ago, though probably not more than an hour had passed.
“No. It was like he thought I might go off and help him. As if there were something still between us,” she whispered. “But he did help me, Shinobu. They would have gotten me if he hadn’t been here.”
Her muscles were starting to shake more violently. Shinobu pulled her closer to him.
“I learned a lot,” he told her. “We were right about the Middle Dread. He was doing so much…You have to help me think everything through.” He drew the athame of the Dreads from his waist and began to adjust its dials. “But first I’m taking you home.”
18 Years Earlier
It was late at night, or perhaps very early in the morning, depending on one’s perspective. Catherine sat cross-legged in the middle of the living room floor of Archie’s flat, which had become her flat as well. He’d fallen asleep hours ago, but she wasn’t tired.
Before her on the floor was a small piece of paper that bore writing in a tidy, foreign hand:
1. Be firm in body, in good health.
2. Clear your thoughts, begin from neutral mind.
3. Focus upon the subject at hand.
4. Place the helm upon your head.
5. Follow these rules faithfully, lest the focal become a havoc helm.
Mariko had written out those instructions and sent them to her. The five steps were directions for using the other object in front of Catherine—the focal she’d found inside Archie’s wardrobe.
She picked up the helmet and felt its cool metal between her hands. She’d let it sit in the sun for days, soaking up energy, just as one did with a disruptor when charging it. Now it crackled faintly when she moved it, hinting at the power within.
Resting the focal lightly atop her six-months-pregnant belly, Catherine studied its details for the hundredth time. Or perhaps for the thousandth time. She had never worn it, however, never pulled it fully onto her head, even though she’d had Mariko’s instructions for months.
The baby moved, and Catherine put a hand to her belly. There was always fresh amazement to feel him and to think: There really is a child in there.
She’d never given any thought to being a mother. There were so many things she wanted to do as a Seeker, and beyond that, there was the other idea, what she’d dreamed of becoming one day if the Old could be turned against the Middle Dread…and motherhood didn’t fit into that plan.
But Archie had changed the landscape. He’d surprised her entirely by being overjoyed at the news that she was pregnant. When she’d suggested the timing wasn’t great, considering that she was seventeen years old and they weren’t married yet, he’d teased her for being old-fashioned. “We’ll get married when we feel like it, anytime,” he’d said calmly. “That’s a ceremony for our parents, not for us.”
She had slowly embraced the change in her life. Though she was only eighteen now, she would have a child, she would have Archie, and together they would search for truth in the history of Seekers.
Now, sitting on the living room floor, she read the first line of Mariko’s instructions again:
Be firm in body, in good health.
There was the catch, the reason she hadn’t used the focal. The reason she’d done nothing, as a Seeker, in a long while.
She felt perfectly healthy, and yet things were not so certain. Catherine had started to bleed at three months, and the doctors hadn’t been hopeful that she would keep the child. She’d gotten into bed, and she’d scarcely gotten out since—and her bleeding had stopped months ago. Surely there was no more danger?
The weeks and weeks of rest had been torture. She’d made Archie clear out the living room furniture and rig up a practice dummy, and she’d spent vast amounts of time lying on a sofa shoved against a wall, instructing him in the use of whipswords and many other weapons. (She’d even adjusted the whipsword to work for Archie as it worked for her, which she’d promised him was the most romantic gesture a Seeker could make.) The dummy was badly battered but still looked better than the walls of their living room, which were covered in slashes and divots and outright holes.
And she’d taught Archie a good deal about Seekers. Though she hadn’t told him everything, he understood that Catherine had an unusual way of getting from place to place, and that this method of travel was dangerous—you could lose yourself as you went, if you weren’t