanna a hug.

“Thank you,” she said, then looked back at her father. He nodded, and she pulled the small wand from her pocket and handed it back to Flanna. “If I come back, will you teach me more?”

Flanna glanced surreptitiously at Jaiden’s father, caught his nod of assent, and said, “If I’m still here I will. If I’m not, my sister will.”

“Absolutely,” Penny said, and smiled.

Jaiden hugged her too, quickly, then broke away and returned to her father.

A few minutes later Torin and Imogen returned, and after a short discussion with her contingent of Reds, a half-dozen of the Red Soldiers Penny and her friends had fought only a few hours earlier led the prisoners away, back to Aurora Hollow and the new Worldgate that led to Galatania. They went to the carnival people and spoke with the elderly ticket taker next, Imogen doing most of the talking. After several minutes, they shook hands, and the carnival people began their walk back to town.

“They want to know if we can persuade Zoe’s father to join our troupe as a trained grizzly bear,” Imogen said to Penny, her expression so severe Penny thought she was serious. Then she smiled and winked.

Imogen’s stern face clicked in Penny’s memory, and she realized she had seen a younger Imogen in her mother’s old photo album.

“You’ve been here before,” Penny said.

“Yes, before King Brom’s death. Before Tynan,” she scowled as the name passed her lips, “put a stop to our visits.”

“They’re not mad?” Flanna had hoped the yearly tours of the Traveling Reds didn’t have to end again because of her uncle’s trickery.

“They aren’t happy,” Imogen said. “But as we’re under new management now they’re willing to give us another chance.”

“I have to go with them, girls.” Torin looked scruffier than ever, but his smile was wide beneath the years’ long tangle of beard. “I need to clean up and get a change of clothes if I’m going to join the troupe.”

Penny and Flanna wouldn’t let him go without a hug and a promise to return as soon as he could.

“I could play a trained bear for a night or two,” Reggie said, making Penny jump.

She turned and found him towering over her.

Before she could escape, he reached down and scooped both Penny and Flanna up in his arms and hugged them.

Penny squirmed in a futile effort to escape, and Flanna screamed with surprised laughter.

“Dad, you’re so embracing,” Zoe said then began to laugh as well.

Dana said something, her voice as usual almost inaudible, but Janet was there to translate.

“She says we’d better get our cars before they’re towed.”

“I’m headed that way now,” Reggie said, putting Penny and Flanna down and taking Zoe’s hand. “It’s going to be a long walk.”

“Then we’ll tag along,” Janet said.

Dana took Reggie’s other hand, and they were off.

They watched Zoe and her family walk down the gravel road, and when they were gone Penny and Flanna found themselves alone... or almost alone.

“Ah, good,” Ronan said, and they were surprised to see him scurry up from under the porch. It was the fox, slightly larger than the average red fox, but in no other way remarkable. Well, except that he spoke perfect, if slightly accented English. “It was much too busy here for my liking.”

“What happened to the rest of you?” Penny said.

“The rest of me is taking a nap,” Ronan said. “It has been a very tiring couple of days.”

“I like him better this way,” Flanna said.

Ronan ignored her.

“There is something I have to ask you,” he said, but didn’t right away. He sat down at their feet and stared off across Clover Hill for a while.

Penny waited patiently, and when Flanna looked ready to tell him to get a move on, Penny nudged her and put a finger across her lips.

“The Phoenix returned,” Ronan said at last. “We all saw.”

“Yes,” Penny and Flanna said in unison.

“So where is she now?” He rose again and faced them, and Penny saw a terrible uncertainty in his oddly expressive vulpine face. “The Phoenix Girls have been here for hundreds of years, I spent the last fifteen waiting for them to come back, so she could return and then leave again?”

“You’re taking this personally, aren’t you?” Penny sat on the porch steps next to him, and Flanna took a seat on his other side. “You told me we had a serious purpose once, but I don’t think even you knew what it was.”

“If it was only about revenge,” Ronan said, “then it was unworthy.”

Penny thought she understood what was troubling him now.

“Unworthy?” Flanna sounded defensive. “We saved two worlds from unimaginable chaos.”

“That’s a good night’s work if you ask me,” Penny said. She understood that wasn’t exactly his point, but felt that saving the world from chaos and conquest by an ancient evil revenant was quite an accomplishment.

Ronan remained silent, perhaps seeing their point, but not willing to abandon his.

“It wasn’t about revenge,” Penny said at last, “and our job here isn’t finished.”

“It’s only just begun,” Flanna said.

Ronan turned from one to the other. “What is it then?”

“The Phoenix has retuned,” Penny said.

“Just not in the way you expected,” Flanna said.

They stood, and Ronan gasped as the flaming wings rose from behind them. Phoenix Fire ignited around them, and they rose slowly into the air.

“The Phoenix has returned,” Penny repeated.

“Two of us,” Flanna said.

“And we’re going to need your help, Ronan, because we still have a lot to learn.”

Susan lived alone in the house on Clover Hill for thirteen years. Then Penny came, and Zoe.

These days there were no more spare rooms in the house on Clover Hill.

Susan now shared the big sprawling home with Penny and Flanna, their cousin Fabia, Zoe, Nancy, Tracy, and, when she wasn’t on tour, Janet. The basement, which had once been thick with dust and untouched for years, was now Janet’s sound studio. Even Jaiden had come back to stay for the week of the Harvest Fair, and her father was hinting that he’d like to settle down in Dogwood so she could go to a regular school and be close to her new friends. At eleven, Jaiden was now the youngest member of the Phoenix Girls.

Penny had been looking forward to this year’s fair, a chance to show off her extended family to her local friends, and to spend time with her dad in the open. Two years before she’d arrived in town with no family except for her godmother, now she had the largest family of anyone she knew.

She had spent most of the previous summer in Galatania with Flanna, learning the essentials of life as a Fuilrix Princess, but she preferred Old Earth, just as Flanna still preferred Gallia. Flanna had agreed, with some prompting, to stick it out on Old Earth long enough to finish high school. Fabia’s presence helped ease some of Flanna’s homesickness, but she returned for short visits whenever she could.

Fabia, meanwhile, enjoyed Old Earth, and had agreed to stay to tutor Penny on Gallia, Galatania, and her family on the other side.

“You can’t hide over here forever,” Fabia said too frequently for Penny’s liking. “You’re one of us and you have responsibilities to the family.”

Penny had given up arguing about it, but she’d already decided her place was in Dogwood, with Susan, her aunt Nancy, and her friends.

The Phoenix Girls.

* * *

“Get up, girls! Everyone’s waiting on you!”

Penny had been ignoring the summons of the rising sun, rolling onto her side and pulling her blankets over her head, and she ignored this latest summons by shoving her head beneath her pillow and going back to sleep.

Her cousin Fabia was a shameless morning person, her routine was to be awake and active, breakfast made and waiting before even Susan rose, which was nice, but she frequently inflicted her early morning mania on the rest of them. Susan took it in stride, and Flanna was well used to it, but Penny and Zoe continued to resist.

There was more shouting from below, indistinct, and a sharp thump on the floor in their attic room.

Penny peeked out long enough to determine that Zoe still slept, sprawled out in the bed across from her like an accident victim, her typical slumbering pose.

If Zoe was that determined to tough it out and remain unconscious, then Penny would follow her example.

“Fabia, don’t.” Penny recognized her sister’s voice coming from the foot of her bed. “Let them sleep.”

A moment later Penny felt herself rise from bed, and not in the way she normally did, grudgingly, under protest, but also under her own power. The pillow slipped off her head, her blanket slipped off, and she opened her eyes to find herself rising toward the ceiling.

“Hey!” Penny kicked and flailed, trying to find a handhold, and found herself spinning slowly upside down for her efforts. She decided to retain what little dignity she had left and pulled her nightshirt down to her knees as her feet rotated toward the ceiling. “I’m gonna get you for this!”

Fabia’s cackling laughter rang out, and a moment later Penny saw Zoe, arms and legs flopping casually, still snoring, floating up to join her.

Flanna shook her head and yelled down the open attic door.

“They’re up!”

* * *

Penny emerged a half-hour later onto her front porch, and stopped to survey the colossal crowd gathered outside. The Traveling Reds were present, this year’s troupe including many new faces, family she’d met only briefly in her visits to Galatania, with Imogen as troupe leader.

Others had come through the Worldgate to greet them on their last stop of the tour, and Penny saw her father among them. He spoke with Flanna and Susan next to a large table laden with plates stacked high with pancakes, eggs, bacon, and bagels. Some of the gathered helped themselves to breakfast, but most were simply enjoying the company.

She saw a handful of carnival workers circulating through the crowd; the old ticket taker, a few operators she recognized from the previous year’s fair, and Jaiden sitting down in the grass with her father.

“What’s all this about?” Zoe pushed her way past Penny, then spotted the food and decided she was more interested in sustenance than answers. She left Penny standing before the open front door, trying to decide if it was time to escape back inside.

Flanna spotted Zoe eyeing the spread like a hungry young lion, and then found Penny.

“Come on!” Flanna waved her over.

Penny sighed, braced herself for an excess of human interaction.

Ronan trotted through the gathered Reds, carnival workers, and friends, garnering only the occasional startled look. The Reds all knew him well, and the carnival people simply thought Penny had a well-behaved pet fox. He intercepted Penny, and she bent down, ostensibly to stroke his head. No need to freak out the carnival people.

“What’s all this?” Penny whispered, and bent even lower for his whispered reply.

“If they didn’t tell you, they probably don’t want you to know,” he said, then moved off to accept a strip of bacon from Jaiden.

Torin met her with a hug, then ran a hand through her hair. It had grown out to a pert, curly bob, and Penny was thinking about leaving it short to avoid confusion. Flanna had grown her hair out even longer now, and their hair was the only way people could tell her and Flanna apart.

“What’s all of this about?” She held her father with what Zoe liked to call her death stare, just to let him know she was serious.

He laughed, seriously undermining her faith in her skills of intimidation, but answered her.

“It’s not about anything,” he said, then switching to Galatanian, which Penny was still struggling to learn, “I wanted to see my daughters, and Susan thought I should bring the family.”

“I thought we should celebrate the anniversary,” Susan said. “A whole year of no one trying to kill any of us.”

“I’ll drink to that,” Zoe said, and downed a Dixie cup of orange juice.

Faces beamed at her, hands patted her shoulders, people noticing her from a distance waved.

“I need coffee if you expect me to deal with people this early,” Penny grumbled.

Flanna made a face. “So nasty.”

Penny rejoined the party minutes later with one cup in her hand and another in her other hand, and saw Katie and Ellen arrive with their families.

Marcus and Lynne West had learned the truth about their daughter on that night a year ago, the blow to their sensibilities softened somewhat by the news that their son and Marcus’s newly returned sister had the same abilities. They had insisted that the Kellys be let in on the secret as well, and over Ronan’s grumbling objections, Susan, Nancy, Tracy, and Janet invited them over for dinner and the shock of their lives barely a week after the battle on Clover Hill and the strangeness that kicked off the Harvest Fair.