Chapter 7
CHAPTER SEVEN
Wow, the cold has bite today. Not enough to drive me back inside, but enough that I've got both hands wrapped around my mug of hot chocolate and my shoulders pulled up toward my ears.
The backyard has been stripped of all the green and growing things. The flower beds, bare and crusted over with a thin layer of snow, and the old oak at the back of the property has gone full skeletal.
Still, there's something satisfying about sitting on the back step in the gray of morning with something warm in my hands, watching Asher try not to accidentally end up in the neighbor's garden again.
He's come a long way.
A month ago, he was vanishing mid-sentence and reappearing in the attic. Three weeks ago, he ended up in New Mexico. Now he stands in the center of the lawn, his boots planted, his expression composed in a way that does not come naturally to him, and waits before he moves.
That's the real improvement. The waiting.
"Okay." Tanner stands at the far end of the garden, arms folded, voice unhurried. "Same as before. Don't think about the distance. Think about the place."
"The place." Asher rolls his shoulders. "Got it. The place."
"Specifically."
"Super specifically."
"Asher."
"I'm specifically thinking about the specific place specifically." He taps his temple. "Locked in."
He disappears. And reappears directly in front of Tanner, six inches from his face.
Tanner doesn't flinch.
Asher grins. "Ha. Nailed it."
"You were supposed to land at the flagstone."
"The flagstone is boring. This was more accurate, arguably."
"The flagstone is your target. Land on the flagstone." Tanner steps back without ceremony. "Again."
I take a sip of hot chocolate. Asher catches my eye and points two fingers at his eyes and then at Tanner's back, mouthing watching him with deeply conspiratorial energy. I point at the flagstone.
He makes a face, but moves back to his mark, and this time reappears on the flagstone. Dead center.
I smile into my mug. That’s my bestie. Right there.
Things in our crime-fighting life have been… not good, exactly, but better than they were. Wylder's theory about Mica needing a partner to imbue the weapons is solid.
She sent me a message last night that one of the blades we worked on is still holding. Not perfectly, and not with any amount of magic that would impact Tharuzel, but holding.
Lily sent me home with the drawing she was working on when we found her in the garden alcove. It’s graphite pencil, strange and beautiful.
Violet is practically running the Arcana practice block by sheer force of personality, and when I cornered her for the real truth on how she’s doing, she confessed that she’s okay, not fine, but okay.
I appreciate the difference.
The house still feels like we’re not quite whole, but we’re getting there. Rowan will be home from her parents’ place soon, Wylder is spending more and more time here, and Orion stays over most nights with Asher.
That’s enough.
Now, if only Garrison would call me and give me an update on Ireland. He told me to be ready, and that was almost twenty-four hours ago.
Asher vanishes again and reappears at the back fence, thirty feet from the flagstone. He looks back at Tanner. “My bad. I did not mean to do that."
Tanner walks toward him. “I know. You drifted. What were you thinking about?"
"The flagstone, I swear. And also… a little bit about the tacos at that new Mexican place on Fifth. Not like a lot. Just at the edges."
"There can't be edges."
"The flagstone and only the flagstone. Got it."
I'm watching Asher reset when something shifts.
It’s subtle at first. A vibration without sound. It resonates in me the way a phone buzzes when it's face-down on a thick table. I feel it. I press my mug against my knee and close my eyes.
Reaching out… I go still.
The blood bond.
Tharuzel’s taint on my bloodline is always present but has been dormant. Other than when he invades my dreams, I can almost pretend he’s not a part of me.
But this is different.
Whatever is happening, there’s a hum in my blood that wasn't there a moment ago, and underneath it something older, larger, and building…
I close my eyes again and reach out.
I extend my senses the way Wylder taught me, not demanding or forcing, just opening myself up to what already exists. I pull in a slow breath, and listen with a part of myself I didn't know only a few months ago.
The bond that ties me to Tharuzel stretches out before me like a line of the finest spiderweb. Something has plucked it, and I feel the vibration along its length.
I’m trying to understand what I'm—
The wave hits, and I drop my mug as I grab for the stair rail. The smash of ceramic barely registers over the rush of my pulse through my ears.
It's not pain. It's something past pain, something that doesn't have a simple explanation.
It’s a massive exertion of power, raw and deliberate and ancient, and at the end of it a satisfaction that isn't mine.
It’s a sense of completion. Of triumph.
Finally.
My eyes snap open.
"Poppy?" Asher is kneeling on the step in front of me, Tanner right behind him. "What just happened, baby girl? Are you all right?"
I pull in a breath. "Tharuzel… he did another ritual. I felt it through the bond. I felt his triumph when the rock split.”
“What rock?”
I thought about that and shook my head. “No, not a rock… the stone split. He did something and broke the stone… or the seal on the stone… I don’t really know, but he’s feeling really good about himself that it’s destroyed.”
“Him feeling good about anything is bad for the rest of us. But how do you know? Were you sleeping during my super awesome training montage?" He looks over his shoulder at Tanner. “She sometimes connects with him in her sleep.”
Tanner nods. “When her mental shields are down. That makes sense.”
I blink, but will have to circle back around to that later. Right now, I need to…
My legs buckle when I try to stand, and Asher catches me as I fall. He scoops me into his arms, carries me up the back steps, and the house opens the back door so he can bring me inside.
The sudden warmth envelopes us, and Asher toes off his boots before carrying me over to the couch to lay me down. He takes off my boots and hands them to Tanner, who’s looking concerned.
“Are you okay, P?”
“Yeah, I think so. I just felt something weird and reached in to find out what it was. That’s when I linked in with Tharuzel. It’s like yesterday, when he did the ritual in that cave in Ireland and caused the earthquake.”
Tanner's expression shifts, and something behind his eyes goes careful and quiet.
Alarm bells start ringing in my head. "What does that mean to you, Tanner?”
"I can't interfere, Poppy. But, if I were to finish this lesson with Asher, I’d suggest he shift his focus from flagstone to lockstones."
He pegs me with a look, and I nod. “Got it. Thanks so much for helping him today.”
He nods. “I’ll leave you to it. And… good luck, kids.”
Asher drops into the chair beside me and sets down two turkey sandwiches. Next, he opens a bag of salt and vinegar chips and adds them to each plate. "Okay, you nearly keeled over. The house and I voted, and you need to eat something while we hit the database."
There's no sense in arguing. Asher was a mother hen before we moved to Emberwood. Now that he's my destined guardian angel, he's more determined than ever to take care of me.
Besides, with him and the house in agreement, I'm outvoted two to one.
I pick up half of the sandwich and take a bite. The Order database is already open. And after finding no folders or notations specifically about lockstones, I've entered it into the search bar and am waiting for it to return what hits.
"What the hell is a lockstone?" I chew my sandwich and reach for a chip.
The search loads and the results begin to populate.
"Okay, we have something." I click the first entry and scan over the information on the screen. Asher leans sideways, dripping chip crumbs on the table. I shift the laptop slightly so he can see without dripping more bits over my keyboard.
"What the hell language is that?"
I frown. The first entry is dense. It's written in an old language, with formal phrasing, and the kind of academic tone that makes the Order feel like a Victorian gentleman's club pretending to be a government agency.
"It's English, goofball. Just listen… Lockstone," I read aloud. "A magical practice documented in the early pre-Order records, involving the warding and empowering of a number of very specific stones, placed in key locations, to amplify their collective binding power."
"Like wardstones?" He points to my sandwich. "Keep eating."
I take another bite. "Sounds more like magical padlocks.
" I scroll further down and keep reading.
"Once activated, a lockstone array creates a warded containment field capable of repelling or binding powerful supernatural entities.
The binding grows stronger with each stone added, each stone drawing power from its placement relative to one another.
Disruption of even one stone in the array weakens the whole. "
Asher stops chewing. "Weakens the whole?”
"Yeah." My sandwich sits heavy in my stomach as I keep scrolling.
The second entry is shorter. A record fragment, partially restored, with gaps where the text has degraded. I lean closer to the screen.
"It says the earliest lockstone arrays were constructed in remote cave systems, deep underground. The decision to place them subterranean was made as a deliberate attempt to keep them hidden from discovery."
Asher finishes his sandwich and grabs a chip off my plate. "What else does it say?"
"Mostly that they are literal locks. Incredibly powerful. And the more stones in the array, the more powerful the binding."
Outside the kitchen window, a cardinal lands on the ledge and looks in at us. Then, a gust of winter unholy blasts against its feathers, and the poor guy takes off. I don't blame him.
Asher pulls the laptop toward himself and scrolls, scanning the information while I finish half my sandwich. "That's it? Does the Order have a list of where these lockstone arrays might be or what's being contained within them?"
"Doesn't seem so."
"So… a very long time ago, someone or a group of someones went to the trouble of building an array of very powerful warded lockstones, hiding them in secret underground caves, so that some big baddie could be either contained or repelled.
And now that Tharuzel has finally achieved a physical form, he's spending all his time and energy finding and breaking them. "
"Seems like it."
"And he's already broken two."
"That we know of."
"And whatever is locked away is bad enough that the people building the locks hid all mention of them on record."
I nod.
Asher taps the table twice. "So, we're basically fucked."
"Or are about to be."
“How many lockstones do you think there are?”
“No idea.”
“How do we find out?”
“No clue.”
“And if we find the location of others, how do we stop him from breaking more?”
“All good questions.”
Dammit. Tharuzel has been the horizon of my nightmares for months. The monster that harvests souls and wears them like costumes. The monster with a vertical mouth full of shifting teeth and a chorus of the dead living inside his voice. I built my entire understanding of terrifying around him.
And now he's just a key to something worse?
When he broke free, I thought he'd torment and plunder and gain power for himself. But he's not trying to become something bigger. He doesn't need to.
He's trying to open a door to something even worse.
"I need to call Garrison."