“You would think,” I muttered with a sigh. “But the city has not been transparent regarding the agreement they made with the fuel company running the show. They don’t have to be,” I added with a snort of disapproval. “All they had to do was toss around the words ‘jobs’ and ‘economic recovery’ to ensure that no one listened to the dissenting minority.” Of course, it didn’t help that the dissenting minority consisted of Betty and a handful of university students.
“Well it smells a hell of a lot like Discordant activity to me,” said Desmond, taking a look back down into the sinkhole and the shimmering cracks in the ground.
They were small, barely a millimeter wide and no more than a foot long each, but that didn’t matter. A breach was a breach and it was only a matter of time before it was ripped wide open. Looking at the lengths the mill’s owners had gone through to avoid paying for upkeep on environmentally friendly equipment, I briefly wondered if Blackbird was worth saving. I shook off the dark thought and chastised myself for thinking like Nai.
“I’ll add it to my list of things to look into. Come on,” I said with a glance at my phone. Bogie and Donna both had sent messages saying that the bar was filling up with the usual mix of vermin and potential lost souls. “Looks like the party has already started.”
As we entered the downtown area, I felt the distinctly chaotic nature of a lost soul and paused to lock in on the sensation. Not far down the street, and headed straight for the Five Penny, was Allen Goetz. Allen was a contract laborer who hadn’t been able to find work for a while, so he was no stranger to the unemployment office. When he was in earlier in the day, he’d been teetering on the edge of lost, so I had sent a bit of influence his way. What he should have done was head over to Louie’s so that the Guardians could catch him before he became completely lost. Apparently, that hadn’t happened.
I sent a message to each of the teens asking if they had spoken to or seen Allen that evening, but received no reply.
“This can’t be good,” I said tersely as both Jem and Nai’s phones rang through to voicemail. “Come on,” I said to Desmond, explaining the situation. When we arrived at Louie’s, they weren’t there. Jake, the kid who worked the overnight, said that neither had been in all night.
“What do you want to bet they went to the mill?” Desmond said with a muttered curse.
“I can see Nai wanting to check it out but Jem would…” I paused when I realized my mistake. “Never mind. You go since you can get there quicker. I’ll check the house just in case something happened,” I said and ran off down the block.
When I got there, the first thing I noticed was that all of the lights were still on, which didn’t necessarily mean anything, but I did feel a bit better, thinking that perhaps the kids had gotten caught up in some television show or something and hadn’t realized how late it was. But when I opened the door and saw two bodies lying on the floor, I panicked.
“Don’t worry, they ain’t dead.”
“What?”
I jumped out of my skin at the unexpected response coming from the corner. Howie sat in one of our armchairs, casually reading a book and sipping from a can of beer.
“What did you do?” I asked as a myriad of scenarios went through my head. None of them good.
“I ain’t did nothing,” the imp-djinn protested. “Alls I did was ask if they never got the notion to find out who they was before they split.”
Not good was an understatement. “Don’t you tell me you…”
I was about to send a message to Desmond when he appeared from outside the Cycle.
“Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t cut your ass into a thousand pieces and personally throw each and every one into an active volcano?”
If I was mad, he was downright murderous as he stormed over to Howie and picked him up by the front of his shirt.
“Hey! Easy there! I didn’t do nothing and they ain’t permanently damaged!”
“Don’t kill him,” I warned as I knelt down to check on the Guardians.
“Gee! Thanks for thinking of me, Seth.”
“I’m more worried about Jem,” I said in a low tone.
Both Jem and Nai were out cold. As inconvenient as that was, it was probably for the best. When they awoke, they were in for a nasty headache. Attempting to self-soul gaze was something of a rite of passage for split soul Guardian pairs. It was my understanding that Administration didn’t even bother to warn of the side effects due to the fact that merely mentioning that it could be done was enough to disregard any and all warnings. Still, it was an inconvenience and we didn’t have time for inconveniences at the moment.
One at a time, I carried each of the teens up to their rooms and deposited them on their beds. I considered asking Desmond to help me, but he was still laying into Howie and I saw no reason to interrupt. Neither were particularly heavy and the only issue I had was trying to figure out how to unlace Nai’s overly complicated boots. When I came back down the stairs, Desmond was alone.
“What happened to Howie?”
“Oh, he’s been given a small time out to reflect on what he did. And I do mean small,” he added with a devious smile, drawing from his pocket a decorative jar no bigger than the palm of his hand.
“You didn’t!”
“Oh, but I did and I have to admit, I’ve been looking for an excuse to put the squeeze on the little slime ball for a while now. Don’t tell me you feel bad for him after what he did!”
“Well no, how could I?” I tried to keep my tone light, but my irritation at Desmond’s accusation came through. “I’m just a little surprised. If I recall, Jem wouldn’t budge on that issue.”
While setting up the containment in Bogie’s apartment, Jem had refused to allow either of us the power of entrapment due to his own claustrophobia.
“Well, that was yesterday,” Desmond said with a frown. “He was a tad less sympathetic earlier today when I asked again.”
“You mean when you took advantage of his inadvertent personality switch?” I hadn’t necessarily meant it to come out as an accusation.
“You have to admit, it certainly came in handy.”
“Just because you’re right, doesn’t mean I necessarily approve,”
“And just because you don’t approve, doesn’t mean I’m going to feel bad.” Desmond’s tone was also straining at the boundaries of civility.
“I know,” I said, stifling an exasperated sigh. “And that’s fine. We’re all under a lot of stress right now, so maybe…”
“Maybe we should go have a beer, watch some football, and keep an eye out for destructive forces instead of jumping down each other’s throats for no reason?”
Desmond’s half-smile was as close as I was going to get to an apology and I took it.
“That’s probably the best idea I’ve heard in a while,” I said, returning his smile with one of my own.
As was typical of Monday nights in the fall, the Five Penny was packed. The majority of the patrons were crowded together to watch football on one of the television monitors installed over the bar. Whether this was good for morale or bad depended on who was playing. Blackbird was far enough away from the big cities that there was no single home team loyalty. Rather, the town was vehemently divided between two teams from neighboring states and as it happened, they were playing each other that evening. Typically, this was a recipe for disaster and the Discordant knew it.
“Well, so much for beer and football,” Desmond said, noting the two wolves who were trying, rather obviously, to get through our wards no more than five minutes after we arrived.
“I’ll keep a chilled glass at the ready,” Donna told him with a wink as she handed me a pint. “Really, it’s not been too bad so far. Betty’s dispatched a few vamps and I think Louise is taking a sadistic pleasure in squashing pixies. I don’t know what got into her, but she’s manic tonight.”
“Oh?” I asked, but Donna held up her index finger and hurried away to wait on a group who had come up
to the bar. I took a sip of my beer and cast out, gauging the atmosphere. Tensions were high due to the game, but thankfully, no one was lost. Yet. I wasn’t quite optimistic enough to let my guard down, but with Jem and Nai incapacitated, I had my fingers crossed.
I set my beer on the bar and glanced up to see the score. I wasn’t a big fan of the game, but I liked to keep up with stats. But instead of the screen, there was a flash of silvery blonde hair and I was nearly thrown off my bar stool as Louise landed roughly in my lap.
“Louise? What the hell?”
“Hide me, hot stuff!” she yelped and buried her face against my neck. I’m sure to an outside observer it might have looked romantic, but I can assure you, there was nothing romantic about having one’s trachea crushed by a forehead. I lifted by head as much as I could over Louise’s mass of blonde curls and surveyed the bar. Sure enough, about twenty feet away was a young, professionally dressed man looking around in vague confusion.
“Isn’t that Dan-” I started, but she cut me off. Quite literally, her hand shot up and tried to choke me.
“Shush! Don’t make eye contact! Actually, can you send him away?”
I could, but it was frowned upon. Still, if getting the man out of the bar meant loosening Louise’s death grip on my neck, I was willing to risk it. I sent him a strong urge to go get something to eat. That way, he would blend in with all of the other lost souls I sent to Louie’s on a regular basis. The fact that he wasn’t lost and my Guardians were out cold remained my little secret.
“He’s gone,” I managed to rasp. Lucky for me, Louise loosened her grasp and sat up.
“Oh thank the goddess! You have no idea how close that was!”
“But I thought you were interested in him. Isn’t that the new guy at the main branch that you’ve been talking about?”
“Yes! Exactly! What a mess!”
“I’m, uh, not following your logic,” I said, incredibly confused. There was the stereotype that men never had a clue what women were thinking and then there was Louise.
“I thought he was emotionally unavailable! You know, just someone to flirt with since… I mean, you know, like I did with you sometimes.”
I raised my eyebrows. “Are you saying I was only ever just a boy toy, Louise?”
“No!” she gasped. “I mean, yes, kind of? Oh damn it all! Sometimes a girl just needs to feel wanted, okay?”
“Uh… right then,” I said, spitting out stray strands of platinum as Louise disentangled herself from me. There was no point in trying to understand the way her mind worked.
“Nice going, Louise,” Donna said with a wink as she rejoined us. “You sure know how to make a guy feel special.”
“Cut me a little slack, I was flustered! Seth knows I don’t mean anything by it, right?”
“Um…” Sometimes it was best to just smile and nod.
“Actually, I’m hiding too,” Donna admitted. “There’s a real creep at the other end of the bar, but Bogie’s going to go wait on him. Unglamoured,” she added with a wink.
“Hell hath no fury…” I murmured lightly, but scanned the bar briefly. Still quiet, so there was that at least. “But since you’ve both decided to put me on stud duty, maybe you can help me with something.”
“Stud duty?” Donna guffawed, nearly spitting out the mouthful of the drink she had just taken. “Sorry,” she gasped, wiping away the dribbles from her chin. “You were saying?”
I briefly explained the paradoxical situation with Eller and the bowling alley. When I mentioned the rift, Donna shuddered. She may have been rested up from her experience with the Truth’s residual power, but it would be a long time if ever before she forgot what she had to endure.
“I am not asking you to do anything dangerous or even to go anywhere near the rift,” I assured her. “Eller’s mind isn’t in danger of damage. I was just curious to know if you might have any suggestions considering the vision Desmond mentioned.”
“What vision?” Louise asked sounding miffed. “You didn’t tell me you had a vision.”
“That’s because I kind of think that it wasn’t my vision,” Donna said, chewing on a ragged fingernail.
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“Well, I was drawn to the fissure and not really thinking clearly,” she said. “Desmond freaked out, which was understandable, so he grabbed me. Next thing I know, I’m throwing up all over him, and I’ve got a vague memory of a werewolf invasion. I think it was Desmond who actually had the vision and I was just the catalyst.”
“Interesting,” I said, mulling over what Desmond had described. For a secondary vision, it had been pretty detailed. “Do you remember any of it?”
“Not much,” Donna said with an apologetic tone, but then she looked up, over my shoulder and perked up. “You could just ask him.”
“Ask me what?”
Desmond slid into the empty seat next to mine, noting that Louise still had her arm around me with an unreadable expression.
“Seth was just asking about the vision I had last night and I was telling him that I don’t think it was truly my vision.”
“Oh?” Desmond looked wary. “Whose vision was it then?”
“Yours,” she said, smiling as Desmond frowned. “I got the basic gist of what I saw, but it wasn’t really clear.”
“What wasn’t clear?” Desmond asked. “If anything, your vision confirmed a suspicion I’d had earlier in the…” He trailed off and Donna’s eyebrows went up.
“That’s right, you mentioned that at the mill. Well, there you go,” she said, confusing all of us.
“What was your suspicion?” I asked.
“It occurred to me that the unusually high werewolf population might be a direct result of keeping the djinn out.”
“I’m not sure I follow,” I said.
“You know as well as I do that there is a method to Chaos,” he began and I nodded. “It hadn’t occurred to me until Slick showed up, but Blackbird is a djinn’s dream come true and I couldn’t fathom why the place hadn’t been overrun. Now that I know Eller Raglund is keeping the djinn from reaching town, it makes sense, but this leaves an opening and it looks like the wolves have taken it.”
“But why werewolves?” Louise asked. “Why not vampires? They feed on desperation.”
“We have plenty of those as well,” I said and Desmond nodded in agreement.
“Seth’s right. We would have the vamps regardless. The wolves don’t feed off of fear or desperation, but they thrive on it. They’re the parasites of Chaos. They kill indiscriminately and have no place in the Discordant hierarchy other than to spread panic. With the djinn unavailable, Blackbird is like a beacon to the wolves.”
“I think I understand,” Donna said slowly, chewing on her lip. “It could have just been something weighing on your mind at the time, but I’m not going to discount the possibility that it was a vision.”
“Warriors do not have visions,” Desmond protested.
“Either way, it sounds like we should be preparing ourselves for war,” Louise said. “I mean, come on. There’s an open Hell mouth and I don’t care if you did let me sleep through it, we can’t keep ignoring it.”
“Yes and no,” I said cautiously. “What it sounds like we need to do is restore balance because the odds at this moment are far in favor of Chaos. I mean, yes, there is an open fissure, but I don’t think that’s reason enough to panic.”
“Um, I beg your pardon, Seth, but this might just be the perfect time to panic,” Desmond said, making every head turn his way. Desmond wasn’t exactly known for hyperbole and his telling us it may be time to panic was panic inducing on its own.
“Look,” he said with a deep sigh, signaling to Donna for another beer. “I’ve only been in Blackbird for a little over a month, but it is clear to me that when the time comes for a showdown between Order and Chaos, this place is going to be ground zero. My concern is that with the weakening between the realms, this is something that is going to happen soo
ner rather than later.”
“And to have a fighting chance, we need all hands on deck,” I said, letting my sigh hang in the air. I suppose that in the back of my mind, I too had known that Blackbird would be the site of another war for dominance. I just hadn’t planned on that war being so soon.
“You’ve got us,” Louise said.
“And mom and Harry,” Donna added.
“If I thought that was enough, I’d have attempted to close the fissure last night,” Desmond said. “But what Seth means is that we’re woefully under-matched at best. In addition to all mystics, we also need our currently incapacitated Guardians and we can’t rely on Jem until we find a way to break his bond to Slick. For that matter, I’m not sure sending Jem, you, or your mother into a war between realms is advisable.”
At that, Donna bristled.
“Just because we’re Nyx doesn’t mean we’re automatically going to side with Chaos.”
It didn’t take an Observer to see how upset she was.
“I never said that,” Desmond protested, but I stepped in before we had our own war on our hands.
“Okay listen up, we can argue and panic or we can look at this objectively and deal with matters that are pressing at the moment. What if we let some of the djinn through?” I asked. “If we can restore a balance, we can head off this supposed werewolf invasion.”
“I’m afraid not.” Desmond shook his head. “With the number trapped in the djinn paradox at the moment, there’s no way to safely attempt to let one out. We’d be flooded and I can’t destroy them all at once, not even with Nai’s help. If there was some way to push them back, we might have a fighting chance with banishment spells. At that point we could close the rift, which would dissolve the paradox and free Eller, but it’s not likely.”
“Is there any kind of spell that could keep the djinn at bay and allow us to close the rift?” I asked.
You Wish (Rise of the Discordant Book 3) Page 9