Miranda looked too much like Marilyn for people’s comfort. She always had. In the brief period between Marilyn being dragged off to Austin to the hospital she would later die in and their father moving them all up to Dallas for a fresh start, people had seemed wary of Miranda, reluctant to look her in the eye. There had been no love lost between Miranda and Rio Verde.
Or Miranda and Marianne.
The plunger shot home, and within seconds her racing thoughts began to slow down. It felt as if someone had cracked an egg on her head and a sweet burning trickled down over her body, sending her fear back under its rock and her shame a mile away.
She was glad she’d finished writing the e-mail already. Typing right now would be hilarious.
Would it work? Would curiosity, if nothing else, draw the prodigal daughter back to this dismal hole in the world? Did Miranda have anything to say to her dying father, or anything to say to her sister, who might as well already be dead?
Mari found herself hoping Miranda wouldn’t reply. She nearly deleted the draft altogether. She could tell him she’d sent it. She could keep putting him off until it no longer mattered. He was barely lucid for five minutes at a time, and she had always been a skilled liar.
The doorbell rang; UPS was due to bring another shipment from either the mail-order pharmacy or the medical supply company. Marianne stood, her hand still on the keyboard, tempted . . . so tempted . . . to hit delete.
But seeing the vial next to the ripped-open package and used needle brought a touch of the shame back, and with a heavy sigh, she hit send.
She couldn’t deny a last request . . . although whose it was, she wasn’t sure.
• • •
The tarot cards were pissing Stella off.
She sat cross-legged in front of her altar, going through her usual ritual, asking the cards to help her decide what to do with herself: Go back to school? Get a new job? Stay at Revelry a little longer?
The problem was, after her adventures with the Signets, she was no longer content with the idea of hanging out doing nothing for the rest of her life. She wanted to do something important. She just had no idea what that might be.
The cards, however, were not interested in her little human problems. She tried to do the reading three times, laying the cards out in the Celtic Cross pattern most Witches favored, but every time, the cards gave her absolute crap, a jumble of random symbols that would take Cirque du Soleil–level acrobatics to connect to each other. None of the cards she pulled made any sense.
Finally, she threw her hands up in exasperation. “Fine!” she said to the empty air. “Forget my damn question. Just tell me what you think I need to know.”
She shuffled and cut the deck again and didn’t bother with a layout this time. She pulled six cards and turned them over one by one.
The first card was the Queen of Swords. The red-haired woman in the picture stared out at her, a dare in her eyes, a blade in her hand.
“Oh, damn it. Damn it, not again.” Stella glared at the museum replica statue of Persephone in the center of the altar. “You’re hijacking my reading to tell me something about Miranda, aren’t you. You know, that’s really rude.”
Second card: the Two of Swords, which usually had to do with someone whose heart was closed off, living in denial of something or blocking emotion. Its image was of a hooded male figure wearing a black cloak, holding two swords crossed in a way that was just as likely to slice off his own head as protect him from assault.
Something about the way the figure stood reminded her strongly of Prime Deven. She almost laughed at how appropriate the card was for him.
The center card . . . Stella frowned at it, not sure what to make of it: the Eight of Pentacles. Normally it symbolized dedicating oneself to knowledge, becoming involved in something that consumed you . . . but she felt, with a combination of certainty and dread, that the card’s traditional meaning was irrelevant here. As with the Queen of Swords card, what mattered was the picture.
A spider sat patiently in the center of a web of glowing threads; around it, the web’s intersections formed eight circles to suggest the Pentacles themselves. As soon as she saw the image, her Sight went temporarily haywire—suddenly her mind was spinning, knowledge flooding into her mind in a massive wave of light that coalesced into a handful of words:
He’s here.
The Spider . . . he’s here . . . it has begun.
When she’d had a chance to ground, she said to the statue, “Seriously? Didn’t things just change? What else could possibly . . . you know, strike that last bit.”
As if to answer her unfinished question, the fourth card was the Ten of Swords.
A man lay on the ground run through with ten swords. The scene was desolate, bloody, and just looking at it made Stella’s skin crawl. It was the card of grave misfortune . . . or sacrifice.
“Miranda’s already sacrificed enough,” Stella said, growing angry. “Can’t she have just a little while where things don’t fall to shit? No offense, Lady Persephone, but you’re being kind of an asshole.”
The fifth card wasn’t all that comforting either: the Devil. Bondage, slavery, willful ignorance . . . giving up one’s free will to an addiction, lust, or darkness. It wasn’t always a purely negative card, but in this context it was hard for Stella to see it any other way.
At least the last card wasn’t so dire: the Wheel of Fortune, the card of destiny. It was a vague ending to the reading, but at least it wasn’t covered in blood or chained to a wall.
The question was, should she tell Miranda about the cards? Stella wasn’t getting any real urgency from them—they might be a long-range warning. And what would she tell Miranda if she did call her? She hated to make the Queen worry about the future unless she knew without a doubt that she understood the meaning.
After sitting there staring at the cards for a while, Stella decided to hold off—she’d meditate on the reading for a day or two and see if she could get any clarity.
“So, what was the point of all that?” she asked. “A string of cards that make no sense together—that’s why you stole my reading?” She paused, looking down at the center card, that crazy burst of intuition that had hit her when she turned it over. “Or . . . is there something I’m not getting?”
She wasn’t expecting an answer, and she didn’t get one, but for the rest of the night all she could think about was the Eight of Pentacles, and the thought kept repeating in her mind: He’s here . . . it has begun.
Three
“It has begun.”
The flat black stone gleamed in the pool of light cast just above it. In that circle of light, an image had formed, as if he were staring at his reflection in a still pond; but the face staring back, while similar to his own, definitely belonged to someone else.
“And you are sure it’s him.”
“Yes,” Nico said. “I’m afraid so.”
A world away—literally—the person in the mirror shook his head. “That is not what I wanted to hear, brother.”
“Nor did I particularly want to say it.” He smiled affectionately at Kai, who, despite being his twin, seemed both years younger and eons older at times. “I had hoped I was wrong . . . that Lesela’s prophecy was in error . . . but I think I knew all along it was true.”
“To hell with the prophecy,” Kai said, his violet eyes—almost as unusually dark as Nico’s own, and yet another reason they had been whispered about their entire lives—fierce and protective. “Come home, Nico. These creatures are not worth your life.”
Nico looked away. “There is far more at stake here than my life. I will not condemn this world for my own sake.”
“What has that world ever done for you, or any of us?” Kai demanded. “The mortals tortured and burned our family and drove us from our homes—and the vampires fed their way through entire clans on the Inquisition’s payroll. We owe them nothing.”
Nico told his brother firmly, “I shall return when I am done, and we will s
ee what happens after that. Nothing is written in stone—and even stone erodes with time.”
“What do you want me to tell Lesela?”
“Nothing yet. She already feels guilty enough that her prophecy sent me here. If she knew who else was involved she would blame herself even more.”
Nico and Lesela had been lovers once, not too long ago, and were still close friends. The gift of Prophecy was as rare as the gift of Weaving and carried with it similar responsibility, so they shared the feeling of being different from their kin. Seven centuries ago Lesela had foreseen the attack that would drive the last Elves from the human world, but even she had not seen what she would leave behind . . . one of the last precious remnants of a time when Elves and humans had loved each other without fear . . . her grandchild. That loss still haunted her seven hundred years later, but as Nico had said, Lesela had believed that child long dead.
Would she really want to know that she was wrong?
“You could have done your work in one night and come home two weeks ago,” Kai pointed out. “Why do you linger?”
“I don’t know vampire energetic anatomy well enough to work that quickly.”
Kai snorted softly. “I rather doubt this boy’s energy is the anatomy you’re staying around for.”
The Weaver couldn’t help but laugh at that. That was Kai: powerful, beautiful, and frequently infuriating, often mercilessly blunt. Despite the rumors that had dogged them since birth, Kai had never wanted for admirers or lovers of whatever number or gender he was in the mood for. Most Bards had a similar allure, but Kai’s talent and beauty seemed to double the usual allotment. The closest earth term Nico had encountered to describe his twin would be “rock star.”
Nico had been quite content to dwell in his brother’s shadow. Kai was remarkable looking for an Elf—black hair, dark eyes, an intensity surrounding him that drew others to him irresistibly. Despite how the vampires here stared at him, Nico was perfectly average among his people, except for his abilities as a Weaver, which had far outstripped those of his most advanced teachers before he had even come of age.
He had told Jonathan he was one of the strongest Weavers, but that was not the full truth. He was in fact the most powerful Weaver in all of Avilon, perhaps anywhere. He would have been perfectly happy to spend his life without anyone ever knowing that.
It seemed the Goddess had other ideas.
Kai sighed, bringing him back to the present moment. “So tell me, is he at least worth all of this wailing and gnashing of teeth? You have not said much about him.”
It took Nico a moment to find words. “I think . . . once you dig down past the self-loathing and fear, the soul within is lovely . . . almost blinding in its light. And I expect the others to be the same—there is tremendous potential for good among them, and a nobility that still amazes me.”
Now Kai rolled his eyes. “I do not speak of glorious destinies here, Nico.”
“I know. But I do not know what to tell you otherwise.”
“Of course you do. You are just afraid to admit it . . . for now. But I will humor you, as I know how much stress you are under with all of this.”
Hoping to change the subject, Nico asked, “How is Mother? I assume she knows where I am by now.”
“Angry as a hive of bees in a hailstorm. She will have several handfuls of choice words for you when you get back.”
“And the rest of the Enclave?”
“Not much better. There was talk of sending someone to collect you, but it turns out you’re the only Weaver strong enough to build a portal, so basically you can come and go as you like and they can do nothing about it except annoy me.” Kai grinned.
He’d been afraid of that. The ruling council of Avilon was mostly made up of older Elves who had survived the Burning Times—most of them scarred on the inside and many on the outside from the horrors they had endured and the loss they had suffered. To them, earth was a cesspool and humanity a cancer, and the Elves had no business ever returning. He didn’t disagree, exactly, but he knew there were things worth protecting here.
Unbidden, the memory of that moment on the balcony flooded his mind, and he gripped the edge of the table hard, trying not to get lost in it.
As usual his brother intuited what he was feeling even across an entire dimension. “Prophecy or no prophecy, you cannot help what soil your heart plants itself in,” Kai said, his voice losing its edge. “You have a choice what to do, but not how to feel. Don’t be so hard on yourself.”
“Easy for you to say,” Nico replied with a weak smile. “You don’t have the fate of three races pivoting around whom you sleep with.”
A smile and a sigh. Nico knew that Kai hated feeling helpless; from their childhood it had always been he who took care of Nico, who got them into trouble and then took the blame himself, who gave his smaller, gentler brother first pick of the cookies he filched from the House of Bakers. “Go to bed, Nicolanai. You look weary and I know holding this connection isn’t helping. Get some rest.”
“I shall. Blessings, brother . . . and try not to worry. I’ll be home soon.”
“You had better be.”
As the light disappeared and the stone became just a stone again, Nico shut his eyes tightly against the longing—he wanted to go home. This place was wrong, and he was wrong in it; he missed the serenity, the simplicity, of life in Avilon. Even this far from the city he could smell what he knew to be engine exhaust and pollution. He was surrounded by the kind of creatures that had eaten many of his kin.
Suddenly restless, he rose and walked over to the door that opened onto the balcony.
Perhaps this place still had that industrial smell, and perhaps it was not the forest of his birth, but it was a forest nonetheless, and he greeted it silently with a sigh, feeling some of the tension release. He leaned on the wall, just breathing it in. The forest here responded to him sleepily, but it had a long memory, and once, his people had walked here. The land always remembered.
Again, he thought of the last time he’d been out here . . . of catching Deven when he collapsed, feeling that slender body against his for just a moment. The fire that had raced up between them had sent his senses reeling, had driven him to say, in a roundabout way, what he was aching for . . . they had been inches apart when Deven pushed him away . . . and it astonished Nico how much that rejection hurt.
That was the moment he knew without doubt that Lesela’s vision had been true. He had tried so hard to deny it—to think that he was simply here to help and then go back to his life—and even though he had felt the attraction the second he had laid eyes upon Deven outside the church, he had pushed it away, hoping . . . praying . . . that it would fade . . . that he would go home, and never have to return here to face what Lesela had said he would face.
In a scant two weeks, in spite of every dark and violent thing he had learned about the Prime and the dozen layers of pain and guilt Deven wore like a shroud, in spite of everything that should drive the Weaver away from such a creature, in spite of what was to come, Nico had fallen in love with him, and in losing his heart, changed the fortunes of everyone . . . everyone.
He was still leaning on the wall with his head in his hands when he realized he wasn’t alone.
Starting, he turned toward the flicker of movement in his peripheral vision. “Good evening, my Lord,” he said, bowing.
The Consort smiled. “Good evening.”
He was a handsome but imposing man—though Elves were stronger than they looked, Jonathan could easily have snapped Nico in half like a twig—but gifted with surprising good humor considering the life he led. Nico could sense that he, too, had a touch of the blood, but it was very far back, and searching out his actual family line would be intrusive to say the least. It was barely more than a trace; at most he would have stronger-than-usual psychic abilities.
“If I am disturbing you,” Nico began, but Jonathan waved his hand.
“No, no, I just needed some air.”
; They pondered the view in silence for a while, but eventually Nico could feel the Consort’s eyes on him. He waited.
“If you’re waiting for my permission, you have it,” Jonathan said. “He and I have an understanding—we always have. He’s just never acted on it.”
“And why should he now?” Nico asked.
Warmhearted as he was, the Consort could still be menacing when he wanted to, and he towered over Nico by several inches. “Are we really going to play this game?”
“I do not—”
“You and I both know it wasn’t just some glowing rock that brought you here. Whatever prophetic impulse you’re acting on, pay me the respect of owning up to it.”
Nico sighed. He turned toward the view again, fear evaporating and weariness taking its place. “My people by and large fear and hate this world,” he said. “We have hidden for so long that many of us have forgotten what we were made for. A Prophet’s word did send me here. And though I want to be of service to this world as I have been called to do, I was not ready for . . .”
Jonathan chuckled softly. “You weren’t ready for Deven.”
“Not at all.”
“You came here thinking it would be straightforward work, only to find yourself crushing a bit on your patient.”
Nico shook his head, smiling at the absurdity of the conversation. “‘Crush’ is not exactly the word for it,” he said. “More like ‘pulverize.’”
The Consort nodded sympathetically. “I’ve been there. It was the quintessential thunderbolt, love at first sight. At that very moment, if you’ll pardon my language, I knew I was well and truly fucked.”
He met the Consort’s gaze. “Are you unhappy?”
Jonathan chuckled. “I suppose from the outside our relationship doesn’t make a lot of sense. I certainly wouldn’t have guessed, before I came to California, that I would end up bound to a spiky little warrior with more demons than a Halloween party.”
Nico frowned. “I do not understand the reference, my Lord.”
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