Chapter 15
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Pamela sat and looked busy reading her screen. Abbi crept out from the other room. She touched my hand, then jogged down the hall to catch up with Card and Lula.
Me? Anger washed through me in waves and a raging helplessness filled my chest and clogged my throat. I wanted to yell. To tear this world apart. To grab Lula and drag her away from the book, from this place.
From anything that connected us to gods or the Route or magic.
We were not ready to use the god magic in the book.
We were not skilled enough.
Revenge would only get us dead.
It was a trap. Meeting Headwaters on his terms was so clearly a trap. But Lula was set on killing him now, with the book, with unbridled power.
With or without me.
Fuck.
“You don’t need my opinion,” Pamela said quietly. “But I’m on your side. No one should be messing with magic that strong. If there’s something I can do to talk Lula out of it, I’ll try.”
I huffed a laugh that was more of a choked sob. “You don’t know her like I do.”
“No, I don’t. Is there anything that would change her mind?”
I took a breath, let it out. “No.”
And that was the answer then, grim as it was. I couldn’t talk her out of this. She had chosen our path, our fate.
She might have thrown my fear in my face (and she was not wrong, the power in the book terrified me), but she’d done it knowing I wouldn’t walk away from her, would never leave her behind to face danger without me.
Our lives were permanently entwined.
So, too, I’d always known, were our deaths.
I’d brought the glass of water out with me when I’d heard Lula on the call with Headwaters. I must have set it on the table.
I picked it up now and drank it down.
We only had hours until dawn. So little time to find the spell we needed. Me standing out here angry wasn’t going to give us more time, wasn’t going to give me more time to learn what I needed to learn to kill Headwaters.
“I hope you’ve got a hearty dinner lined up,” I said. “Something we can eat quick.”
“Will do. You want to take some water in with you? I’ve got sealed bottles.”
“Yeah, that’d be good.”
Pamela left for the kitchen. I closed my eyes. I’d never been a praying man, and the way I knew the gods, I didn’t intend to become one.
Still, I cleared my mind and took breaths to calm my racing emotions and thoughts.
It was unfair how little of the last hundred years I’d been able to truly spend with Lu. Fleeting minutes stitched together from the magic pocket watch that could stop time.
Only these last months had I been alive, real, solid and able to touch her. Hold her.
Now Headwaters and the gods and their damned magic were going to take that all away from me again.
“You better let us in this time, Death,” I muttered. “Because I am not letting her soul go without me.”
The door to the kitchen opened and Pamela handed me a twelve-pack of bottled water.
“Thanks.”
“Is there anything I can do?” Her usually happy face was drawn with worry.
“Save me a shot of whisky?”
“You got it. We’re scouting the meeting place. Grandpa’s already headed there.”
“Tell him to be careful.”
“He’s a hunter. He knows how to stay beneath the radar. Luck Brogan. If anyone on this Earth can tame the book, it’s you and Lula.”
“We’ll find out, or die trying, I suppose.” I gave her a nod and walked down the hall to the safe room.
The door was shut, but Abbi stood outside it.
“I’m sorry,” she said, her eyes filling with tears. “I’m sorry Headwaters made you do this. Do you think I can make Lula go to sleep for long enough she’ll forget all about it?”
“I think you could do that. But I think she would know you’d done it, and be very, very angry at you. We don’t use magic on the people we love.”
“Not even to help them stay alive?”
“Not when they’ve made their decision. It’s her life, Abbi. It’s mine too. I gave her my soul years ago and it’s still hers, just as her soul is mine. If she’s walking this path, I’m walking it too.”
“Maybe I’ll put you both to sleep,” she grumbled.
I touched her shoulder. “Give us a little hope instead, okay? We’ve pulled off the impossible before.”
“When?”
“When I convinced you to eat a vegetable instead of a cookie.”
“That was a trick!” she said. “I thought a sugar pea was a cookie. I liked it, though.”
I smiled. She lunged and hugged me.
I hugged her back. “Hey, now. We don’t know how this is going to work out. Let’s not give up before we begin.”
She nodded, then pulled away. “I told them you would come.”
“You were right. Of course.”
“Of course.”
I reached over and gingerly rested my hand on the latch. No magic sparked, so I opened the door and walked in, Abbi right behind me.
Lu stood with her arms crossed over her chest, facing Card who was talking in quiet tones. She didn’t look happy with what he was saying but wasn’t arguing.
Her gaze cut to me, golden eyes liquid light in the shadow of the room. I knew she’d heard what I’d said to Abbi. Maybe even what I’d said to Pamela. Her cheeks heated, a rare blush washing across her face, but she tipped her chin up.
Card looked over his shoulder, and his expression was a mix of regret and acceptance.
“Okay. Now we can go forward,” he said. “It takes both of you. As I was saying to Lula, there are no shortcuts. Not with this book. It isn’t a magic that can be controlled. It can only be used the way it wants to be used, and it wants the both of you to use it. Not one or the other.”
“I’m going to step out so you two can talk. Call me back in if you want to go forward with the book.”
He walked out, taking Abbi with him, not that it would matter much. She had big ears. She’d hear everything we said.
“You’re here,” Lu said.
“You know I’d never leave you behind. Where you go, Lula Gauge, I go.”
She wiped the tear tracking her cheek with the back of her hand. “I’m angry,” she said. “But I’m not angry at you.”
“Fair,” I said. “I’m angry too. Not at you.”
I crossed the room to stand in front of her. I opened my arms. “Too angry for me to hold you?”
She shook her head. “No. Never.” She leaned into me, her arms unlocking and wrapping around my hips. Her palms, pressed against my back, radiated heat.
I kept my breathing even and slow, and after a moment or two, her breathing settled, calmed, matching mine.
“I know I’m wrong,” she said. “I know we’re not ready to use the book. But Headwaters has never stuck his head out—not in a hundred years. I’ve never known where he was, or what he was. And I’ve been dealing with him for decades.”
“Through a third party,” I said. “A monster like that has his own ways to throw hunters off his trail. You can’t blame yourself for not knowing.”
“That’s only part of it,” she said. “We’re running out of time.”
She leaned back to look at me. “I can feel it, can’t you? More and more gods are looking for us, looking for the book. More and more people are getting involved with us trying to use the book, or hide the book, or destroy the book.”
“Pretty sure destruction isn’t on the table.”
“I know. But if it were…”
“That would be my first choice, yes.”
“Even if we don’t go to meet Headwaters,” she said, “even if we just stay here, holed up, trying to find the perfect spell that will kill Headwaters, stop Ate, stop Mithra, and Apep, and all the other gods…how long do you think we’d have before we’d be found?”
The hunters had good wards, the magic here was old, established. We had all their tricks on our side, along with a powerful wizard, the moon rabbit, and Ricky with her resources of the Crossroads.
We had Cupid and Raven on our side too.
But stacking all of that against the unknown, the wrath of three, maybe more gods?
“Not long,” I said truthfully. “A week, at the most, before we’d need to find another bolt hole.”
“I think so too. So, this is it. This is our chance. We find the spell, we use the god magic and cast it at Headwaters with everything we have. No matter the cost. This is it. This is where we were always headed, whether we liked it or not.”
“I agree, I can agree with all that. I hate it, though. That these are our choices. But at least we still have choices.
“But Lu, there’s one thing I don’t agree with. The cost matters. Your life matters. If there’s a way to use this magic without it killing us, then that’s what I want to do. Even if it’s harder. Even if it takes us longer.”
She hesitated. When my wife made up her mind about something, she did not doubt herself, she did not back down. She had made up her mind that tomorrow was her one and only chance to kill the monster who had destroyed our lives.
I needed her to see that we might have other chances.
“If we find a spell that can kill Headwaters,” I said, “I’m all in. If we find one that can trap Headwaters…”
She was already shaking her head.
“…trap Headwaters to give us time to find the spell that will kill him, then I’m all in for that too. You might think we only get one chance at the bastard, but maybe we can hit him more than once. With more than one weapon.
“Can you agree with that?”
“I don’t want to agree…I want him dead. But if we can trap him, then kill him, yes.”
“Fair and good,” I said. “We have a plan B.”
“I don’t know how you’ve stayed so optimistic after everything that’s happened.”
“Did you just call me naive?”
“No. Optimistic. We only get one chance at this, Brogan. The world would never bend to our favor and let us have a plan B.”
“We don’t need the world to give us favors. We make our own luck. Always have.”
“Except for the Blarney Stone!” Abbi yelled through the door. “That was good luck we got with a kiss!”
“She’s not wrong,” I whispered. “But she is very nosy.”
“No, I’m not! I can’t help it if I can see things. And hear things. I’m so good at it!”
Lu stepped back, her hands dragging down my forearms, to catch my fingers.
“I’m sorry,” she said quietly. “I’m sorry, Brogan. I have to do this.”
“No apologies. Not to me. I know we’re out of time. I want that monster obliterated, so Ate can never use it to turn someone else into what we are—tools for gods to access the book’s power.”
“Yes,” she said. “Abbi. Tell Card he can come back in.”
Card entered the room. He had a small brass pocket mirror in his hand that swirled with magic.
“That’s new,” I said.
“Ricky just found it.”
“Is she here?” Lu asked.
“No, the Crossroads found a way to transfer the mirror to the Scout. Scout’s a dragon, right? You can tell me.”
“Scout is the hunter’s business,” I said, not wanting to share something they hadn’t already shared with him.
“Well, Scout, whatever it is, hooked up with the Crossroads, and now I have the mirror.”
“What does it do?” Abbi asked.
“It shows me the true intention of god spells.”
“The hell,” I said. “Are you sure?”
Card flashed me a giddy grin. “Absolutely sure. Not an easy thing to track down. I didn’t even know these still existed, but the Crossroads dug it up. Now we can see what those spells can really do.”
“How do you use it?” Lu asked.
“Oh, I don’t. This goes in the circle with you. Brogan’s going to use it.”
“And the glasses?” I asked.
“Yes, so I can see what you see and confirm it. We need to arrange a few things. You’ll need a table to hold the book and two chairs, if this is going to work the way I think it will.”
The door opened (did everyone in the place have a key to it now?), and Abbi came through with a wooden chair.
“I needed some help,” she said.
“Hope these are okay.” Josie followed Abbi with another wooden chair, and Pamela followed her with a small end table. “We can scrounge up something else if not.”
“That should work,” Card said. “Just put them down there, mind the sigils.”
They did so. Pamela gave Lula a look then checked my expression.
“We’re good,” I said. “Keep the whisky at the ready, though.”
“That,” she said, “I can do. Luck, Gauges. See you on the other side.”
She took Josie’s hand and they walked out, Card shutting the door behind them. He waved his hands to activate the warding spells, then pointed at the chairs.
“Get those in the circle and place them back-to-back,” Card said. “Lula, you want the table in front of you.”
This was it, the point of no return.
I glanced at the door, and for a moment, I tried to imagine what my life would be like if I had made different choices. But no images came to me, because this was the only life I wanted. The one with Lula at my side.
I picked up the chair and stepped into the circle of spells.