Chapter 21. Temple
Temple
It was the betrayal at the signing of the Unseelie Treaty of Baltimore that changed me.
It took less than a second for one bitter little shit of a fairy to shoot an iron-tipped arrow into her queen’s left eye and destroy that progress.
There were only so many fights you could fight, so many supernatural political schemes you could tear down, so many killers you could banish before it all began to feel familiar. Cyclical.
My family had done this for centuries. So had Ronnie’s. The Guardians Council had been training little girls to fight and die for even longer.
The world advanced swiftly but changed slowly. The hate and greed and evil carried on from one generation to the next. The players might be different, but the game remained the same.
Baltimore was the first time I felt tired.
One angry fairy with an arrow. Now it was one corrupted ex-sidekick with an ancient spellbook. Destruction was so much quicker and easier than creation. The god of entropy had put his thumb on that scale when the universe was born.
“Thanks for that, asshole,” I muttered to myself.
“Excuse me?”
“Not you.” I rose from my chair. My right knee popped. I grimaced and grabbed my cane. Leaning heavily, I said, “I was talking to entropy.”
“And did you get an answer?”
“Every day, he erodes these old bones a little more. That’s his answer.”
I felt Margaret drift closer like a cool spring draft. “You’re right. He is an asshole.”
I chuckled, but my humor melted quickly. “If we don’t stop R’gngyk, the world goes to hell. If we do . . .” I shrugged. “All we’ve done is buy ourselves a reprieve until the next monster like Alex Barclay comes along. It’s like trying to fight a river with a fork.”
“You’re a bundle of sunshine today, aren’t you? I thought you were supposed to be studying Annette’s new pet.”
“Don’t get me wrong. I don’t regret the life I’ve had, the battles I’ve fought.” I sent my awareness through the walls to check on the cat. He was licking himself with a tongue that resembled a six-inch-long leech. I grimaced and turned away. “It was never enough.”
“It never will be,” she said matter-of-factly. “But to the people we’ve saved, it was everything.”
“Do you ever regret it?” I asked. “Getting caught up in this life? Dying so young?”
“It was better than an office job. I wish I could have had more time with my husband. I wish I could have given Ronnie a more stable life. But do I regret helping the people I helped? Never. Dying sucked, but it was bound to happen eventually. I’d seen enough not to fear it.”
“I get that.” I picked up a magnifying glass and began examining a whisker I’d snipped from the cat.
It was in its own Mason jar, with the same additional spells I’d put around Slimey.
The whisker and Slimey had the same alien wrongness, but the stuff from the cat hadn’t moved.
I hoped that meant it had no life of its own.
“I dodged death more times than I can remember. This is death’s revenge: losing myself day after day, year after year. Fading until there’s nothing left.” I shook myself. “Listen to me, complaining about my life to a woman who had hers cut short.”
“Your life isn’t all bad, you know. If you died, you’d never get to finish that cheesecake on the corner of your desk that you forgot about. I do miss the physical sensations. Eating and drinking, hugging my son, feeling the snow on my face . . .”
I set my magnifying glass aside and opened my book. The house lent me what strength it could spare. Its approval made me smile. It liked her, too.
“What are you doing?”
“I’ll tell you after I make sure I can still do it.” I traced an invisible line through the air, then tossed one end like a fisherman casting his line.
“That tickled.”
My smile grew. I picked up the fork, cut a small piece of cheesecake, and brought it to my mouth.
“Sweet mother of god!”
The cheesecake was tasteless in my mouth, nothing but lukewarm gel and dry crumbs. I’d tweaked a spell designed to share one’s senses. I knew the tangy, creamy sweetness of my cheesecake, and now, so did Margaret.
I swallowed, licked my lips, and as innocently as I could, asked, “Another bite?”
“Temple Finn, I don’t want to hear one more word from you until you’ve eaten every crumb on that plate.”
Maybe Margaret was right. Maybe my life wasn’t all bad . . .
“You feel it, don’t you? The call of R’gngyk. The magic simmering in your flesh, ready to awaken. It’s time for you all to embrace R’gngyk’s power. Meet me in two hours for the final ritual.”