Chapter 21 #3
She’s still ranting. “It’s all so boring.
Every minion seems to think that if she rises, they will too.
The sad truth is that if she bothers with them at all, it will only be to destroy them.
As painfully as possible. In all her rituals and dark little ceremonies, it says as much.
She is come to destroy, she is the end of all things, she is the mouth that will suck on the bones of the world and chew through the gristle.
” Savi heaves a sigh. “She says she will kill everyone and everything, and still her acolytes dance for her. Your wolf last night died for her when she would never do the same for him. I cannot understand it.”
Your wolf. I repress a shudder at that.
“I agree with everything you’re saying. But I doubt one of her cult members will. I think they believe that death is part of the fun.”
“I hate cults,” Savi mutters darkly. “If I was a god I would be much more interested in clear-eyed followers, not this blank, mindless thing that hers have going on.”
“Are you considering elevating yourself?” I ask brightly. “A little ascension in between death goddess risings?”
“You joke.” Savi drives a little bit too fast through Jacksonville, seeming not to notice when a set of humans dive out of her way as she plows through an intersection.
No hint of brakes. Or any apparent awareness when they shout after her.
“But in certain periods of history, sorcerers were worshipped as gods.”
“Who wasn’t?” I reply airily. “According to my grandmother before she died, there was a time when the world cowered in an appropriate fear of werewolves. The glory days, she called it, though she could never pinpoint when, exactly, this was. She was not a fan of wolves having to diminish themselves in the world.”
“Sometimes,” Savi tells me as she takes the hill out of town, her voice dark and arid at once, “diminishment is survival.”
I don’t ask about that. Something about her forbidding tone keeps me from it.
I lounge in the passenger seat as she drives down to Winter’s coffee stand and pulls into the line.
We inch up toward the front, watching truckloads of various creatures get themselves coffee and a little card reading.
Some shout at her. A few throw their coffees.
Some cry, and I see Winter reach out and hold their hand the way a doctor might.
I wonder if she knows how completely she’s become the oracle by now.
When Savi pulls up, she stares up at Winter and frowns when the cards are offered. “Your shift must be over,” she says.
“It was over two hours ago.” Winter cracks her neck on one side, then the other. “But I figure as long as I still have stamina and no headache, why not keep going?”
“Because you’re exhausted and the cards are getting cranky,” says her coworker, a girl I remember from school. She laughs at Winter, then looks my way and, oddly, turns red. “Go on. Get out of here.”
Winter walks out the back of the coffee stand, nods at the vampires who lurk menacingly and glower at every car that pulls up. With them around, she doesn’t have to carry her guns or dive into her car like an action hero.
Instead, she climbs into the back seat of Savi’s SUV like a normal person back in perfectly normal times, and we drive down into Ashland, past the snowy fields, the whitecapped mountains leading the way.
Once we get to Ashland, we drive through Lithia Park—which is always green these days, thanks to magic best left to its own devices—and then out into the mountains until we’re bumping along unmarked roads again.
We wind around and around, catching stunning glimpses of Mount Shasta in the distance, all the way up to Savi’s estate.
I don’t think Winter has been here either, but she does a great job of not looking particularly overawed as we pull up to the sprawling house.
It looks even more like a temple an old god might fancy to me now.
Maybe the sort of temple sorcerers enjoyed during their divine eras, but something keeps me from asking.
Savi flows her way out of the car once she parks it near one of the doors, beckons us to follow her, and sweeps into the house.
Once again, I keep my eyes on her and try not to look at the things happening in my peripheral vision. When Winter starts to drag, her attention clearly getting caught and wrecked, I loop my arm through hers and drag her with me.
“Never look directly at anything in a sorcerer’s house,” I tell her in a low voice.
She blinks, her eyes wide. It takes her a moment to focus on me. “Is that a thing you tell little wolflings?”
“It’s common sense. Do you know magic? If not, don’t mess with it. Even if it’s trying to mess with you. Especially then.”
“Wise words indeed,” Savi says, suddenly beside us. Instead of leading us to one of her courtyards, she turns into a room that smells so deeply of magic that I feel my hackles rise before I even enter.
Winter stops on the threshold too, her head jerking back. “What is this place?”
“My dungeon,” Savi says, then laughs when we both stare at her. “I’m kidding. It’s a place where I cast a spell or two as needed. I thought it was high time that I warded the three of us. Instead of places I think we might go.”
“That seems smart enough,” Winter says, carefully, her pulse rocketing in her throat as she looks around the room. I can hear it.
I look too, my attention going immediately to the windows that look out at different views. The night sky. A wild, cold ocean. The Milky Way. The valley. A desert made of shifting sands and a sun so bright it hurts. It’s dizzying.
I clear my throat. “I wasn’t aware that you could actually ward people.”
“Nothing can or can’t be done,” Savi says, though it sounds to me like she’s talking to herself. “It’s really more a question of . . . what can the magic do? What can you make it do?” She shoots a look in our direction. “Most of the time it’s about harnessing creativity, that’s all.”
She beckons us in. Winter and I look at each other, but we go.
Savi seats us around what looks like an ornate basin, though I know, somehow, that it isn’t plain water in the round bowl in the center.
She shows us how to sit with our knees touching and tells us to lift our hands and hold them over the bowl, the same way she does with hers.
“This is a very intense spell,” she says. “It’s also very effective. It can take a moment or two to settle into the bones.”
“Like arthritis,” I say.
Savi sends me a dark look and frowns until I get my hands in the right position.
Then she begins to chant.
I’ve heard her chant too many times to count. That low muttering that Winter talks about, that spell work she weaves into everything. It’s like a song. It’s like a dance of sound and shape, and I’ve heard it over and over again.
I’ve never been a part of it before.
I can feel the magic wind its way around and then sink into me, and it occurs to me that I shouldn’t be so comfortable with this. That I shouldn’t throw myself into magic when I know better than to look at it.
Yet nothing about this feels like a threat. Nothing about Savi ever has to me, not since I met her at Winter’s door and actually talked to her myself. I might be wrong about her too, the same way I was wrong about Connor. I know that’s a possibility.
Still, my body isn’t reacting the way it usually does to threats. My wolf side is happy and at ease.
You either listen to your intuition or you don’t, I tell myself.
I decide to listen. I let go.
Savi is speaking in a language I don’t understand. Her mouth moves around words I can hardly fathom, in a cadence that’s unlike anything I’ve ever heard before. As she speaks, it’s almost as if I can feel each word attach itself to my skin.
Then they sink in deep. They winnow their way down to the bone, where they glow.
This goes on and on, and soon enough, it’s as if we’re somewhere else.
Everything is light. I can see shapes move all around me and not just in my peripheral vision. It’s as if we’re floating. I’m aware of the three of us, individually and together.
Like we are a rune all our own.
Everything is golden. Everything is bright.
Everything feels carbonated, and I begin to feel giddy.
Soon enough, it’s as if everything is spinning. I can feel Savi’s words deep in my bones like an ache, but it’s like we’re dancing anyway. Even though I’m fully aware that somewhere back on a mountain in Ashland, we’re sitting still.
The more we move—or don’t move—the more everything spins and folds in on itself, collapsing deeper into that aching glow of spells on bone.
Until, at last, everything goes beautifully dark.