Chapter 11
CHAPTER ELEVEN
The bakery was just as I remembered it, filled with warmth and the homey smell of bread and pies.
Tears pricked my eyes. I’d forgotten the shape of the place, how small it was, how the fresh white paint complemented the wood, how the old wooden floor shone.
Five round tables were placed strategically, allowing walking space between them.
Best of all, Lula was there beside me.
She gazed at the bakery with sorrow and desire, loneliness twisting her features.
Then she closed her eyes. “It’s not real.” Her voice shook.
“Of course it’s real. It’s yours. It’s ours.” I reached for her, but something was in the way. Something square and bulky in my arms.
The witch’s box.
“It isn’t. Can’t be.” Lula’s eyes were still closed. “You need to refuse it, Brogan. This is a memory, a past we can’t return to. This is an illusion. Close your eyes. We aren’t here. We can’t be. Not ever again. We’re in New Mexico. With the Walches. With Abbi. With Cardamom.”
It felt real, far more real than the hideout. It felt more real than the distant dream of our lives on the road.
I wanted to stay. But not without Lula.
“Fucking gods,” I muttered.
Just before I closed my eyes, I saw Lula smile.
The smell of pine and copper filled my nose, and a chill washed over my skin. We were back, or at least I thought we were back, in the safe room.
“I’m going to open my eyes,” Lula said. “Keep yours closed.”
I didn’t like that idea but did as she said. We were both winging it here, trying to feel our way through handling whatever the book was going to throw at us.
I counted heartbeats.
Finally, I heard Lu exhale. “Go ahead,” she said. “We’re in the safe room.”
I opened my eyes. Lu stood directly in front of me, the book in her hands between us. The book wasn’t even open, the key was still in the lock.
“How long were we gone?” I asked Abbi.
“You stayed right here,” she said. “I didn’t…did I miss a god? Did you get lost?”
“Not lost,” Lula said. “The book just took us into a memory. A time we both miss.”
She wasn’t looking at me when she said it, so I shifted the box to one hand and touched her wrist.
Her gaze met mine. I was surprised to see tears there. She shook her head, telling me she was fine, and I gently cupped the side of her face.
“We don’t need that time,” I said. “We have all of our forever still ahead of us.” I glanced over at Abbi who was standing just outside the circle, chewing on her bottom lip.
“All good, Pumpkin?”
“I don’t hear anything. It’s still quiet. I can’t hear the book either. I didn’t even know it did a magic.”
“Think we got the proof we need?” I asked Lu. “That was big magic. The wards are holding.”
“We haven’t opened the book.”
Yeah, that’s what I figured she’d say.
“Let’s do it then.” I set the box down, but when I straightened, I held onto her wrist.
I didn’t know what was going to happen, but I refused to let her go.
Lu steeled herself. I could feel the subtle shift in her muscles as she rocked just slightly to the balls of her feet, poised to respond to whatever the book was going to throw at us next.
“I’m going to open the cover.”
I was nervous as hell, but that woman’s hand didn’t even tremble as she turned the key and opened the book.
The end pages were black and plain, but if I stared at them too long pinpricks of light flashed and faded. I heard distant voices screaming.
I blinked and the book looked like a book again, the voices silenced.
“Hell,” I said. “The whole damn thing is a mind bend.”
“It’s…not easy to hold onto,” Lula said.
“How?”
“It’s moving. Can you see it moving?”
“No. Can you hear it? Did you see the lights?”
“No,” she said. “Abbi?”
“Nothing. Quiet, quiet, quiet.”
Well, I’d take that as a win.
“Can you turn the page?” I asked Lula. “Or is that a terrible idea?”
“Let’s find out.” She turned the page.
“There’s nothing there,” she said. “It’s blank.” She turned the next page. “It’s blank. Brogan, there are no spells.”
I heard her, I did. But I couldn’t formulate the words to respond.
Because she was wrong. The pages were not blank.
They were filled with power, with galaxies, with microscopic wonders and mind-altering vistas twisting across plains of existence I couldn’t comprehend.
I couldn’t bear the horror and beauty of it, but I could not look away.
“Brogan!” Lula’s voice drifted, distant and different.
Worried, I thought, she’s worried about me.
But that thought was whisked into the river of power that twisted around me, a storm pulling apart and reshaping earth, stars, reality—and me.
“Brogan!”
A slap across my face rocked me back. The sting bloomed and heated my cheek, bringing me back to the reality of her, the reality of now.
Lula had the book tucked under her arm, her gaze frantic. “Can you hear me?”
Her grip on my wrist was punishing, her fear sharp and overpowering.
I blinked and nodded, trying to orient.
I was in the hideout. In the safe room with Lula.
Abbi stood on tiptoes, ready to bolt out the door for help.
“My wrist,” I said. “Love, my wrist.”
Lu belatedly registered my words and relaxed her grip. “Jesus, Brogan. Are you…are you here? Are you hurt?”
“I think I’m okay. What happened? You hit me?”
She released my wrist. “You were just…you were just frozen, gone.”
“You died!” Abbi shouted from outside of the circle. “Your soul was floating out and Lula couldn’t catch it and I said slap you because you’d come back and you did and you can’t die, Brogan.” She wiped the inside of her arm over tears streaming down her face. “You can’t.”
Lula took my hand again, this time weaving her fingers with mine. “You can’t,” she agreed.
“I didn’t mean to—I was lost. The spells. Lula, the power, the concepts, it’s massive. I just…I don’t know how anyone can wield that kind of magic.”
She was nodding and nodding, tears gathering in her eyes.
“We put it away,” she said. “Now.”
I groaned, every joint and muscle complaining as I picked up the witch’s box and held it open for her.
Lula locked the book, and placed it back in the box, her expression equal portions of hatred and fear.
I shut the box, and placed it on the floor again, in the center of the circle of sigils, the shadow cloth smothering out the voices, the images, the magic.
“I hate it,” Lula whispered.
“I know.”
She took my hand, holding on as if she were afraid I’d float away. We stepped outside the circle.
A wave of fatigue and vertigo hit me so hard, my knees went weak.
“Hold on,” I said.
Lula didn’t argue. She was trying to get her feet under her too.
I wasn’t the only one affected by the book. But if just seeing the spells had nearly knocked my soul out of my bones, I couldn’t imagine how hard it had been for her to hold it.
“Abbi,” Lu asked, “did you hear anything? See any magic leaking beyond the room?”
“Nothing. The wards are really good.” She crossed quickly to us and took Lula’s other hand. “I think we should go now, though. I think we should go right now. I want cocoa. Do you think they have cocoa? We all need cocoa.”
She dragged us to the door, and held it open, gently pushing Lu and me past her toward the hall.
Lorde was there, pacing. She whined and woofed, sniffing Lula and me, and growling.
“It’s okay,” Lula knelt and rested her face against Lorde’s fuzzy head.
Abbi shut the door. “Cookies too,” she said, sniffing. “We all need lots of cookies.”
“Lead the way, Pumpkin.”
She glanced up at me. “You’re going to follow, right?”
I touched the top of her head, her hair soft under my palm. “Of course, I am. I am not leaving you. Either of you.”
She nodded, those eyes serious and ancient. Then she started down the hall. “Hado was worried,” she said. “Hado says it’s dinner time.”
At the end of the hall a small meow called out.
“We’re coming,” Abbi said. “They’re okay. They’re still here.” She bent to let Hado leap into her arms. “It was scary, but I wasn’t afraid.”
I touched Lu’s shoulder. “We should eat.”
She gave Lorde one last pet and stood.
“Do you think,” she looked away, then met my gaze. “Do you think they’d have food for me?”
She was talking about blood. She never asked for blood. Holding the book had cost her more than I’d thought.
“Monster hunters? I’d expect they have some decent blood around here somewhere.”
“I hate wanting it.”
“I know. We’re doing all sorts of hard things today. We’re still standing.”
The magic in the book had shaken me down to my core. I couldn’t fight it, couldn’t outrun it or outthink it. I hadn’t even known my spirit was leaving my body.
Dying.
Power like that shook a man.
We were walking in sync, and she rested her head against my shoulder, briefly.
“Don’t you ever do that again,” she whispered fiercely.
“We’ll figure it out. Maybe it won’t be so bad next time.”
Even I didn’t believe that.
I could see the argument in her, because it was in me too. Those spells weren’t as bad as Cupid and Raven had said they were. They were worse.
The gods had said using the spells to kill Headwaters might kill us. They hadn’t told us just opening the book would kick our butts.
I never wanted to see the inside of that damned book ever again.
“Hey,” Pamela greeted us as we walked into the control room. “Abbi told us you opened the book. What do you need?”
Josie had a huge first-aid kit open on the table. Cardamom was leaning on the far wall watching us with eyes that caught more light than they should, his tattoos glowing softly against his skin.
“Food,” I said, “to start with. Then advice, then sleep. Probably in that order.”
“I’ll get dinner off the stove,” Pamela said. “Lula, do you need blood?”
Like I said, hunters were pros at this kind of thing.
“Yes,” she said. “It doesn’t have to be human.”
“Got it. Give me a sec. Josie, a little help?”
“Sure.” She latched up the kit and took it with her to the kitchen.
I pulled out a chair and dropped down at the table. I felt like I was carrying a fifty-pound bag of sand on my back.
Lula slipped into the chair beside me. Lorde settled under the table, her head on my foot.
“So,” Cardamom said. “What did you do? Exactly.”
“We opened the book,” I said.
“I didn’t sense the book, but you reek of god magic.”
“It’s in the safe room,” Abbi said. She sat at the head of the table, Hado draped across her shoulders, her hair covering him so only his golden eyes could be seen. “I don’t think any of the magic got out.”
“It didn’t.” His tattoos flared, then dimmed. I wondered if he knew his magic was rolling over his skin. “What did you learn? What did the spells say?”
“I couldn’t understand it enough to learn anything. It was…” I just shook my head. “No.”
“Lula?”
“Blank pages. That’s all I saw. I could feel the magic, but I couldn’t see it, not a word.”
He took a moment to process that, scowling.
“You are both very lucky it didn’t permanently harm you. You can’t guess your way through god power. And unless you agree that you won’t touch the book again without me being there, and that you will listen to me, then our deal is off.”