Chapter 29
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
The low-level conversation at Zeke’s Café soothed my worry, but even my lavender glasses weren’t helping the pounding in my head.
Fortunately, the café sat in its quiet midevening lull between dinner and the night-bird coffee crowd.
I spotted Ori right away. I grinned at the chai waiting for me in an oversized white teacup and slipped into the chair across from her.
“Are you okay?” Ori asked, her forehead wrinkling with concern.
“Yeah, worried, but yeah.” I lowered my voice and leaned toward her. “They attacked us and took Ranth, but I have a tracker.”
“Breathe, girl, breathe. He’ll be okay.” She rubbed her cheek against mine.
“I hope so. I’m worried because he’s far away too, and we’re not sure how that even works. Like he walked Mrs. Finnegan to the car, and we were apart in the graveyard, but we don’t know how far is too far or if it’s still a thing.” My hands were shaking.
“You’re really worried about him.” She pulled back a little but took my hand. “Is there more going on? I’m getting a vibe when you two talk, like there’s something deeper.”
“Really? But yeah, I don’t know what it is. It has been days, hours really, but it’s like I’ve known him my entire life.”
“Like you were meant to be together?”
I tugged my hand out of hers and playfully buzzed my lips. “There you go, Ms. Romance, always finding the fated mates trope in life. I don’t know. It’s weird but good. Like when we kissed, he was so sweet, but it was intense, as if we’d done it before. Like I knew him before.”
“You kissed?” Her eyes were huge. Before I could answer, the air charged with Rose’s particularly boisterous energy, and her black boho skirt and sunglasses amplified her presence. Like the lightning ball of awesomeness that was Rose, she headed to our table.
Me kissing Ranth was not going to get the Rose stamp of approval because her standards for me were always in my best interest. Kissing the cursed wizard who had to disappear from this world was not in my best interest. “Tell you later,” I whispered to Ori.
“What’s going on?” Rose asked, taking the third seat and raising her sunglasses. The burgundy lipstick and peacock blue eyeshadow made her gorgeous eyes pop.
I took a breath, the nightmare of my situation sucking away positivity and the need to explain the kiss. “Disasters of the ninth demons and beyond. Ranth has been acquired by his ‘order.’ But the Marahk aren’t the same people as the Ahknim. At least, they aren’t who Ranth described.”
Ori covered my hand. Her fingers were warm after holding her favorite cinnamon latte. I hadn’t realized I was cold.
“How are you doing—really?” she asked quietly.
I did a self-check. “Annoyed and worried? Sound about right?” I didn’t add the lurking weakness was part of the annoyance.
I’d failed to protect my home from intruders and Ranth from being taken.
I’d been knocked out by a non-magical drug, and now I had to scramble for a plan.
But even if my life weren’t literally on the line, defeat was never an option.
Rose laughed. “Sounds very Sorrel.” Her lightness helped.
“This mine?” She reached for the white mug Ori slid toward her with white-dotted nails.
“I did some asking around about the Marahk because I thought I’d heard that name before.
Turns out, they take jobs I wouldn’t let my worst enemies touch—like making people disappear and ruining things for money.
You know me. I’m okay with all colors of magic, but these people don’t have boundaries.
” She unzipped her jacket, baring the black silk tank underneath.
She took an exploratory sip of her drink.
“Lavender mocha? Perfection. Thank you.” She grinned.
“My pleasure,” Ori replied. “According to the email you sent, Ranth is what he says he was, a member of the wizards of a high order. They called him a Collector. But if these people existed, it was before recorded history except for one. The Ahknim have some connection to Melichior.” Ori picked up her cup.
“Like the three kings?” I asked.
“I think so. The spelling is slightly off, but I expect it’s the same.
He was a learned king, and that would make sense in context.
But there was nothing about the Trees or the Serpent.
The big letters at the bottom of the document were to bring him in unharmed and then contact someone in Alexandria.
” She set the cup down, then turned the screen around.
“The other emails concern me more. Apparently, this trio of people, Ranth and the other two, make a lock on something with power, a lot of power. Enough that the boss in Alexandria said to deliver the goods, using whatever was necessary. They think Ranth has a sky key, and they’ve been looking for him for a thousand years. They want him badly.”
And now they had him. The cup handle was a lifeline to reality.
I could do this. “What they don’t know is that he doesn’t have a sky key.
He is the sky key. The sky won’t open without Ranth, but he’s the only one that can return to the Garden.
While they are confused, it’ll buy us some time to rescue him.
He doesn’t have a passport, so they can’t put him on plane if they are thinking that. ”
Rose rubbed her earlobe, like she did when she was thinking around a problem. “What’s a sky key, do I know? Is it the gold stuff we needed to find?”
“The Garden Ranth needs to return to is on another plane. Like I use maca to get to the other plane, this one is locked and requires a key. They call it a ‘sky key,’ but it’s really a ritual to get back into the Garden.
That’s what all the stuff we’re gathering is for.
Well, sort of. Without Ranth, any ritual won’t work.
The Keepers of the Trees are, themselves, the keys to open the sky. ”
“Ah, I got the part about the pieces for the ritual, but now I really get it. He’s synced with whatever place he has to get back to, so he can get there, but no one else could—but they don’t know that.”
“Exactly,” I replied, sitting back in the chair.
“We’d better hurry then. If they know the right people, they could get a passport within a day,” Rose said.
“Wow, really? That’s fast,” Ori replied.
She was not wrong, but I needed to remain positive.
“They’ll have a tough time keeping him locked up.
I’m sort of concerned, though, because depending on where he is, he’s a long way from me, and we don’t know if the proximity thing is still an issue.
He thought it was, so there’s that. It’s good news they need to have him in one piece.
They used a smoking-drug bomb to take me out.
I dunno why Ranth didn’t fight back. I mean he could have used magic, but maybe the smoke took him out too? ”
“They’ll definitely drug him if they know he has power they don’t understand,” Rose said.
That sent another shiver through me. They had drugged me, and they could do it again. I’d have to be careful. “We need to find him. I have these to help.” I laid the hairs on the table.
Rose peered at the raven-black strands. “From?”
“Fabra, the woman the Marahk sent to get him. She didn’t do a good job.
I bound her to the house. But after they took Ranth…
” I palmed my forehead. “I should have bound Ranth to the house. That would have been way smarter! Argh. I took her hair and figured we could charm-track her if the email header didn’t help. ”
“Don’t beat yourself up, honey, you did great.” Rose rubbed my shoulder.
Ori picked up her phone. “Ha, you have a good memory. I already have Juke working on the email. She said it should be pretty fast—wait, Juke already found it… Bayview near Hunter’s Point.”
“Fabra said the clubhouse was there.”
“But you don’t know for sure if that’s where Ranth is,” Rose replied.
“Even if it isn’t, it should take us closer to him or at least find people who know where he is. We’re going to need a plan, a good plan. If these people have weapons, then magic only goes so far.”
“Unless you go in planar…”
“Yeah, I could do that to scope. But to get to Ranth, we will still have to do it in the real world—I think… Though, maybe you’re right!”
Ori closed her laptop. “We could call the police. I mean, I know how you feel about real-world law enforcement, but they abducted someone using military-style tactics.”
“And how exactly would we explain Ranth to them? No, I have to do this myself.” I scrubbed my face. Was I up to this?
“You aren’t alone. We’re with you,” Ori said, laying her hand on mine.
“And I have friends they won’t want to meet twice,” Rose said, smoothing her left hair bun.
“How long do you think it will take you to assemble backup?” I asked Rose.
“An hour if I call in favors.”
“I can’t wait. If they’re planning on taking Ranth out of the country, they’ll do it fast. If they’re smart, they’ll move him within a day.”
Rose leaned. “I mean, I know he’s in trouble now, so we’d help anyway, but this is rapidly getting into peril territory. Remind me why we’d go to such a level of trouble for a virtual stranger?”
I stuck my arm out. “Remember? If he dies, I die. The curse split, and now I’m bound to him and him to me.
If either of us dies, then that’s it. It’s game over.
” That settled into my bones as I said it.
I was all cavalier about Fabra taking Ranth, but if something happened to him, it would happen to me too. At least I knew he was still alive.
Rose rubbed my arm. “Sorrel, don’t go there.
We’re going to get him back. You aren’t dying any time soon, not while I’m around.
” She gave my arm a light squeeze. “Look, I already got a ping back. There’s a takeout place up the street from the address.
I’ll get my people to meet us there, so we’re an easy call away.
You’re doing Muni, right? If I catch a ride, we’ll probably get there about the same time. ”
“I’ll go straight there. Text me when you’re set,” I said, draining my chai, then getting up. The weight of the last twenty-four hours smacked me.
“I’m going with Sorrel,” Ori replied, her chair scraping back as she tucked her laptop in her messenger.
“No chance. You go with Rose.” I slung my messenger over my shoulder.
Ori glared at me. “Uh, how about, no. Freddie’s on his way, and he can watch my back. He’s bringing some muscle too. Or so he says. Let’s hope we don’t need any of it. I texted him about the meet. He’ll get there before we do.”
The little wrinkle between her eyebrows stated firmly there was no way she was letting me go alone. Somehow, I’d have to keep her safe when I got there.
Rose zipped up her jacket. “Anything special you need? I can run past the shop on the way.”
“Good thought. I have eyebright for the vision link, and bay and euphorbia for purification, but if you can pick up periwinkle for restoring memory and some vanilla beans for energy and mind clearing, that would be great. Actually, if you have some areca, it would work as a stimulant—in case we have to wake him up.”
“You’re pretty sure you’re bringing him home,” Rose replied with curved-lip respect. She studied me, as if sizing up whether I could live up to my commitment. I was wondering the same thing.
“I’m going in with a positive attitude. Like my mom used to say, ‘You reflect what you emit.’”
This had to go as positively as I hoped because there wasn’t another option I could face. Walking into a questionable lair and demanding stuff wasn’t that far off from fighting demons, but humans with guns was a different kind of dangerous.