Chapter 16
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
“Got it?” Card asked.
“We’ve gone over it half a dozen times,” I said. “If I don’t have it by now, not sure you asking again is gonna change anything.”
Lula and I sat on the chairs inside the sigil circle, our backs to each other. She had the book propped on the table in front of her. I was wearing the magic glasses and holding the scrying mirror in my hand above my shoulder.
I angled the mirror so I could see the book in its reflection.
“Then begin,” Card said.
“I’m ready when you are, love.”
Lu inhaled, exhaled, and opened the book. It was the same spell we’d last seen, the one that seemed to be nothing but plain ink on the page.
But this time the words made sense. More than that, the intent of the words was clear, like a diagram had been drawn behind the words to show what the spell should be used for.
Card whistled.
“Transformation?” I guessed.
“Yes!” Card said. “Oh, the mirror is brilliant. Okay, can you see the power? It’s subtle, it’s going to be subtle. You might sense it as a smell or a taste or a sound.”
“Black pepper.”
“That’s it. Focus on that. I can’t see lines of power connected to it. I still think this is a lost god spell. Let’s see if it has any juice.”
“You want me to transform something?”
“I want you to cast the spell to transform something.”
“Something small,” Lu suggested.
“The pillow?” Abbi picked up a pillow off the cot where she was sitting.
“How about a bottle of water?” Card said.
Abbi put the pillow down and retrieved the water instead. “Do I take it to them?”
“Brogan needs to step out for it,” Card said.
I dutifully followed orders, then returned to sit with the mirror in one hand and the bottle in the other.
“How?” I asked.
“Hold in your mind’s eye exactly what you want the bottle to transform into,” Card said. “Then you need to speak the words. All of them. You don’t have to do it quickly, but you have to get through from the start to the finish. Take your time. All through in one.”
“I don’t speak that language, what if I say it wrong?”
“You won’t. Lu,” he said, “the book might be hard to keep still while he’s casting.”
“I know,” she said.
I rolled the water bottle in my hand and let my thoughts wander for a moment. I wanted to transform it into something harmless. Something I could keep focused on, something I wouldn’t forget no matter what happened during the spell.
There would be a price to pay for this, I assumed. Nothing the gods gave came without strings attached. And those strings were likely to strangle.
Something small. Something beautiful. Harmless.
Something that would make Lula smile.
“Ready,” I said.
“All through in one,” Card repeated.
I held the vision in my mind and began reciting the words.
They were strange in my mouth, musical in a way I’d never experienced, but with hard stops that had me gasping for breath before continuing on.
I held tight to the mirror and didn’t dare look away. Black pepper filled my mouth, my nose, my lungs. My eyes watered, my throat was on fire, but I spoke every syllable to the last.
The earth shook, then one hard thump echoed as if a boulder had rolled down a mountain and struck a brick wall.
The spell lifted, the air smelled of cool breezes and mint.
I coughed into my arm, hacking up the aftertaste of power. Everything in me felt raw.
“Oh, well done,” Card said. “Brogan, Lula. How are you?”
“I’m okay,” Lula said. “Brogan?”
“Fine.” It came out thin, like I’d been shouting for days.
Or breathing god power.
“Can I close the book? Did it work?” Lula asked
“Close the book,” Card said. “Brogan?”
Lula shut the cover, and I lowered the mirror in my shaking hand.
We still sat in the chairs, back-to- back. The room was still the room. Abbi and Card were still whole. And whatever the boulder collision had been, it seemed to be gone now.
But there was something in my hand that hadn’t been there just a moment before.
I stood, my knees stiff, legs feeling like they were covered in cement. I walked around to Lula. “It worked.”
Her eyes went wide.
In my hand, I held a small bundle of wild asters. The flowers were purple with yellow centers, gold shining along the edge of each petal.
“You turned it into wildflowers?” she asked.
“I turned it into something beautiful. Something that reminds me of you.” I gave them to her, and she drew them to face to smell the sweet perfume.
“It feels like flowers,” she said. “It smells like honeysuckle. Asters don’t smell like honeysuckle.”
“I like honeysuckle,” I said. “It reminds me of summer, of us.”
“Transformation,” Card said. “The spell followed what Brogan had in his mind. It won’t ever be a water bottle again. Well, unless you want to cast that spell to change it back.”
“No,” I said, clearing my throat. “Once is enough to prove we can use the lost god spell. That we can use the book.”
“I thought all the spells in the book were big and mean,” Abbi said.
Card made a sound. “None of us can know what the gods were thinking when they put this book together.”
“Raven said they made it on a whim,” I said. “And promptly forgot about it.”
“Which means for some of the gods,” Card said, “it wasn’t important or consequential. So, there might be more spells that won’t automatically destroy.”
“Transformation can be used for evil in the wrong hands,” Lu said. She smelled the asters again. “Or for something simple and beautiful.”
She offered me the flowers, but I shook my head. “They’re for you.”
She smiled and tucked them into her braid. “I love you.”
I cupped her face. “I love you.”
I started coughing and turned my head into my shoulder until the bout passed.
Lu left the circle and took a bottle of water from Abbi. She motioned me out of the protective circle and gave it to me. “Drink.”
I did and it helped soothe my raw throat. I handed the empty bottle out for Abbi to take away, then sat back in the chair.
“Ready to look through the book for a spell that will do more than transform a water bottle into a wildflower?” Card asked.
We entered the circle again and took our seats. I lifted the mirror. “Ready.”
Lu took a breath. “I’m turning the page.”
It took hours.
Each spell needed time to resolve into something I could read, and more time for Card and I to agree on what its purpose might be. Some blasted lightning into the room. Some rattled reality or manifested in star-strewn winds.
But we needed the lost god spells, and Lu couldn’t just thumb through the book to find pages which appeared to be written in plain ink.
The book wouldn’t allow it.
She had to turn each page, wait to see if the spell crackled with magic, or plain ink.
We found two lost god spells. One seemed to summon black holes, the other turned oxygen into diamonds.
We weren’t foolish enough to cast either of them.
“You two want to take a break?” Card asked, rubbing his eyes and yawning. “Get some food. Coffee?”
“Yes,” I said. “Both.”
“One more page,” Lula said.
“Love, it’s been hours. We’ll take a break and get back at it. Half an hour, tops.”
“No, I think…” She made a frustrated sound. “I think one more page. The book seems to want…I think we need to turn one more page before we take a break.”
I swore but pushed the glasses back on my face. “One more. But then I need a break, a real break. Deal?”
“Yes. I know. Yes.”
“Ready,” I said.
“Ready,” Card said.
“I’m turning the page,” she said.
This spell flared blue, then spidery writing filled the page. It looked like plain ink, although it had a nimbus glow to it.
“Lost god,” Card said. “I think it is. Brogan?”
“I think so too.” I adjusted the mirror waiting for the words to resolve into something I could read, or a diagram to appear, or some other clue that would tell me what this was.
A chill ran down my spine.
“What?” Lula asked, sensing the change in me.
“It’s…dark. I can’t see exactly what it does, but it’s violent. Card?”
He’d shifted to the edge of his chair. “Agreed. This was meant to destroy.”
“How?” Lu asked. “Is it a sword, a bomb, a storm? That stupid diamond thing again?”
“It’s a beast,” I said, swallowing down the sense of power, of fire kindling through the spider web ink. “Something caged that can be awakened.”
None of us said anything.
The mix of relief and horror was uncomfortable. We’d found something that might be powerful enough to kill Headwaters. But if we used this spell, if we released a beast like this upon our enemy, there was no guarantee we’d be able to control what it destroyed.
“Are you going to do the spell now?” Abbi asked, worried. “Because I don’t think you should do the spell now, I really don’t think you should.”
“Lula, will the book allow you to return to the page without having to go through the rest?” Card asked. “Can you mark your place?”
“I know where it is. I know how the book…accesses it. Yes. I think I can find it again.”
“Then we all need a break,” Card said. “Food, maybe sleep. It’s only a few hours before dawn and we have a big decision to make.”
We’d been at this all day and night. No wonder I felt like I’d been dragged behind a truck.
“I’m closing the book,” Lu said.
She did, and I stood and rolled my shoulders trying to throw off the dread in my gut.
Finding that spell, the one that might kill Headwaters, made this even more real.
We were going to fight Headwaters—kill him—in just a few hours.
Or we were going to cast a spell that would slip our control the moment we unleashed it and destroy us, our family, the world.
I picked up the witch’s box and opened it.
Lula looked even paler than normal, the circles darker under her eyes. She might talk a good game, but she was exhausted.
She placed the book in the witch’s box. I set it on the floor, draping the shadow cloth over the whole thing.
We left the circle and the room in silence.
Once out in the hall, the fatigue really kicked in. I wanted to sleep for a hundred years.
“Food.” Lu took my hand and guided me down the hall straight into the kitchen.
The kitchen was old school industrial but had a table with bench seating at one side.
That’s where Lu deposited me.
“Give me a minute,” she said, pulling down a cast iron skillet and drawing over a loaf of bread.
I crossed my arms on the table and rested my head there. I closed my eyes for a second, only a second.
“Brogan,” Lula’s hand stroked down my back. “Food.”
I made a sound and she chuckled.
“Yes. Eat something. You’ll feel better.”
I reluctantly lifted my head.
She held a plate with a huge sandwich on it and piles of potato and corn.
My stomach growled and I sat up.
She settled the food in front of me and sat close so she could lean against my side. She’d made herself a steak—venison, rare—and cut small bites to eat.
Card was already eating a bowl of soup, checking his phone, and Abbi was out in the control room, telling whoever was out there what we’d found.
I picked up the sandwich—layers of meat including some of the venison, surrounded by cheese and tomato, onion and lettuce—and dug in.
I’d never eaten a sandwich so quickly. Then I turned on the fried potatoes and corn she’d broiled and seasoned.
As soon as my plate was cleared, I tuned back into the conversation.
“At the rest stop, might be best,” Elmer said. “Good vantage points from there.”
“Easy for us to get to, means it will be easy for him too,” Lula said. “It’s so close to the highway.”
“Then back in the hills a bit. But it’s where I’d park. We have good access to surveillance and a couple bolt holes if things go south.”
Pamela and Josie weren’t in the kitchen. I hoped they were sleeping.
Elmer looked fresh, like he’d gotten some shut eye after his reconnaissance of the meeting place with Headwaters.
He also looked relaxed and confident, as if facing this kind of monster was an everyday thing.
He was a hunter and not easily spooked. I’m sure he’d taken on all kinds of evil in his days.
“What about escape routes?” Card asked. “If it goes to hell in a handbasket, I want a way out of there. I’m not going to die in the middle of Nowhere, New Mexico.”
“Aren’t you a cheerful fella?” Elmer asked.
“Yes. Usually. But right now, I want to cover our asses.”
“Fair,” the older man said. “Like I said, there are bolt holes. With strong enough magics to keep us hid. Not a lot of cover otherwise. The highway will get you out. There’s trails off road too, but no real roads or structures, manmade or otherwise.”
“Is there a map?” Card asked.
“Sure. We’ve got video set up on some of it. I’ll show you.” He and Card left the kitchen. I glanced at the wall clock.
“Three,” I said. “Dawn in what, two hours?”
Lu nodded. “It will take us about an hour to get there. You can catch an hour nap.”
“I’ll stay up.” I yawned hugely. “Help plan.”
She tipped her head to the side. The braid, which still had the wild asters twined in it, swung across her back.
“What’s to plan?” she asked. “You and I show up at the rest stop, or behind it in the hills. Headwaters comes. We kill Headwaters.”
“Contingency plan. Plan B. It’s not going to go easily or smoothly. It never does. We don’t know how to control that spell. We’ve never cast it.”
“We cast one of the lost god spells. We can cast this one.”
“No two of those gods are the same. I don’t believe it’s that easy. Releasing a beast, Lu? That’s a hell of a different thing from transforming water bottles into flowers.”
She frowned. I knew I wasn’t telling her anything she hadn’t already thought about.
“You can’t back out on this now, Brogan.”
“If you’re in this fight, I’m in this fight.
You don’t walk into danger without me at your side.
But,” I bent my head to catch her gaze, “this might be our end, our death. Headwaters tore out our souls and stitched them back together the way he wanted. He knows how we’re made. He knows how to unmake us.
“Maybe using the beast isn’t the best way to go.”
“What other choices do we have? Summon a black hole, which will swallow Earth? Turn the oxygen into diamonds, which will kill us all? Turn water bottles into flowers? We have Cupid’s favor, Raven’s help, Abbi, the hunters, and Card. Do you really think we can’t win?”
She leaned back too, her body more fluid than mine, tucking one leg up on the bench.
“I’m saying if I could drop a dime and call Death, I’d ask if he was going to escort us over the threshold this time. Just in case. Because I refuse to be half-alive and impossibly apart from you again.”
“You want to call Death?” Abbi asked, popping into the room. “I can call Death.”
“Sure,” I said. “You can call Death.”
“He gave me his number. Plus, it’s online. He has a web page!”
“Oh for…” I didn’t believe her. Was too tired to think it through, was too tired to be arguing with Lula on a subject I would never win.
“Fine,” I said. “Call Death and ask him if we die, if he’ll take us together or not at all. I handed her my mobile phone, which I hardly ever used.
Abbi took it and pressed the keypad, then held it to her ear.