Read No Sorrow Like Separation (The Commander Book 5) for Free Online

Gilgamesh’s driving style.  I just adjusted how I drove until I found the right place to keep Gilgamesh calm.  Magic, but what wasn’t?
    “That shouldn’t be a problem,” he said.  “What Keaton wanted me to do was test your mind.  Is this okay?”
    Gilgamesh was a loud ‘Boo!’ from falling apart in utter panic.  I worked on quieting myself to be pleasant Carol .  Which wasn’t what I wanted to be doing right this instant.  Back to myself, or back to having more of myself than before, I wanted to go out and be a predator for a while.  A good stalk would quiet my nerves.  I was obligated, though, to be pleasant.  I wasn’t sure why.  More of this ‘logic’ nonsense.
    I went with my gut.  “Ask the questions.  Let’s see how I do.”
    The answer was: poorly.  My memory was back to Arm normal, but as I feared, my grasp on logic hadn’t improved much.  I now understood simple ‘if X then Y’ style logic, but anything more complex turned into gibberish.  I could do arithmetic in my head but couldn’t connect formulas to objects or concepts.  Triangle areas remained beyond me.  Oh, and I couldn’t read.  I knew this when I figured out that the squiggles on the radio dial and speedometer and the road signs likely meant something.
    After those tests I told Gilgamesh I needed to get out of the car and work off some steam.  He didn’t object, but afterwards said that he couldn’t remember me being able to leap as I had when I was bounding around beside the highway.  I suspected his observation meant something, so like with many things that meant something I couldn’t understand, I stuck his words away in my memories for later.
    My biggest fear was the size of the tab I was running up with Keaton.  At some point she would demand repayment and I had some bad fears about what she might want.  The wonderful old phrase “I’ll do anything” haunted my thoughts.  I didn’t want to go there again.
     
    “Carol?  I need to talk to you, if that’s okay,” Gilgamesh said.  A panicky whisper, barely audible over the steady freeway hum of progress at 75 miles per hour.
    “Sure.”  I had hours of driving to go and any distraction would do.  Getting my mind partly fixed had shaken loose a large number of bad memories, all of which I tried to process.
    “I haven’t been talking to you about personal issues, for fear they would upset you, or that you hadn’t recovered enough to, um…”  His voice trailed off.
    “Understand?  Cope?”
    “Yes.”  He took a deep breath.  “You need to understand that I’ve wanted to talk to you in a calm setting since the beginning, since St. Louis.  Just the fact I’m fulfilling one of my dreams has got me on edge.”
    I was beginning to suspect Crows didn’t think like other human beings.  “I understand,” I said.  This talk was important to him.  He had likely been rehearsing since Keaton grabbed him.  Or before.
    “First, I’d like to apologize for not being able to participate in your rescue.  I’m just a young Crow.”
    I had to laugh.  He could hide from me, find me in the vast expanse of the United States, cope with Keaton and he still needed to apologize.  I remembered some of the story.  “You got me out of captivity without having to be present.  What you did is nothing to apologize for.”
    He appreciated the compliment.  “I asked myself ‘what would Carol do?’”
    “You organized the rescue.”
    “As best as possible.”  He went on to tell an amazing story of how he had juggled his Crow contacts, Keaton and Rizzari, making sure they all had the information they needed at the right time.
    “What you did is amazing,” I said.  “I’m not sure I would have been able to do that.”  We eyed each other closely.  Part of our relationship was a juice-based love thing, another was that we made damned good resources for each other’s plans.
    In return, I told him about Focus Teas and her schemes.  I