I picked up the nearest object—not a priceless antique, but one of the rocks I kept in the center of the table—and heaved it at the wall where it pinged off with a satisfying ricochet.
I exhaled just on the edge of a yell: “Fuuuuuuck!”
“We’re on our way. Don’t call him until we get there.” Lula’s voice on the phone was small and tinny in the middle of the table.
“Ricky,” Val said. “Are you going to answer the panicked woman, or do you want to throw something else at the wall first?”
“She’s not panicked.”
Val crossed his arms over his chest and pointed one finger at the phone where, yes, I could hear the strained edge to Lu’s words.
I stopped stomping around the kitchen and scooped up the phone.
“...Cupid would have to get us there if we demanded it. Just give us a couple hours to pin him to the wall, and we’ll be there.”
“No,” I said, and then a little calmer, “Lula Gauge, you are not going to dig yourself in deeper with a god just because I don’t want to talk to my father. I got this. I talked to him when we were fighting the Hush, remember? I can do this. I can deal with him. I’ve managed it my whole life. I’ll manage it now.”
“I do not like you turning your life upside down for these men,” she said. “Kick him out.”
“Which one?”
“The one who’s there. Card. Kick Card out and let him deal with the fallout from his actions. He doesn’t deserve your kindness.”
I knew I didn’t have to be kind to him. But...I wanted to. And hearing her say otherwise set off just how much I liked having him around again.
I didn’t owe him anything—not even for when he’d risked his own life to tie me to the Crossroads magic. That debt, if there ever had been one, had long ago been erased.
The reason it had hurt so much to have him leave without telling me why was because I had loved him, dammit.
I still loved him. And I didn’t know what I was going to do about that.
I had paused long enough, Lu filled the silence. “Is it because he was there at your beginning?”
“I’m angry at him for leaving,” I said. “I’m angry at him for cutting off all communication. But it’s old anger. Old hurt. And it’s not enough for me to throw him to the gods. He’s made mistakes. So have I.
“I’m willing to help him. If we find the coins, we do. If not, well, he will pay the price for his decisions. There’s nothing I can do about that.”
“We’re coming your way.”
“No. Listen to me, Lu-lala. We have until noon tomorrow. Unless you have the coin in your hand, there’s nothing you can do here. Not now.”
“But...”
“If we run into demons, I’ll call,” I said. “Or the Hush, or any of the other nasties that hang out around here—if they show up, you’ll know. This is just a couple coins and a dryad-wizard who made one too many stupid choices.”
I heard her soft exhale. “Anything comes up, you’ll call.”
“Anything I can’t handle. Yes. Of course. You know in all the years I’ve been here, there hasn’t been anything I couldn’t handle.”
“Except that shop you wanted me to build for you,” Brogan chimed in. Lula must have been holding the phone away from her ear enough for him to listen.
“Oh, I can handle that. But wouldn’t mind sipping lemonade while someone else pounds nails.”
“Did you take down the tree that was in the way?” he asked.
“Not yet. You’re handy with an axe, aren’t you?”
Brogan chuckled, and I heard him murmur something to Lula.
“All right. Fine,” she said. “I’ve been talked out of it. For the moment. If you need to, Ricky—I mean it—call me.”
“I will.”
“I could contact your dad for you. See what he wants.”
“No. I’ll deal with him. Thanks, Lu-lala. Always.”
“Love,” she said.
“Love,” I replied.
I disconnected the call.
“Do you think your dad knows about the coins?” Val asked.
I rubbed at the bridge of my nose, trying to pinch away the headache starting behind my eyes. “He might. He sticks his nose into a lot of people’s business. If he doesn’t...well, that note is a hell of a coincidence, isn’t it?”
“You could ignore it. Ignore the message,” Val said.
“Tempting.” I scrubbed fingers over my scalp.
“You could wake up Card.”
“Yeah. I’m gonna give him his hour and a half. I’ll grill him while we’re driving to wherever we go to get the hidden coin.”
“So, tea? Coffee? Whiskey?” Val offered.
That last suggestion made me smile. “Nothing yet, but I reserve the right to change my mind.”
I left the kitchen and thought about how I should contact my dad. Phone would be easy, but I wanted to see his face when we talked. That way I could get a better idea of how many lies he was telling me.
Video call would work too, but I wanted the upper hand.
So I jogged up to the notion room.
“Need to talk to Dad,” I announced to the Crossroads when I entered the room. “Something as visible as possible.”
The Crossroads grumbled low, like a deep shifting of stone and earth. It didn’t like my dad as much as I didn’t like him.
“I know,” I said. “I’m not bringing him here. But I need to see his body language. His face. I don’t have time to mess around with anything else.”
The grumbling continued for another minute or so while I pulled a chair to one side of the desk, then walked around the desk to sit in the comfortable chair there. I moved a little bowl of dried flowers and pebbles to one side, then tapped a finger on the desk top.
“Right here,” I directed the Crossroads magic. “I need the magic focused here.”
The grumbling quieted, and I touched the barn owl tattoo on my upper arm.
I needed sight, I needed hearing, and I needed wisdom. The ink flowed and warmed as magic woke and stretched.
“Dad?” I called out, sending the magic winging through the world to find him. “I got your message. Let’s talk.”
The magic spooled out, then caught like a kite string in the wind, lifting away. I didn’t bother to follow it. I didn’t really care where on earth my father was at this moment. I just needed the magic to find him, so we could talk.
I shifted in my chair, finger tapping the edge of the desk. At least two minutes, maybe five passed, before the string of magic tightened and twanged like a plucked rubber band.
“Erica?” His voice wasn’t exactly inside my head, but it wasn’t in the room either. He was communicating through that string of magic, which wasn’t enough for what I needed today.
“Join me,” I said. The words carried magic, carried the command and power of this place.
The air above the empty chair crackled and sizzled, and then my father was sitting there.
He was a little transparent, but at first glance, anyone would assume he was solid.
I was not a small woman. But my father was much bigger, built like an ox. His hair was dark, short, and his beard, I noted with a small jolt of surprise, carried a lot more gray than when I’d seen him last.
His eyes weren’t brown like mine, but a sort of gray-blue that reminded me of winter skies.
He must be somewhere relatively warm, since he was wearing a brown T-shirt with a Smokey Bear patch on the sleeve, shorts, and hiking boots.
His expression was guarded, his eyes narrowed, but he was otherwise relaxed, breathing easily. Not ready to fight, but ready to be on guard if needed.
“Hello, Erica,” he said in a voice as familiar as my childhood summers. “Did you get my message?”
I was gripping the edge of the desk. I pulled my hands back and dropped them onto my lap. “Does it have something to do with Fate’s coins?”
He nodded slowly. “It does. Have you seen Cardamom Oak? Or has he contacted you?”
“Yes.”
He opened his mouth, thought better about what he was going to say, then slotted his fingers together and leaned forward. “I miss seeing you.”
“No,” I said. “You don’t get to say that to me. You don’t get to say how hard it’s been for you. The only thing we’re going to talk about today is why you left the message.”
“Yes,” he said. “Yes. I know where Fate’s coin is.”
“Both of them?”
He frowned. “Only one. There’s more than one missing? He can’t stay out of trouble for more than a day, can he?”
“Where is it?”
He scratched his beard. “I’m not going to bring up our past,” he said, “but I do want to say this on behalf of Card. He didn’t want to go to you. Tried everything else he could.”
My heart was running fast, and I knew—I knew—what he was going to say before he did.
“He came to me.” Dad put his hand in his pocket and pulled out a coin.
A very familiar coin. Except this one wasn’t copper but was, instead, the burning silver of stars. Marked in the center was a scroll. It was Lachesis’ coin.
I swallowed anger and frustration and just the general need to throttle a sleeping dryad. “He gave it to you?”
“He wanted me to find the information he needed about his sister.”
“And you told him it would cost Fate’s coin? Hell’s tits, Dad! You took the coin from him?”
Okay, from his expression, I hadn’t said that as calmly as I’d thought.
“I didn’t tell him it would cost a damn thing! But he knows I have connections, and those connections are more willing to talk when you have something valuable to give them. He gave me the coin. He told me to spend it if it would help him find Thistal. And I looked, I asked, but no one has information about her. No connection I have.”
He was shouting. But then, so was I.
“If you asked around, then why do you still have the coin?”
“Because I didn’t offer the coin! It belongs to Fate, and even I’m not stupid enough to use it without her blessing.”
“Then why didn’t you give it back to him?”
“I didn’t want him to spend it with someone else who would keep it. He went to the swamp siren and gave her a coin, can you believe that?”
“Yes,” I said, “which was stupid. But we got that coin back.”
He sat up straighter and nodded. “Good. That’s good, Erica. I didn’t think... I have no idea what she made you pay for that, but I hope Card did the paying.”
“He did.”
Dad grunted. “Is he still alive?”
“He is.”
“He’s there?”
I could lie, but there was no reason for it. “Yes. We need that coin.”
“I know. I’m in Missouri, but I didn’t... I wasn’t sure if you’d allow me near the place.”
The history of our lives together, all the laughter, all the pain, sat between us like a stone wall that neither of us could climb, nor chip apart.
“The Crossroads hates you.” I said it calmly, but it hit him harder than all the previous yelling.
His cheeks above the beard slapped red, and the lines at his forehead and edges of his eyes deepened.
“I don’t blame it.” Those words were so quiet, I thought maybe I was losing the audio connection to him. “But there’s something more you need to know, Erica.” He held up his hand. “It isn’t about us. It’s about Card.”
I closed my mouth and crossed my arms over my chest. “All right.”
“Do you know who sent him after these coins? Who wanted him to find the envelope in the diner?”
I waited.
“I do. I asked enough people. They couldn’t tell me what I wanted to know about Thistal, but they told me other things. Lots of other things.”
“Just say it.”
“He was called back to the Halls to finish his schooling with the master wizard of his guild. He told you that?”
He had not told me that. I thought I had a good poker face, but Dad knew how to read my body language too.
“I see. All right. This isn’t mine to say,” he went on. “He should be the one, but it’s important for the coins. I think it’s important for how you’ll want to deal with this. Card didn’t know who wanted the envelope, but I have it on good authority it was his mentor, Stel, who sent him to fetch Fate’s coins.”
“He told me a woman hired him to pick up an envelope.”
He’d said he’d talked to her on the phone, but he’d never said he’d actually seen her in person. A wizard like Stel would have ways of disguising herself. Even from someone as clever as Card.
Dad nodded. “The woman was a wizard. A very powerful one.”
I sat with that for a moment trying to make sense of it. Nothing added up. “He’d have known if it was his mentor, wouldn’t he? You just told me he’s been gone all this time learning magic from her.”
“I told you that’s what took him away from you and the Crossroads. But he didn’t stay long at the Halls. He’s been on the run for a long time.”
“Running from what?”
“His mentor. Magic, his magic. The wizards. But especially his mentor. She...” He leaned back. “Erica, this isn’t mine to say, but she wanted him to choose. Between being a wizard and being a dryad. You know the two magics don’t blend. Some say mixing them can kill the caster or create magic that is an abomination. Uncontrolled.”
I thought about the walking tree, and Card’s wild joy.
It was a mix of magic that not many could control, but it was nowhere near an abomination.
There were my tattoos, too. Those were a mix of dryad and magic. They were magic not sanctioned by wizards.
I didn’t trust my dad, but it made so many other things make sense.
Card needed money, even though he was a wizard. But if he was cut off from the Halls, on the run from them, he’d want to do as little magic as possible, so as not to be found by other wizards.
His mentor, Stel, had been politicking her way up the ranks for as long as she’d been alive. I’d seen more than one of her ex-pupils over the years and all of them had denounced magic.
But if she’d let all of those students go free, why would she hassle Card?
Because he was an amazing wizard, someone who had the ability to Walk even though he was also half dryad.
Someone who had juggled two magics and talked a tree into moseying on over to new ground.
Someone who had painted ink on a nobody’s skin and linked her to a wounded magical place.
“Okay,” I said, still sorting pieces of this puzzle. “His mentor had some way to disguise herself, and tricked him into picking up an envelope she happened to know Fate would leave at a diner. Is that what you’re telling me?”
“I don’t know how Stel knew the envelope would be there. She might have stolen the coins and planted them there.
“She knows he’s desperate to find his sister,” he continued. “It is easy to assume he’d look in the envelope, then try to use the coins to ask for help. I think she tipped off Fate and told her the location of his tree.”
“But why?”
“She wanted him to choose between being a wizard or a dryad.” He shrugged. “If his tree’s dead, he’ll go back to the only other place that will take him in. That will welcome him. That will be a home. The Halls.”
I inhaled, then exhaled, leaning back into the chair. Even though he wasn’t really in this room, even though I couldn’t smell the crushed cedar and faint tobacco scent of him, I could very much see my father.
And I could see he was not lying.
“Shit,” I said quietly.
He nodded. “I’m not going to insert myself into whatever relationship you have with Card.”
At my look, he had the good grace to give me a wry smile. “Beyond me being here now and holding this coin. But the Crossroads accepts him. His tree came from that land. I want to give you the coin, or give it to Card, although I’m not all that convinced he wouldn’t use it to pay off someone else.”
“He won’t,” I said. “I won’t let him. We’re handing the coins back to Fate.”
“She’s there? I thought I could reach you before... Well, it doesn’t matter. I have the coin. Tell me how you want me to get it to you, then you’ll have two of the coins. You said the other is still missing?”
“Card says he hid it, so if it’s still at that location, and we can get to it, we should be able to handle this in time.”
“Fate gave you a deadline?”
“You don’t need to worry about that.”
He scowled but nodded. “How do you want me to get the coin to you?”
“Where are you?”
“Elwood.”
That was just over an hour away. Easy to get to him, easy to get back. But I didn’t want to leave Card here alone. And I didn’t want to send him to my dad either. Who knew what deal the two of them would try to make?
There was no way in hell I was inviting my father to my land, my home, either.
“You can send Card my way,” Dad suggested. And there was something behind it, a casualness that set off warning bells.
“You made a deal with Stel, didn’t you?”
His eyes widened. It was either actual shock on his face or a very good acting job. “No, I did not. How can you accuse me of that?”
“Oh, I don’t know. It’s not like there’s anything you’ve done in the past to make me suspect every word that falls out of your mouth.”
“Our past has nothing to do with this.”
“Like hell it doesn’t.”
He opened his mouth, ready to really get into it.
The earth shook. The room flickered. Items appeared and disappeared, magic zinged from wall to wall. Half-broken calls of bells and crystals rang out.
Something was wrong with the Crossroads. Something was very wrong.
“What the shit?” I jolted to my feet.
My dad popped out of existence. The ink that covered and flowed over my skin caught fire. I focused on the unbreakable connections between me and the house, the land.
The Crossroads was panicking, magic coming unhoused, unsorted, and flinging itself against the boundaries of the place as if it were trying to escape.
Or defend.
I kicked off my shoes and planted my bare feet on the wooden floor. I pressed both palms on the desktop and centered myself, grounded myself, spearing my will through the house and deep into the ground, holding all this space as my space.
The walls were my skin, the windows my eyes. And all the magic flowing, ragged and powerful, was my blood and will.
Show me, I commanded.
An ocean wave of images poured over me, upside down, sideways, none of them holding long enough for me to make any sense of them.
“Ricky?” Val appeared in the room, this room where not even ghosts were allowed. The door was open, though I hadn’t opened it.
Card swung up to the doorway, his hair a mess, panic brightening his eyes. He stopped just on the other side of the threshold. “What’s happening?”
“Something’s wrong—” The Crossroads pressed and squirmed like someone was stabbing it with hot pokers. I grunted with shared pain. “Something’s hurting the Crossroads.”
“Is it the portals?” Card asked. “Someone coming through?”
“No one can—”
But the magic was screaming, and I couldn’t find a way to calm it. The Crossroads was a maelstrom of chaos, and no matter how hard I tried to hold it together, hold everything down, it was flying apart.
“Someone’s coming, Ricky,” Val said. “Someone’s coming.”
I knew it. I could feel it. Like a storm raging our way. Like I was caught in a hurricane, a tornado that had been sent after me like a pack of hounds.
“Go,” I told him. “Find my dad in Elwood. Tell him to bring the coin to Fate.”
And that was all I had time to say before all the lights in the house were extinguished. The magic went dead, like batteries pulled out of electric toys.
“Oh, shit,” Card breathed.
I didn’t have a chance to ask what he was swearing about. Instead, a voice filled the darkness.
“Now,” the voice said. A woman’s voice. A wizard’s voice. “I will have what I am due.”