The Fourteenth Key (The Chronicles of Terah Book 3) Read Free

can’t put the wives in there.”
    “What are you talking about?” Joan asked with a deep frown.
    “They need a place to sleep! We don’t have anywhere to put them!”
    “You haven’t heard anything I’ve said,” Joan snapped. “This is for one afternoon. We don’t need housing.”
    “You can’t get everyone here, meet with them, and get them all back home in one day.” Karl looked at Kevin. “Tell her there’s no way you can make that many trips in one day!”
    Kevin opened his mouth, but before he could get one word out Joan held up her hand for him to stop. “Like I said Karl, you haven’t been listening. For some reason you’ve decided you don’t want me to do this so you’ve tuned me out.” She turned to Kevin. “I don’t want more than six or eight wives at a time. I want these meetings to be small, informal, just friends having some tea and conversation. I want them to talk openly, and that won’t happen with eighty women. Can you get six or eight wives here after lunch and take them back around five?”
    Before Kevin could answer, Karl spoke up. “Okay. I’ll agree that’s doable, but that means at least ten meetings. How many days do you plan to tie Kevin up with this? And how often do you plan to do it?”
    “I don’t know, maybe only this once, maybe once a year, maybe more. I’ll have to see how successful it is before I can answer that question.”
    “What do you want to meet about anyway? We go over everything at the minister’s conference.”
    “Sometimes talking to men isn’t enough to get the job done. Sometimes, if you want results, you have to go to the wives.”
    “Such as?”
    Before Joan could answer, there was a quick knock and the door opened.
    “I hate to interrupt,” Chris, Kevin’s assistant, began.
    Kevin waved Chris in. “Interrupt. Please. Tell me I’m needed somewhere else. Anywhere will do.”
    Chris laughed and shook his head. “No, but Laryn and Steve want to speak with you for a moment if you have time.”
    “I have plenty of time, but they should enter at their own risk.” Kevin looked at Joan and Karl. “Actually, it might be a good idea for them to be here for this discussion.”
    Laryn, Kevin’s aunt, had served as his father’s assistant from the time he’d started training to be a sorcerer until Myron was born, and then served as his Second until he’d died six months ago. While Badec spent the last year of his life in a coma, Laryn ran the office in his name in order to give Kevin time to study magic with Glendymere. Then, for the past six months, she’d served as Kevin’s mentor in his roles as Seated Sorcerer of Camden and Master Sorcerer of Terah. Kevin felt a deep affection for the woman who’d been a complete stranger until six months ago.
    Steve had been brought from Earth along with Chris, Joan, Karl, Theresa, and Darrell to help Kevin and protect him as he traveled to Willow Canyon to study with Glendymere and then on to Camden to assume his responsibilities. Back on Earth, Steve had felt like his life was basically over. He was a retired widower with no close friends or family. But life on Terah had turned out to be quite interesting, and much to his surprise, he was in love again, which was the reason he wanted to speak with Kevin.
    After Laryn and Steve sat down, Kevin said, “Laryn, Joan wants to invite the ministers’ wives to her home in small groups for meetings.”
    Laryn looked at Joan. “Any particular reason?”
    “I think there are some things women can and will handle better than men, and since none of the ministers are women, we need to meet with the wives.”
    “Such as?” Laryn asked.
    Karl sat back and folded his arms across his chest. “My question exactly.”
    “For one thing, I’d like to see a little progress on placing chapel aides in small communities. Unless Karl’s holding out on me, the ministers haven’t found out how many we need or where we need them. I bet the wives would have gotten