I’d slept most of Saturday, only to wake later in the evening to the smell of Jonah’s ambrosia. AKA, fried potatoes with onions and peppers and some seasoning even after my third helping, I still couldn’t identify. When I asked him to tell me what it was, he refused. I’d have to get Kara to ask him.
While we ate, we reviewed the events of our hellish week. It was somewhat of a relief that we had found out about the Young family practicing blood magick. The circumstances of our discovery weren’t ideal, but at least we’d stopped them.
Now, we just had to stop the others.
Lemuel Oren had been the final piece all along. Khnum—god who gave life to gods and humans. Funny how, with just a little bit of information, Ezra was able to determine which of his siblings could possibly be behind the mayhem. If we had stayed on my building’s sordid past, we would have figured it out, too.
Gavina and the rest of the girls who escaped the cult’s massacre could have made a positive impact in the lives of others who found themselves in similar situations. Instead, they went from victims to predators, believing the only way to protect themselves from Khnum was to repeat his actions—to make themselves into gods. It didn’t matter if the ritual wasn’t working. Didn’t matter if in the end, they would have died anyway. They just kept killing. Senselessly.
We had taken down two of them. That left three to deal with. But now, we were going into this with all the knowledge we needed. But more important we knew the reason why they were practicing blood magick.
That left Logan. Out of all the games he played, it was his parting words to me that gave me the biggest clue. That, and his sudden change from trying to kill us to protecting us, however half-assed he went about it.
“We all have bonds we need to break…”
He was trying to free himself from someone, and I could guess who that someone was: Lemuel Oren. The man—correction, Old One, we all now knew—who was in charge of The Oren Group.
The professor had led us to the three Arks: one for life, one for knowledge, and one for death—the trifecta presenting itself again. We concluded the one for life was used to create the Old Ones and could possibly be the one the families were fighting over. What we didn’t know was what happened to the other two.
Louis Badet—Thoth—being the author of The Land Guarded by People of Colour and an Old One, was the biggest surprise of them all. It also, in hindsight, made sense that Luisah would entrust Steve with a copy of the rare document, knowing I would need it in the future. While the contents were important, it was the author in the end that was the most important, just like with the book by Professor Shukuma.
It was close to midnight when we decided to call it quits, which was a good thing since my brain had decided to call it a night an hour earlier. So, I climbed back in the bed with Alek and let him hold me. For now, that was all I wanted. My hormones, of course, rebelled.
Kara and I stepped out of Devlin’s house and into the heat. Sweat immediately coated my body. If the heat didn’t let up soon, I was afraid we’d all cook to death. Kara rubbed her stomach as we walked down the short path toward her car. She was taking me by my apartment to retrieve the letters Doc had been sending me. I didn’t tell anyone about the purpose of my trip; just that it was important. And while I would have preferred Alek to take me, it was better if Kara did. It would give me time to talk to her about them and prepare myself for the rest of the team to read them as well.
When we got to her car, I glanced behind it and stared at my own vehicle. “I need to buy a new car,” I announced as we climbed into hers. “There is no way I’m ever going to feel comfortable driving it again.”
Kara started the engine, and we rolled down the windows as the air-conditioning pushed warm air out of its vents. “Give it time,” she said and turned to me. “I know what those B’s did was horrific, but you can’t let them win.”
“How would they win if I bought a new car?” I asked.
“By showing them that they got to you.” She rolled up her window, and I did the same. The air-conditioning had finally started blowing cold air out. “But please, get your D air-conditioning fixed.”
“So, I see you’ve gone back to not cursing.” I leaned back in my seat. She was right, of course. Still didn’t stop my determination to get rid of my car. Besides, it was time, anyway.
“For now,” she said.
“What about when you and Jonah decide to move past the pool parties and into the bedroom?” I asked, smiling at her.
She winked at me. “Then I might invent a few.” She licked her lips. “Seriously. That man.” She made an appreciative noise that made me laugh. “One minute, we’re staring at each other, and the next minute, he invites me to go swimming. I was so nervous I almost didn’t show up.”
“I would ask for details, but…might be a little weird. I won’t be able to look at him the same way.” I cringed at the thought of Kara giving me a blow-by-blow account of their time together.
“What about you and Alek? The man can’t keep his eyes or hands off of you.” She wiggled her eyebrows.
I groaned. “Oh, dear god. We have devolved into girly girls. What’s next? Painting our nails together? Spa day? Shopping?” I was so not going to spend the entire day shopping and getting my nails done. I thought about Alek washing me down in the shower. Okay, maybe I might get my toes done, and while I was at it, a bikini wax.
“We’ve always been girly. We just…” She trailed off and I suddenly knew what she wanted to say. We had always talked about men, only our discussions had been about sex—not love and emotion and caring. And I also realized it had been my fault our conversations had been so shallow, because all my past relationships had been superficial.
“My fault,” I said finally.
“Don’t you dare,” she said through clenched teeth. She pulled to the curb and turned to me.
I wanted to look away, but I knew that would be too childish, and I needed to stop doing that. I needed to take charge of my life and work through every one of the obstacles being thrown at me like I was in a sadistic game of dodgeball.
“Okay. So, not my fault?” I offered to get her to calm down.
“No. We talked about each other’s lives. That’s what friends do. Did I worry about you? Yes. And if I recall, I have never shied away from telling you so.” I turned to her. “You hide. We all do. I have kept my secrets, and I know you have kept yours. But that ends today, got it?”
I nodded. “Got it. But…I am so not painting your nails. And you can just forget spa day.”
She laughed, breaking the rising tension in the car, and pulled away from the curb. “Now, what was so important that you had to ruin my swim date?”
I didn’t hesitate—a positive step in the right direction, as I told her about the letters I’d been receiving from Doc, she didn’t yell—also a positive step. Maybe I could do this; allow myself to rely on others and open up about the things that bothered me. It would take time, of course, but like Kara said, we kept too many secrets from one another, and it was time we stopped doing that.
We arrived at my apartment a short time later. When we climbed out of the car, a wave of heat rushed over us. It reminded me that I hadn’t told Kara about the first time I’d been caught in a massive heat wave that had drove me to my knees. As I relayed yet another kept secret, we walked into the cool hallway of my apartment complex, only to stop dead in our tracks.
Hathor stood by Mr. Wan’s door, wearing a sundress with a large purse on her shoulder, chatting. And I do mean chatting, because the look on his face suggested he had not been able to get a word in edgewise. She turned when we stopped and beamed at us.
“I was hoping you would come home,” she said, rushing over. She threw her arms around me. “My brother wanted me to give you something to protect you against Set,” she mumbled into my hair before she stepped back and looked at me. “You look well. I’m glad.” She reached into her purse and pulled out a small black box. “Here, add this to your charm bracelet. It will protect you for a while.” She pulled out another, much larger box. “He also wanted me to give you one of his favorite daggers.”
“Can’t you just kill Set?” I asked.
She blinked at me. “We are eternal,” she answered as if I should know that. “We just need to put him back in the Ark.”
“Who let him out?”
She frowned. “Khnum. They were always so close.” She smiled again. “Your mother’s magick is almost restored.” She stepped away and looked at Kara. “It’s nice to see you again!” Before any of us could respond, she burst out the front door and into the blazing heat.
Well damn. We just spent an entire week trying to figure out who was behind all this madness and all we had to do was hunt Hathor down and ask. Un-fucking-believable!
“She your friend?” Mr. Wan asked.
“Umm…yes, I guess so.” I stared down at the box in my hand. How the hell was a charm supposed to stop Set?
I looked up and found Kara and Mr. Wan studying me with confused looks on their faces. “Yeah, she’s a friend,” I said with more surety in my tone. “I hope she wasn’t troubling you.”
He shook her head. “No. She reminded me of my wife. So chatty.” He laughed and went back in his apartment.
“That was weird,” Kara said, following me to my apartment. Thankfully, there were no packages leaning against the door.
“Yeah, it was.” I handed her the box and fished my key out of my purse. “But then again, Hathor is a little strange. And speaking of strange, Logan wanted me to tell you hello.” I gave her a brief rundown of what happened between Logan and me in the cave.
“Logan is beyond strange,” she said.
I made a non-committal noise and went inside my apartment. The residual blood stain on the carpet caught my eye. There was no way to know how close to death I had come that night, but the fear of it still rested inside of me. I took the box from Kara and opened it.
A gold charm lay inside on a red cushion. I pulled it out and studied it: a Shen ring circling a trinity knot. I’d encountered so many references to the trifecta lately. Its number and symbols had to hold a significant amount of power if the history of magick and belief centered around it.
After Kara helped me put the charm on my bracelet, I opened the other box from Ezra to reveal a bone-handled dagger inside, resting on a bed of black satin. He’d written a note.
Tuesday and Thursday mornings at five.
“Well, damn,” I said handing her the card so I could study the knife. “Looks like I will be resuming my training at an unholy hour in the morning.” I held the six-inch dagger in the palm of my hand. Glyphs had been carved into the bone handle. “I wonder why he would give me one of his daggers.”
Kara stared at the blade. “It is nice.” She took it from me and admired it. “Are you going to go?”
“He invited both of us.”
She regarded me, raising a single eyebrow. “So, we do this together?”
I nodded. “Maybe we can convince Marta to join us. And Rachel, too. Make it a girls’ outing.”
“At five in the morning?”
“If I have to suffer, everyone has to suffer.”
She laughed. “Yeah, sounds like a plan. Of course, I think Rachel could kick Ezra’s ass.”
“This is true,” I called over my shoulder as I made my way into my bedroom to retrieve the shoebox filled with letters. It was going to be hard letting the others see them. The intimate details of my time with Doc were recounted in such lavish detail in the first few letters I read, and I had no idea what the others contained. He’d taken to re-imagining our time together by the third letter. So, I had no doubt they had gotten darker and more extravagant by now.
After grabbing the letters, I locked up my apartment and we left.
A boom sounded when we stepped outside.
We looked up. A streak of fire shot across the horizon.
Thick gray clouds closed in, filling the sky and completely covering the sun.
Another boom thundered, shaking the ground.
Then, the clouds opened up and let out a torrent of rain. It pounded down, drenching us. We ran for the car and scrambled inside.
My chest heaved as I stared out at the downpour.
My mother had her magick back.