Trickster's Girl: The Raven Duet Book #1

EPILOGUE

HE SHOULD HAVE GONE ON. The moment the pouch left her hands he’d felt it, the dissolution of the energy song that Kelsa and the catalyst had created between them.

Separated, their signatures were so different, so much less, that he couldn’t have sensed either of them. But he’d found the pouch before, in the museum. He could find it again.
He doubted his enemies could.
So he had time. A few days, at least. And if she hadn’t broken him out of that human jail he’d still be there. It seemed … rude to abandon her before he knew that she’d go free.
He’d found her by following the bike. It wasn’t long after he’d regained the ability to shift that two uniformed humans had arrived, bundled the motorbike into a van, and driven away. A longish drive. The nearest airport was in Whitehorse.
Half a dozen black birds were tearing at trash in the airport parking lot, so no one looked twice at him. Even Kelsa, after a swift glance at the hovering flock, had shrugged and gone back to fussing over her bike as it was loaded into a shipping crate. If it hadn’t been for the hovering policemen he could have approached her, but it sounded like their orders were to keep their eyes on her till her plane was in the air. They didn’t have enough evidence to charge her with the jailbreak, but they were taking no chances with “young Houdini’s”deportment.
In this form he couldn’t laugh, but delight bubbled up and he flipped his wings to display it.
Even if he’d been able to speak, he wasn’t sure whether he’d have praised her or berated her for abandoning the pouch in that spectacular way. Probably praise. If she had crossed the border, sooner or later his enemies would have killed one or the other of them. Maybe both. Now he had another chance, a little more time. But whoever was carrying the catalyst now hadn’t connected with it at all, and that worried—
Raven had never seen the woman who hurried across the parking lot toward Kelsa, but there was something familiar about the mouth, the tilt of the eyebrows. He had gotten better at reading human faces.
Kelsa looked up and her jaw dropped. She took a slow step toward her mother. Then another. Then she ran straight into her mother’s outstretched arms.
They were both crying, Raven observed critically, a state that seemed to reduce even sensible humans to incoherence.
The two policemen wore the smug look of humans who’d known this was going to happen.
“This is stupid,” Kelsa finally said, her voice muffled against her mother’s shoulder. “I’d have been home by tonight. They’re going to put me on a plane in just a few hours. “
“It’s only the cost of a ticket,” her mother said. “And Mrs. Stattler agreed. Worried doesn’t begin to cover it! You’re really all right?”
“I told you I was. ” Kelsa pulled out of the embrace just enough to see her mother’s face. “You didn’t have to come. “
“I didn’t have to. “The older woman’s voice was firm now. “And Jemina said that as long as you were all right I should let you cope with the consequences yourself. But she was wrong about that. Kelsa, we need to talk. “
The girl’s expression was serious, but sure. “You’re right. It’s time. And now, I’m ready to listen. “
She looked up as he launched himself into the sky. She had no way of knowing it was him, but her hand still rose in the beginning of a farewell wave.
She had no further need of him. Just as he no longer needed her—though for a human she’d done amazingly well. He would actually miss her.
But time was rushing on, and it was the healing that mattered. Raven circled once and settled into flying, north and west, toward Alaska.