I pulled Alek away from the breakfast table with only minor teasing from my friends. Yosemite was outside, standing just beyond the garden in the trees, apparently talking to a birch tree.
Alek set up a ward around us and I laid out my suspicions, and my plan.
"It's a lot of guesswork," the druid said, running a hand over his thick red beard.
"Jade has good instincts," Alek said, surprising me with his quiet defense of my theories. I hadn't always been right about things and he'd been around to witness some of my worst mistakes. Still, his support warmed me better than the morning sun.
"If I'm wrong, we can still get to you to help in time. If I'm right, it will take the pressure off you and allow you to fix the forest and lay Balor back to rest."
"Why Brie?" he asked.
"I saw what she could do with that sword. Also, I trust her not to do something stupid and get in over her head trying to protect me."
"Unlike, say, Harper," Alek said with a rude snort.
"She's got that foxy courage—what can I say?" I smiled at him.
Harper was my best friend, but no way could I trust her to go with this plan if she knew the truth. The very friendship that bound the twins, Harper, and I together would potentially give the game away and get them killed.
If I was right. I really wanted to be wrong, but the pieces fit into a picture we couldn't afford to ignore.
"Ciaran must stay near Brie, if she is to fight," Yosemite said.
"If they agree, he can come." I had considered bringing Ciaran into this meeting. I trusted the leprechaun to keep a secret. He and Brie weren't back yet, however, and I couldn't let the plan wait. Our noon meeting was coming, and the three of us had to be in agreement.
"And you are sure they will not see through the ruse?"
I was going to rename this guy Thomas the Doubter. Geez.
"No," I said. "The book is written in Old Irish, Middle Irish, some weird-ass dialect of Latin, and a bunch of words in something the weird part of my brain tells me is called 'Stone.' I doubt it is something anyone besides me could totally parse, but there's enough recognizable there that someone with enough knowledge could maybe make out the meanings." I wondered if humans had been misunderstanding the phrase "written in stone" for centuries, but I shoved that thought aside.
"I cannot say, but that I hope you are wrong," Yosemite said. "These games within games are tiring to even consider." He shook his head and rubbed at the bridge of his nose as though he felt a headache coming on.
"Hope for the best," I said. "Plan for the worst." It was all we could do.
"This plan sucks," Harper said.
We had gathered in the living room like a ragtag band of adventurers. Rosie hovered at the edge, teacup in hand. Max and Aurelio sat on the floor, heads tipped in mirrored gestures of consideration. Harper sat with her feet pulled up in one of the overstuffed chairs, glaring at me. The twins were side by side, Ezee watching Yosemite's face with narrowed dark eyes, Levi sucking speculatively on one of his lip rings. Junebug sat next to her husband, her fingers laced with his. Brie leaned against a wall behind Harper's chair and Ciaran hovered near her, his red coat bright as fresh blood in the sunlight streaming through the window next to him. Only Tess was missing, but her door was open and I knew she could hear what we said.
I stood at the end of the room, flanked by Alek and Yosemite.
"It's the plan we have," I said. "We have to divide ourselves if we are going to do both rituals. We can't have the magic interfering, and we can't provide one big juicy target. It's not that bad a plan, come on."
"Whatever. I'm going with you." Harper folded her arms over her knees.
"No," I said, too sharply. I sucked in a breath and forced myself to calm down. "What I'm doing is the more minor thing. Alek, Ciaran, and Brie should be enough. We'll have to be quick and quiet, and we want to distract Clyde with the larger force. That's why the rest of you need to go protect the druid. And Lir. He's the last unicorn, after all."
Cheap shot on my part, but it got Max and Levi both nodding. Harper made a face at me and rolled her eyes.
"Fine," she muttered.
"Great," I said. "Arm up and let's go do this thing. We have to be in place by twilight."
Orders issued, objections quelled, the group broke up into smaller groups. Brie came over to me, her eyes searching my face. When she spoke, however, it was to Yosemite.
"You trust her?" she asked him in Old Irish.
"Yo," I said. "Standing right here, totally understand you."
"I do," Yosemite said, as though I weren't standing right here, totally able to understand them.
"There are many here who think you are worth following, Jade Crow," she said, looking at me now.
It wasn't my imagination, or Alek's. Brie was different. She looked a decade younger and her eyes were full of power, her gaze keen as a sword blade. The gentle, helpful magic she infused into her baking was nothing like the hot, sharp power that rippled off her in lazy waves.
"Who are you?" I said, sticking to Old Irish, aware our conversation could be overheard.
"E pluribus unum," she said with a toothy smile that didn't reach her eyes. Out of many, one . Like it explained anything. Ha.
"Okay, then," I muttered.
"Brie," Ciaran said, tugging lightly on her sleeve. "Come."
He led her away. Yosemite followed them, leaving Alek and I almost alone at the edge of the room.
"Tell me I'm doing the right thing," I whispered in Russian.
"You are worth following, kitten," he said, wrapping his arms around me.
Not what I'd asked for, but somehow it was the right thing to say. I squeezed him back and then went to prepare for the worst.
"I'm going with you," Tess said to me as I went to say goodbye to her.
She was up, leaning unsteadily on the bed, and trying to pull a sweater over her head. She'd definitely lost weight. Healing was apparently far tougher on her than on me.
"Fat chance," I said. "I mean this in the nicest way, but you aren't strong yet. Worrying about you might get us killed."
"I'm stronger than I look," she said.
"Says the woman who can't pull on a sweater without looking like she's in agony."
"I want to help." She dropped the sweater and glared at me. "Besides," she added, her expression shifting from anger to worry in a blink, "what if Samir comes for me here while you are all out fighting Clyde?"
I'd thought about that. I'd been doing a lot of thinking all morning about Samir, about what I knew of him and how he'd acted toward me so far since I'd revealed myself months ago.
"I don't think it'll happen," I said. "I think he'll sit back, watch to see what Clyde manages with this Fomoire and Balor's Eye crap. Samir likes a show."
She pressed her lips together and nodded. "He does," she admitted. "Clyde might be arrogant and young, but he's dangerous, too."
"So am I." I grinned at her, trying to project more confidence than I felt. Clyde wasn't the only one who could put on a show.
"Still feels wrong to stay and convalesce while everyone else fights," she muttered. She climbed back onto the bed, not quite successfully hiding a pained grimace.
"Someone will need to protect Rosie, Max, and Junebug," I said. I'd used the same argument on Max, only saying Tess, Rosie, and Junebug that time. Rosie had forbidden Max to go, much to his anger, but I agreed with her. He was only fifteen. It was hard to remember sometimes, it felt like we'd all been through a lifetime of battles these last few months.
"True," Tess said with a sigh.
I sat on the edge as she arranged herself. The others were almost ready to go, but I had things I wanted to discuss. So many things. There wasn't time for them all.
"You'll be more help later," I said. "After. I think if Clyde fails here, Samir might come himself. Were you serious about us fighting together? You said you know about magic, that you could help teach me."
"I was serious," Tess said. Her eyes fixed on mine, an almost fanatical light burning in their depths.
Doubt whispered in my heart, doubt about my plan, about the connections I was sure I'd made, about Samir's nature and the nature of Clyde's plan. I pushed them away. I had contingencies for being wrong, thin and weak though the beta plan was. I was running out of time, but there was one thing I desperately wanted to know, and I hoped Tess had an answer for me.
"Do you know if Samir lied to me about how we can't be killed unless another sorcerer eats our hearts?" I spat out the question in a rush, thinking about all the times I'd almost died. The times I should have died. Like when I had thrown myself on a freaking bomb only weeks before.
"I think it is true," Tess said after a long moment. "He's lived a very long time, and we don't seem to age much. I've never heard of a sorcerer killed any other way, but we don't exactly appear very often and we all seem to die only one way most of the time, killed by one man." She looked away from me, one hand rubbing her crucifix, her jaw tight.
"But what sets us apart from human magic users? Why don't we die? Why do we have power at our fingertips for asking when others must earn it?" I wanted to know what we were. I wanted to know how it all worked, how much of what little Samir had told me was the truth. I'd eaten the hearts of two men, men who had had to train and learn and steal their power from other things. I knew they were different from what I was; I felt their humanity, their mortality. But my knowledge was weak, blind, like knowing the difference between the taste of licorice and the taste of mint. Two different things, but I didn't know why.
At the heart of it, I wanted to know why I was even more different. Why could I see magic? Why did I heal in hours? Why did I know every damn language?
Why had I survived when so many others had not? Why was Wolf with me, and how had she scarred Samir?
I curled my hands into fists, feeling like a small child. All why and no answers.
"I don't know," Tess said. "Why is there magic at all? I give those questions up to God. It is more peaceful to accept His will than to doubt."
"Don't you want to know why we are what we are?"
"No," she said, her voice soft, her eyes bright in the sunlight as she stared out the window, not meeting my gaze. "I only want to live, to be free of Samir. To let this cup pass from me."
I knitted my eyebrows together, trying to place where I'd heard those words before. More scripture, perhaps.
"We'll find a way," I said, sounding more confident than I felt. "First I'm going to go pwn that brat of his."
"Pwn?" Tess said, finally looking at me again. "Like your shop?"
"It's from the Welsh," I joked.
"Wouldn't it be pronounced poon then?" Her expression was skeptical.
"Damn, foiled again," I said.
Alek tapped on the door and stuck his head in. "We are ready," he said, eyes flicking between Tess and I.
I stood up. We were out of time.
Be good , I thought, almost speaking the words aloud.
"Be safe," I said instead. "We'll talk more later."
"Godspeed," Tess said. "Take care, Jade."