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  “Tell ’er myself, then, next time I’m by. You free for dinner tonight? We never did get to the Italian place up on Route 1. Way the town’s filling up, I’m thinking this evening’s our last best chance ’til fall.”

  I smiled.

  “It sounds great. This time,” I promised, “I’ll remember.”

  “I’d appreciate it, though you forgetting turned out all right.”

  “All right?” I demanded, since my forgetting our previous date to dine at the Italian place on Route 1 had led directly to the first time Borgan and I had made love.

  “Well, what I mean to say is, it was nice.”

  “Nice! I’ll show you nice.”

  “I’ll look forward to that,” he said, and I heard the laugh in his voice. “I’ll pick you up at six, Kate.”

  “See you then,” I said, smiling like an idiot, even after we’d hung up.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  MONDAY, JUNE 26

  LOW TIDE 6:17 P.M. EDT

  SUNSET 8:27 P.M.

  “That . . . was delicious.”

  I put my fork down on the plate that had only moments before held a substantial slice of tiramisu. Borgan and I had opted to share dessert—an enlightened decision, considering what had already gone before.

  I leaned back in my chair, picked up my cup and had an appreciative sip of really excellent coffee.

  “Rest of the meal was nice, too,” Borgan offered, with a half-smile.

  I eyed him.

  “I’m beginning to think that when you say nice, you actually mean . . . oh—supercalifragilisticexpialidocious.”

  Borgan tipped his head as if considering.

  “Gotta admit it, Kate, nice is a lot less of a mouthful.”

  “Oh, agreed! But it’s a little . . . tepid. An amateur might think you were less than enthusiastic, take her veal saltimbocca and retire, weeping, from the field.”

  “Hadn’t thought of it that way,” he allowed, raising his cup to his lips. He drank, and sighed in a satisfied way as he put the cup back in the saucer.

  “Being a Mainer, I’ve got certain traditions to uphold,” he pointed out.

  “True enough.” I finished my coffee, and echoed Borgan’s satisfied sigh. That was some nice coffee.

  “Maybe,” I said, meeting his eyes firmly, “we could meet in the middle.”

  “I’m open to suggestions.”

  Borgan looked exceptionally fine tonight, in a black shirt with mother of pearl buttons. His braid, hanging casually over his shoulder, looked subtly different; I couldn’t decide if he had added another bead or shell to those already woven in, or if he’d oiled the heavy length, or . . .

  “See, now, nice seems better’n just nothing,” he said, and I shook my head, ruefully.

  “Got caught up in the scenery. How about wonderful, or terrific, or even—great?”

  “I can try ’em on and see how they fit,” Borgan said equitably, and then turned his head to smile at our waiter, who had just arrived to ask us if we needed anything else. Assured that we were in fine fettle, he gave Borgan the check and cleared away the dessert plate, forks, and coffee cups.

  “This was a good choice,” I said, while Borgan pulled a credit card out of his wallet. “We’ll have to come back again, after the Season’s over and we can move on the roads again.” I hesitated, then added, hearing the note of defiance in my own voice. “My treat.”

  Borgan looked up from the check folder.

  “That’d be . . . great,” he said, and smiled.

  * * *

  Borgan has a red GMC pickup truck with leather seats to die for. I settled happily into the passenger’s side, and pulled the seat belt snug.

  The fact that Borgan not only owns a truck, but drives it, apparently when and where he pleases, was almost as strange as the fact of Gran’s sojourn in the Land of the Flowers, leaving her tree rooted, as it were, in the Wood on Heath Hill. See, trenvay are tied to certain pieces of land, or rocks, thickets, or stretches of swampland. Some of the older, and thereby stronger, can leave their own place and wander around town. Gran, for instance, set up housekeeping in Tupelo House on Dube Street. Borgan being the Guardian of the Gulf of Maine, he can apparently range up and down the coast far enough that he found a truck useful.

  And I guess, really, it’s not all that strange. After all, I left Archers Beach—walked away from my oath and my duty and all the family I had left—and lived for years in the dry lands, employed as a software engineer.

  The only thing was that I’d been dying at a pretty good clip, without Archers Beach to sustain me.

  “So,” Borgan said, snapping his seat belt, “like to go for a ride?”

  “That sounds so . . . normal.”

  “That mean no?”

  “It means yes.”

  “All right, then. Where’d you like to go?”

  Well, there was a pesky question, wasn’t it? I considered Portland, but I wasn’t craving a city. A small ride in the extended twilight, that was what I wanted. Something with a pleasant aspect, that wouldn’t take all night. I had plans for a good percentage of all night.

  Nice, was it?

  “You want to go down Camp Ellis?” I asked. “That’s a pretty ride.”

  “So it is.” He started the truck and slipped it into gear. “Give you a chance to stick your nose into the cat business, too.”

  I laughed.

  “I’d be honest and tell you that I’d forgotten about the cats, but I know you wouldn’t believe me.”

  “Might try it; I could surprise you.”

  He turned right onto Route 1 out of Anjon’s parking lot, the truck gathering speed effortlessly.

  “Are there”—I said, rolling down the window so I could smell the complicated odors of the salt marsh we were passing through—“are there any other Guardians of the Land, up or down the coast?”

  It had never occurred to me to ask the question before, and I sort of wondered why it occurred to me now— Oh. The cats. If Camp Ellis had a Guardian . . .

  “Well, now,” Borgan said. “There’s some. Not so many now as had been, and never were a lot. Off the top of my head: Stonington, Roque Bluffs, Cutler, Barrington”—he threw me a half-amused look—“that’s in Nova Scotia. Had been a woman at Surfside, but her folk didn’t understand it.” He stopped, suddenly, as if he hadn’t exactly meant to mention the Guardian of Surfside.

  “What happened?” I asked, assuring myself that I just wanted to know, and that I wasn’t jealous.

  “What happened . . .” He sighed. “They sent her away, is what happened, by reason that she was crazy. That’s what her father said, and signed the papers to put her into a hospital in Portland. When she came home, she might as well have been dead. Married a man her father picked out, had his baby, then . . . she faded.” He shook his head. “Wasn’t a drop of harm in that girl, an’ her father could never say the same.”

  He guided the truck ’round a curve, then threw me a half grin.

  “Happens Camp Ellis has a Guardian. I’ll make sure to introduce you.”

  “I’d like that,” I said, truthfully. Borgan was the only other Guardian I’d met, and his service was different in key ways from my own. “What’s her name, the Camp Ellis Guardian?”

  “Melusina Cosette Dufour,” he said promptly. “But everybody calls her Frenchy.”

  * * *

  The public landing parking lot in Camp Ellis was about half full of cars. Borgan pulled into a spot overlooking the little spit of beach and the boats moored in the Saco River. The last, long rays of sunlight kissed it all: gilded the water, turned the sand to gold, and the working boats into the barges and barques of kings. Wood Island Light was precision-cut from shadow, standing tall and black against the rosy sky.

  Borgan turned off the truck, and I sighed in simple contentment.

  “Did you miss this, when you were out in the dry lands?” he asked.

  “I did, at first, all the time,” I said slowly, watching the wavelets brush gently against the little beach. “Then, it was like . . . it was like I convinced myself it wasn’t—it had never been—real. Just some place I’d made up out of my head, and it would be stupid to cry myself sick every damn’ night because I was missing a place that didn’t even exist.”

  “That’s some powerful spellwork,” Borgan said, after a moment.

  “Powerful stupidity, more like,” I corrected. Something moved in the corner of my eye. I turned my head and saw that the door of the red shack to our left had opened, and a stick figure in jeans, flannel shirt and a gimme hat was limping in our direction.

  “Looks like the lot man wants his fee,” I said.

  Borgan turned his head, then popped the door and got out.

  “Evenin’, Frenchy!” he called.

  “Don’t you ‘Evenin’, Frenchy’ me, you son of a hake! Where the hell you been?”

  I opened my door and jumped to the ground, shutting it firmly before I walked around the back of the truck.

  “Been about,” Borgan was saying. “Piece o’business took me outta the way for a bit.”

  “Piece o’business,” Frenchy repeated. “And what kind of—”

  I walked into her line of sight about then, and she stopped her scold to give me a long look out of peat-brown eyes before she returned her attention to Borgan.

  “I can see that kind of business might’ve kept you, all right.”

  “Be polite,” Borgan told her, and stretched out his hand. I took it, and let myself be pulled closer to his side.

  “Kate, this is Frenchy, Camp Ellis Guardian. Frenchy, this is Bonny Pepperidge’s girl, Kate Archer, Guardian of Archers Beach.”

  “Pleased to meet you,” I said, which was more true than not. Frenchy didn’t bother to return the s
entiment.

  “Archer of Archers, are you?”

  “That’s it,” I agreed, there being no sense to denying it.

  “And you’re pleased to meet me for why?”

  “Because, not counting Borgan, I’ve never met another Guardian.”

  She gave a sharp crack of laughter, and smacked Borgan on the arm.

  “I like that—not countin’ Borgan! Oughta happen to you more often.”

  “Time enough, and I’m pretty sure Kate’ll cut me down to size,” he answered equitably.

  “’Bout time you met your match.” Frenchy turned back to me. “So, now you met another Guardian, what d’ya think?”

  “I think it’s a good thing you started whittling Borgan before I got to him.”

  That earned me another crack of laughter, then she pushed her gimme hat back up on her head, showing a short, curly profusion of brown hair. I frowned. The sense I had from her was that she was old—her face was gaunt, tanned to leather by wind and sun. I reached for the land to sharpen my senses—and touched something that was . . . land. It responded to my touch, tardily; I heard a slight fizzing inside my head, as if I’d hit a radio station hovering on the edge of my reception area.

  I withdrew my touch, carefully and respectfully—no snatching—and produced a small bow for the Guardian on whose land I stood.

  “Sorry. Habit.”

  “Don’t I know it?” Frenchy said cheerfully. “Used to be I’d get over to the Pool now and then, to share news with John Lester. Had the damndest time mindin’ my manners. Nature’s nature, is what it is.”

  The Pool in local parlance is Biddeford Pool, across the river and east, toward Wood Island Light. So there was another . . .

  “Been gone some amount of time, now, John,” Frenchy continued. “And nobody rose up to take his service.” She shook her head, a shadow passing over her worn face. “Still miss ’im. Quite the man, wasn’t he, Cap’n Borgan?”

  “John was a fine man and a good Guardian,” Borgan said. “Did just as he ought.”

  Frenchy turned back to me.

  “So, you got specific questions? I’ll let you know that I doubt it—Bonny Pepperidge wouldn’t let you outta her sight ’less you knew how to go on.”

  “Mostly,” I said carefully. “Mostly, I wanted to meet another Guardian—and now I’ve done that, and met you. If I do come up with questions—which I’m likely to do because I’m new at this—it’s good to know there’s someone I can ask.” I grinned. “Gran’s a stickler, but she’s not a Guardian.”

  “Lady o’the Wood; that’s damn’ close, but I take your point. Sure, I’ll be on standby. Got a cell?”

  I did, though I was faintly surprised to find that she did. We exchanged numbers, and then I said, “Do you mind talking about the cats?”

  Frenchy laughed shortly.

  “Why not? Everybody else is talkin’ about the cats, like they just fell down from the moon or somethin’. You’d think a smart fella from Away’d know enough to leave what works alone, but, no; there’s none o’what you call common sense at home. Trouble is, while there’s some of us who’d partake of a little civil disobedience, there’s others of us who want the cats gone, and agree with Mr. Talbot about how they’re a nuisance and a sanitation issue, though we take care of ’em proper, and all of ’em have their shots and their records and we get ’em fixed soon’s it’s safe.”

  She shrugged, and jerked her head at me.

  “You wanna see ’em? C’mon with me.”

  I looked at Borgan.

  “You and Frenchy go on,” he said. “I’ll just sit over there by the operator’s shack and take the parking toll, if anybody comes in.”

  “Might be one or two yet,” Frenchy said, glancing at the sky. “’Preciate it. We won’t leave you long.”

  * * *

  Frenchy’s pace was strong, but not fast; it was easy to keep up with her while we walked toward what was left of the old Dummy Railroad terminal.

  “Been talkin’ to the cats, naturally,” she said. “Most want to stay—well, sure they do; the Camp’s their home. Some have relatives in Ocean Park . . . Saco . . . down to your own Beach, and they’re receptive to the idea of moving where they’re more welcome. So, there could be a compromise made. Trouble is, Mr. Talbot’s not a man to stint his principles—makes compromise a mite difficult. Joe and Walter—fishing men, they are—might be making some headway in educating him about the rats and the mice and suchlike vermin they might not have down Away in Phillydelfa.”

  “I think they have rats in Philadelphia,” I said, stepping over a length of old rail. “In fact, I’m sure of it.”

  “Did seem to make sense that there would be, it being a seaport.”

  She slanted a glance rich with mischief toward me. I raised an eyebrow, and she added, entirely straight-faced, “So I’m told.”

  “That’s pretty good,” I said.

  “All’s it wants is practice. Right ’round on the landside’s where it’s open. Got some protection from the sea winds, and privacy for their comin’ and goin’.”

  We came around the shed, and paused just short of entering. I sniffed, smelling fur and cedar and brine. It was dim, and I half-reached for the land, remembered my manners at the last second, and brought my hand up, palm cupped.

  The power coiled at the base of my spine wakened briefly, and a globe of light formed on my waiting palm, illuminating the murky inside with a soft yellow glow.

  “Nice trick,” Frenchy said.

  “Thanks. I’d hate to have to tell you how long it took me to learn it.”

  Inside the shed, green and amber eyes caught the light and reflected it back to me. I could make out maybe ten cats on various levels created by beams, corner shelves, and platforms—somebody had been busy making sure the place was habitable; on the floor were bowls of dry food and other bowls, full of water.

  “Is this all of them?” I asked.

  “All runs to twenty-three,” Frenchy said. “Not everybody uses the place; they’ll kind of shift in and out as it pleases ’em. They’re cats, after all. No time cards or sign-out sheets for them.”

  “They’re feral?”

  “Some are—there’s about eight, nine that don’t tolerate people, and barely tolerate other cats. You’ll maybe catch sight of their shadows somewhere out on the town, or down the dock. The rest are pretty mellow; they’ve got no fear of human people—no respect, either,” she added, and it seemed like she was making a point to one of the cats inside the shed. “Four of ’em like people, fools that they are. Can prolly place them through the animal shelter, but that still leaves a nineteen-cat problem.” She moved a bony shoulder in a half shrug. “Back o’the envelope, call it a fifteen-cat problem, taken as a given that those with connections elsewhere’ll move on.”

  I nodded while I considered the cats inside the shed and they considered me. They were gray cats, mostly, some showing white feet or markings, more short-haired cats in the sample than long. I didn’t see any kittens; all of the cats present at the moment were mature enough to take care of themselves.

  A shadow moved in the side of my eye, and I turned my head to the right.

  The murk parted before him like savannah grass before a lion; a plushy black with a long, plumed tail and a white smudge along the right side of his face, from nose tip to the outer edge of a bright amber eye. He stalked up to me, then paused, staring into my face. His was flat-nosed and broad, his ears notched with past valor.

  I looked back at him, carefully not moving.

  This appeared to satisfy his sense of propriety. He continued forward, leaned in to weave ’round my ankles once, and went on, out into the old train yard, about business of his own.

  “You must be somethin’,” Frenchy said, and her voice actually was a little hushed, as if she’d just witnessed an event of no small moment.

  “King Cat?” I asked, trying for flippant.

  “Near enough. The fishing men call him Old Mister, and even they do what he says.”

  “Well, then I’m glad I passed muster.”

  Frenchy gave me a funny look, her eyes squinched together, then said, “Yeah,” in a not particularly convinced tone.

  I grinned and put my light out, reabsorbing the tiny bit of power.

  “I’d best get back to Borgan,” I said. “You don’t know what kind of mischief he’ll get into if he’s bored.”