A few days later, Claire, Naomi, and Rebecca walked into Eternity Road. Rebecca and Naomi carried a bottle of wine in each hand. Worse yet, Claire held a stack of board games.
Talbot and I exchanged a glance. “Uh-oh,” he said.
“Family bonding night,” Claire announced.
“We used to do it all the time when we were growing up,” Naomi said. “Minus the wine.”
“Speak for yourself,” Rebecca said. There was a hint of a smile at the edge of her mouth. “Nyx, it’s time you joined us.”
What had brought on the sudden urge for my company? My sister had thawed toward me, but I was still wary.
“Have fun,” Talbot said wistfully.
I stared at Naomi. “He’s coming with us. He’s my brother, at least as close as I’ll ever get to one, so he’s in or I’m out.”
Talbot gave me a grin. “I guess I could close the store early.”
She sniffed. “I’ll encourage your little bromance. We’re playing at your place, then. And you’re buying the pizza.”
“Fair enough.”
They followed me up the stairs to the apartment, but I noticed that Talbot and Naomi were lagging behind.
“Naomi, hurry up,” Claire called out, but Rebecca nudged her. “Don’t be an idiot.”
I gave my sister a look. “Playing matchmaker?”
“She was miserable,” Rebecca replied. “It’ll work. Trust me.”
Strangely enough, I did.
I unlocked the door, frantically trying to remember if I’d left underwear on the floor. Normally, I didn’t give a shit, but Rebecca was bound to notice. The idea that I worried about impressing my sister made me a little queasy.
I was relieved that the apartment was relatively clean, if you ignored the empty bottles piling up on the kitchen counter.
“Did you have a party last night?” Claire asked, staring at the bottles and cans littering the room.
Rebecca snorted with laughter, but didn’t say anything. Surprisingly, my sister was polite enough to ignore my empties. Or maybe she just didn’t care.
“Make yourself comfortable,” I said. It was after 7 p.m., but it was still hot, so I went through the apartment and opened all the windows.
Talbot and Naomi finally showed up, holding hands.
“Let’s get the game started,” Rebecca said. “I call Scottie dog.”
“Whenever we play Monopoly and Becks gets the dog, she always wins,” Naomi explained.
“Not this time, Becks,” I said. “We’re rolling for it.”
The pizza arrived and we settled in. When I chose a soda instead of absinthe, Talbot grinned at me, but didn’t comment. I wasn’t trying to stop drinking, I was trying to win. Rebecca was a ruthless player and I needed my wits about me.
I won the roll of the dice and got to go first.
“Luck is on your side, Nyx Fortuna,” Rebecca said. “But I have skill on mine.”
“So how do you stay so young-looking?” I asked my sister. “If you’re older than me, I mean?”
“How do you know it’s not the same way you look so young?” she replied.
“I doubt your mother defied the Fates and a prophecy and hid your thread of Fate,” I told her. “So how do you really do it? A little of Gaston’s go-go juice?” The orange nectar of the gods had kept the Fates’ Tracker alive long enough to torment me.
She raised an eyebrow. “Didn’t you read all of the Book of Fates?”
“Not enough time,” I said. “I died, remember? Claire inherited it.”
Claire gave me a look. “I’m not giving it back.”
“I was supposed to have it,” Rebecca said.
“You can have it,” I said. “There are just some things it would have been nice to know.”
“Sorry, it’s a trade secret,” Rebecca said. She rolled the dice and got snake eyes.
“Now who is lucky?” I bit into a slice of gooey cheese pizza.
“Is that what they call it?” My cousin elbowed me hard in the stomach.
Talbot and Naomi were so busy kissing that he wasn’t paying attention to the game. “Talbot, it’s your turn.”
“While you were drowning your sorrows, I was doing some research,” he said smugly. “I know where Wren is.”
Part of me still had a soft spot for Wren. My inclination was to let her go. She had been under her mother’s thumb. Maybe she could have a life of her own, now that Hecate was trapped.
The soft summer wind picked up and blew the Monopoly money all over the room. Rain poured down like liquid silver, coming faster and faster. I shut the windows while everyone else gathered up the money.
“Should we start over?” Rebecca asked.
Naomi shivered and Talbot wrapped an arm around here.
“Weather’s changing,” she commented. The air turned cold. There was a sudden cessation of sound.
Something hard hit the roof. I looked out to see hail, larger than I’d ever seen, slamming to the ground.
Rebecca shivered. “Something’s wrong,” she said.
The air had gone electric. “Storm’s coming,” Naomi said.
“Not just any storm,” Talbot said.
“Storm god,” I said. The sky was purple and getting darker.
“A storm god?” Talbot asked. “No, it’s just a little crazy summer weather. Happens all the time in Minneapolis.”
“Not like this,” I said. “I’m telling you this is the work of a storm god.” The wind screamed in my ear. Where is she?
“Which storm god?” Claire asked.
“The pissed-off one,” I said. “Now move. Talbot, where’s your dad?”
“At home,” he said. “At least he was ten minutes ago.”
“Find him,” I said. “Gather up all the magical items at the store and then take them and everyone you can find into the basement.”
“What are you going to do?” Rebecca asked.
“I’m going to try to stop him.”
“I’m staying with you.”
“Me, too,” Claire said.
I didn’t have time to argue with them.
“Talbot, find your dad, please,” I repeated. He hesitated, but finally tugged on Naomi’s hand and they headed for Ambrose’s apartment.
Rebecca and I took the narrow stairs that led to the roof. The door wouldn’t budge, but Rebecca shoved me aside and sent a spell whizzing through the door. It popped open and the wind tore it off the hinges. The door flew into a growing funnel cloud. We were pelted with rain as we went.
There was every possibility we’d end up in that funnel cloud, but somehow we stayed on the roof. For every step we took, the wind beat us back two. The tornado sirens wailed a warning as we struggled to stay upright.
The sky was filled with clouds like dark smoke, but the sun still shone through in spots. Tornado weather.
The storm god appeared, riding a black storm cloud in the shape of a horse. “Bring her to me,” he said. His voice boomed like thunder. Boreas, the god of the cold north winds, had a voice like thunder. His long black hair, streaked with frost, streamed in the wind. A bolt of lightning struck not far from where we stood.
“What does he want?” Rebecca said.
“Not what, who. He wants Hecate.”
“She’s not here,” Rebecca said.
“Obviously,” I replied. “But he doesn’t know that. Unless…” I trailed off, struck by an even more horrifying possibility.
“Unless what?”
“Bring me the goddess.” Boreas said. He accentuated his request with another bolt of lightning.
“What goddess?” I shouted, but my words were swallowed by the wind.
“He’s trying to kill us,” Rebecca said. “Why?”
I tested her theory by moving closer to Boreas. At that range, he shouldn’t have missed, but the next bolt he sent landed several feet away.
Why was Boreas attacking us?
“He’s not trying to kill us, he’s trying to stall us,” I told Rebecca.
“Why?”
“He’s just the diversion,” I shouted.
“Diversion for what?” Rebecca yelled.
“Someone is trying to break Hecate out,” I said. “His job is to stall us.”
“The aunts,” Rebecca said. “They’re at Parsi. Let’s go.”
My sister caught on quickly. When we tried to leave, Boreas sent a gale-force wind to stop us.
“Since when is the god of the north wind on the side of a murdering psychopath?” I yelled.
The building shook with the force of Boreas’s fury. The hail came down faster and faster, morphing into huge jagged icicles. The air went frigid enough that I could see Rebecca’s breath.
“He’ll tear the city apart,” I said. “We have to stop him first.”
Stopping a god, even a minor one like Boreas, wasn’t going to be easy.
I tried to send a compulsion spell his way, but it didn’t even slow him down.
A gust of angry wind knocked me off my feet and I struggled to get up again. I was dragged along the ground, but grabbed ahold of the building’s ledge and clung. The wind howled in my ears as I tried to think, hitting on and discarding spells. I tried fire, but he summoned a downpour and put it out.
I sent a fireball his way while Rebecca lobbed a trash can at his head. I was desperate enough to try to remove the air around him. No air, no wind god. I wasn’t sure if the spell would remove the air near us, too. I filled my lungs.
The spell was complicated. As I started to utter the words, Boreas caught on to what I was doing and sent a gale-force wind my way. Rebecca did her best to block the worst of it, but I was pelted with a two-by-four, a street sign, and a city trash can.
It felt as though my face was going to be ripped off, but I clung to the edge of the roof as I spit out the last words of the spell. Boreas fell out of the sky and the wind died.
My lungs burned. I gasped for air until fresh oxygen hit my system. I crawled to the center of the roof. The storm had ended, but we were wet and shivering. The water was ankle high and seeped into my Doc Martens.
“Are you okay?” I panted. “Your arm?”
“I’m okay,” she said. She winced as she put her arm back into the sling. “Holy shit, that was some storm.” Her lip was bleeding and two enormous bruises dotted her cheeks. “Good work stopping it,” she added.
“Thanks for running interference,” I said. “Let’s go!”
Our shoes made a squelching sound as we ran. Outside, the building next to Eternity Road had been flattened, reduced to toothpicks by the twister. Broken glass littered the sidewalk.
There was a painful scrape on my leg from where I’d been dragged. I limped as I led the way to my car. The wards had held, but a large tree branch blocked the road. I pushed it out of the way, using a combination of magic and body strength.
The Caddy was covered in debris, but most of it was small enough that Rebecca and I cleared it away.
As I drove across town, I saw downed power lines, flooded roads, and wrecked cars.
“Can’t you drive any faster?” Rebecca snapped.
“If I wreck the Caddy, we won’t get there any quicker,” I said. I clicked on the radio and searched for the news. It wasn’t good.
The Stone Arch Bridge had been blown apart. At least three people had died, and more were missing.
“Hurry,” Rebecca urged. “The aunts always work late. They might still be in the building.”
As powerful as they were, the Fates were not invincible.
“Someone from the House of Zeus had to be involved,” I said. I clutched the steering wheel tightly.
“What makes you say that?”
“Boreas had help,” I said. “Luke warned me that Johnny couldn’t be trusted.”
“That doesn’t mean anything,” she said.
“Unless it does,” I replied. “Although all the wind gods are from the House of Zeus.”
“You can’t think Johnny had anything to do with this?” I stared at my sister. There had been a strange note her in voice.
“You can’t be in love with him already,” I said.
“Of course not,” she said. “But Johnny and I are old friends.”
The information surprised me. “You two knew each other before?”
She nodded. “In college.” The news that my sister went to college surprised me almost as much as her relationship with Johnny.
“Old friend, huh? Tell me the truth, Rebecca,” I said. “It’s important.”
“I may have some feelings for him,” she said.
I wanted to shout at her not to be stupid, that of course he couldn’t be trusted, but not that long ago, I’d told her to go for it. I’d gotten soft since I’d stopped running. And romance wasn’t my forte, anyway.
“And if he did betray us?”
“Then he’s dead.”
I didn’t know what to say. I changed the subject. “We’re here.”
“Park near the loading dock,” she ordered.
I threw a quick ward over the Caddy after we exited. Rebecca ran for the building while I followed at a slower pace.
Buildings all over Nicollet had been obliterated. The wooden structures were in pieces, turned into toothpicks for the gods. Cars were scattered, upside down and sideways, like an enormous petulant child had a tantrum and thrown his toys.
Naomi’s bad omen had come true. Death and destruction were everywhere. And I had brought it to Minneapolis.