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On the way home, Sir Walter mentioned that he had arranged with the
nonna
, or elderly landlady, for some Italian home–cooking. I left him downstairs to get dinner. Once I rippled solid inside the apartment, my stomach roared with hunger. I didn’t see Mick right off, which most likely meant napping or showering. Seating myself beside the window to the courtyard, I watched as Sir Walter attempted to pass our landlady a large stack of Euro bills. They were haggling over the price of dinner or something. She spoke with her hands as much as with words. After a few minutes, she walked off shaking her head and mumbling in Italian. Sir Walter stood like he was still waiting. I didn’t know what for; he already had a bowl that looked like dinner.

But he stayed and, sure enough, she came back a minute later and handed him a set of keys. Which she didn’t let go of right off. It seemed like she had a string of
No
–this and
No
–that to get through before she would let go. Shaking her head once more, she punctuated whatever she had to say with a jabbing forefinger that stopped just short of actually taking out one of Sir Walter’s eyes.

“
Arrivaderla, Signora
,” he called out, doing one of his little trademark bows.

“
Buona Notte, Signore
,” she replied. She grabbed a broom that was leaning against the wall behind her and began beating the paving stones. She was muttering in Italian and still moving her head back and forth like she seriously did not approve of Sir Walter.

“Mick,” I called, “Come here quick. Check out our landlady.”

My sister ignored me. The head–shaking below ceased, although the mumbling continued.

“Mick, hurry up or she’ll be gone.”

Just then the
nonna
with the broom looked up and saw me in the window. The muttering got louder and the head–shaking started up again. I pulled back from the window, laughing, and headed down our short hallway to my sister’s bedroom. I passed the bathroom, empty, on the way, and knocked on Mick’s door.

“Hey! Dinner. Wake up. You should have seen our landlady and Sir Walter going at it just now.” I waited to give Mick a moment to wake up, then I pushed the door open. “Wake up already.”

The light beside her bed illuminated the quiet, empty room. My sister wasn’t here.

I turned back down the hall, checking the bathroom more thoroughly and passing Sir Walter as he entered the apartment.

“Mick’s gone,” I said. Something like panic was setting up camp in my gut. “No note, no nothing. She always leaves a note on the kitchen table.” It had been our system for years.

Sir Walter set a large bowl of pasta on the edge of the kitchen table, which was empty except for the laptop.

“Why would she take off?” I asked, more to myself than to Sir Walter.

“Indeed,” said Sir Walter. “Although perhaps it would be better to ask ourselves who has taken her?”

FORGIVENESS

·
SAM
·

Take me to Gwyn’s,
I told Christian as we rose out of the valley’s tule fog and into the foothills.

Are you certain we should go to the dwelling of your friend? Would not you prefer that your parents know of your safety?
asked Christian.

They’re going to worry for sure if they see me lying in bed looking like I’ve been shot full of drugs,
I replied.
They think I went to Fresno for the day. I can use Gwyn’s phone to call them after I … recover.

Very well.

We arrived at Gwyn’s, shivered through the rock wall of her mom’s bakery building, and rose along the stairs. As we passed the tiny bathroom, I thought of something I was going to need.

Advil
.

Apparently I’d thought it “aloud,” because I could feel Christian’s confusion over the strange word.

I explained.
It’s a pain reliever. You had those in the seventeenth century, didn’t you?

We lacked “ad–ville,”
he replied.
Will I find it in an herb garden? Send me an image.

Amused, I sent him an image of a bottle of Advil on the counter in the Li’s tiny bathroom.

A decoction.
I shall obtain it.
Saying this, he set me gently upon Gwyn’s bed.

As I solidified, a fog wove itself through my brain, as heavy as the one we’d traversed in the valley.

Christian had to wake me to deliver the Advil. “
Mademoiselle
,” he whispered. “The ether affects you still. Do you wish for the decoction of
Ad–Ville
?”

I rolled over, took the meds, and fell back into a dark sleep.

I awoke to the gloom of evening, having the sense that I’d just left a church service for the second time that day.

“You’re awake,” whispered Gwyn, sounding delighted. “Good. Finally someone to talk to who’s not completely pissed off at me or ignoring me.”

“Gwyn?” I mumbled. My mouth felt like it had been swapped repeatedly by large cotton balls.

“Drink this,” she said, passing me a cup with a straw sticking out of it.

I drank something that tasted like peppermint and bitter herbs. “Sylvia–tea,” I said.

“No, this is Bridget Li–tea. It’s supposed to cure hangovers,” said Gwyn. “I told Ma you came over so your folks wouldn’t know you’d experimented with alcohol last night. She’s the one pissed off at me.”

“You’re good,” I said, nodding. I quit nodding when the room started wobbling. “And my folks, why am I here according to them?”

“They think we’re just hanging after a trip to Fresno.”

I frowned, remembering something Hans had said. “Did you and your mom get some text from my phone about going to a spa?”

Gwyn rolled her eyes. “Yeah, obviously Ma vetoed the idea. I won’t tell you what she said about your favorite spa. Let’s just say Ma doesn’t appreciate Japanese culture.” Gwyn’s eyes grew large. “Omigosh! That text wasn’t from you! Ew, it was from
him
, wasn’t it?”

I nodded.

“Does he still have your phone?”

I nodded again.

“You need to get the number disconnected,” Gwyn said. “In case Will or Sir Walter call you.”

One more thing to do. Get a new cell number.

“So I guess Christian filled you in on … everything?”

“When he could be bothered to,” she replied.

My brow wrinkled in confusion.

“He’s the one who’s been ignoring me,” she explained. “He’s busy praying again. Or chanting. Whatever you Catholics do. He was all telling me about your little vacay in San Francisco and then he said it was ‘vespers,’ and he started in on this sing–song–y Latin. I made him ripple so he wouldn’t wake you up.” She shrugged. “And so Ma wouldn’t get all in my business about him.”

I started to nod again but had to quit. The dizziness hovered nearby. “He’s probably singing something called ‘the hours of the day.’ Nuns and priests and other good Catholics do that. Seven set times, day and night. I’ve actually been hearing him recently.”

“Seven times
every day
?” asked Gwyn.

“And night,” I said. “Although it eased up in the last century. But I’m guessing no one’s updated Christian. He’s probably still a seventeenth century Catholic.” I tried propping myself up in Gwyn’s small bed. I ached in places I didn’t want to think about right now. “I think I need to pee.”

“Oh, good sign!” said Gwyn, standing to help me. “I mean, it’s always a good sign on the Emergency Room Channel shows. God, Sam, I’m so sorry. About what Hans did to you.”

I didn’t want to talk about it.

“Right,” she said. “I’ll just kick Christian out of the bathroom.”

“You put him in the bathroom?”

“Yeah, dude, it creeped me out to have an invisible guy chanting prayers in my bedroom, okay?”

I grunted a laugh and Gwyn helped me to the bathroom.

After she got me settled back in her bed, she told me I should be feeling pretty much normal once the anesthesia left my system. “I found a recorded show on egg–harvesting from the Make Big Bucks channel.” She laughed, but then cut herself off, and her eyes got soft. “I’m sorry, Sam. I’m not very good when things are horrible and serious. I feel like I have to laugh or I’ll scream. I guess I just want to lighten things up. But some things aren’t meant to be … lightened, are they?”

Reaching for her hand, I smiled. “Thanks for trying to help.”

“You’re welcome,” whispered Gwyn. Then she sighed. “What else did I have to do with my time except surf? You were laying there looking all death–warmed–over. Catholic boy was chanting prayers. Ma’s not talking to me.”

“I’m glad you’re here with me,” I said. Tears formed in my eyes and I forced them back. “I’m not ready to go home.”

“I already called Sylvia and told her you’re spending the night,” Gwyn said. “Ma says you can stay as long as you know she doesn’t cook dinners.”

My mouth formed half a smile. “Trust me, food doesn’t sound good right now.”

Gwyn scooted down the bed so she could wrap her arms around me. Her hair smelled like berry shampoo, which normally I’m not a fan of. But right now, it smelled like the best thing in the world to me. I let a few tears squeeze out before we pulled apart.

“I feel so …
mad
right now,” I said. A few more tears chased their way down my face.

“Of course you do,” Gwyn said, passing a box of tissue.

“And I miss Will so ba–ad.” My voice cracked and I started crying hard.

Gwyn sat with me, holding me on one side, passing Kleenex. Once I’d gotten through the worst of it, she spoke. “Will’s job right now is to figure out the best way to kick some bad–guy butt, which is great considering someone needs a serious kick in the pants right now.”

My voice came out in a whisper. “I should have stayed with Will, Gwyn. I came here to stay safe and look what happened.”

Gwyn frowned, thinking. “Coming home was the right thing to do, given what you knew at the time.” She shook her head. “Do you have any idea how much your dad loves you?”

I picked at the quilt on my lap. My dad wasn’t the most demonstrative of parents.

“Sam, your dad’s eyes, when he’s watching you at home,” Gwyn paused, casting her eyes around the room for words. “The man
treasures
you, girlfriend. That’s the only way I can describe it. He gets this look in his eyes when he sees you that is different from how he looks at anyone else. Including Sylvia.”

“Ew, I seriously hope so!”

“Shut up. You know what I mean.” Gwyn took my hand in hers. “It would kill him to lose you, Sam. You did the right thing, coming home.”

I looked down again, remembering how I’d used the exact same words to convince Sir Walter I had to come back to Las Abuelitas. “Yeah. I know.”

The sound of Christian softly clearing his throat made us both look up.

“If I am interrupting, I can vanish once more,” he said.

“Well, that’s just dumb, since you’d still be here anyway,” said Gwyn, patting the bed beside her. “Come on over. Join the convo.”

Christian took a chair at Gwyn’s desk instead, after bowing slightly.

“God, I love how you do that, but you have absolutely got to quit bowing at school,” said Gwyn, shaking her head sadly.

Christian flushed. “As you command.”

“Oh–boy–there–we–go–again,” said Gwyn, blurring her words together to obscure them from Christian. “Which brings up something else,” she continued, “Now that the girls of Las Abs High have noticed your existence.” Sighing, she placed one hand on Christian’s shoulder to steady herself as she leaned and grabbed a notepad off her desk. “Sorry,” she said, indicating the personal contact. Of course she didn’t mean it.

“I’ve made some notes for you. If a girl says any of what’s written here to you, you want to run the other way because she’s after your virginity.” Gwyn paused and cleared her throat. “You know what that is, right?”

I rolled my eyes.

“You will pardon me,” interrupted Christian. “I am no virgin.”

“Really?” Gwyn’s voice came out in a low purr.

“He was married, dweeb,” I said, throwing a one–eyed stuffed tiger at her.

It was very ugly, but she hugged it close, glaring at me.

“But I am puzzled,” said Christian. “You say the soliciting of sexual congress is permitted within the halls of learning?”

“Say what?” asked Gwyn.

I remembered things Will had told me about life in the court of Louis the Fourteenth. “Gwyn’s not talking about … prostitution. In our century, well in our country, anyway, some kids choose to have, er, sexual contact outside of marriage.”

“The
unmarried
females are promiscuous?” asked Christian.

“Very,” said Gwyn. “So stay away from girls who give you their number or say they want to hook–up or fool around or … just keep clear of the girls around here. They’re not all like me, ‘kay?”

My fingers gripped the fur of another stuffed animal, but I stopped myself from actually throwing it. I was in Gwyn’s care, after all.

“I am here to guard the safety of
Mademoiselle
Ruiz. I shall not permit myself to become distracted,” replied Christian. Then his face turned a deep scarlet. “That is, it shall not happen again. I shall never forgive myself for allowing a distraction to prevent me from protecting you.”

“He means his chanting thing,” murmured Gwyn. “It’s what distracted him last night.”

“I beg forgiveness,
Mademoiselle
,” said Christian rising to bow deeply.

“Yeah, um, sure. I forgive you,” I said, knowing it would matter to him.

“So, you pray seven times every day?” asked Gwyn.

Christian bowed. “I celebrate the hours daily.”

“That’s cool,” said Gwyn.

I turned my laughter into a cough.
Cool
from the girl who said, minutes ago, that it creeped her out?

“But I shall no longer do so facing the east, nor shall I lower the lids of my eyes. I believe neither is required of me by God.”

“Um, yeah, I think you’re good there,” I said. “So my window faces east, I guess?”

“Yes. I was turned from you last night, or Hans could not have assailed your person.” Remorse creased his face.