Chapter 25

W ith supreme effort, I cracked open my eyes to a view of the ceiling over the wagon’s backseat, and an exploratory twitch of my fingers confirmed the sock was back on my arm, its dirt cool on my skin.

“Hello, Imposter.” Josie leaned over me. “You might be asking yourself where you are, how you got here, and why I’m here.” She grinned, and fear skipped down my spine. “You’re at the burial ground. As to how you got here, Tameka drove you. In your wagon. Because you were unconscious, and Kierce isn’t rated for gas-powered vehicles.”

“Josie—”

“I’m here because my former roomie, who could have been my future ex-girlfriend, thank you very much, called to let me know what happened to you.” She kept smiling, and dread sank deeper into my bones. “When she told me what you did—and it’s a long list—I thought…my sister would never do those things without telling me, so I came to see for myself.” She poked my cheek. “You look a lot like my Frankie, but you can’t be her. She has more sense.”

“Where’s Matty?” I croaked, expecting him to pop in next. “He’s okay?”

“You don’t get to ask those questions, Imposter .” Josie produced a water bottle. “You also need to lift your head and drink. I tried pouring water into your mouth on my own earlier, which explains the wet sensation you’re probably experiencing.”

Since the inside of my mouth felt sticky and tasted foul, I did as she instructed, grateful for the cool sips.

“I’m sorry.” I dropped my head again. “I could have handled this better.”

“Yes, you could have,” she grumbled, stroking my hair, “but Matty and I don’t make it easy on you.”

“I don’t mind?—”

“Mary, please, let me get this out before the rage swallows me whole again.”

Meekly, I mumbled, “Okay.”

“Your whole life was about us. Taking care of us, loving us, providing for us.” She capped the water. “You help people fix their regrets in death, and I never wanted Matty and me to be one for you. I wanted you to live your own life, have your own dreams, and not worry so much. But then…”

“Everything happened,” I said, sparing us from uttering the word died .

“Yeah.” She cast her gaze far away before reeling back in. “You got a second chance. How you use it? It’s up to you. If you want to do more of this saving-the-world stuff, then do it. You’ve earned it. Just maybe update us from time to time? I’m not making any promises, but we might be less hysterical if you kept us in the loop.”

“I can do that.” I asked the question I had been dreading. “How long was I out?”

“Forty-five minutes, give or take.” She hooked her hands under my arms. “Let’s try sitting up, shall we?”

The recuperation time kept getting worse. Apparently even divine bodies had limitations.

There was something comforting in that. Limits were a good thing. The alternative was too…vast.

The world dipped as I regained my equilibrium, but I soaked in the scenery as I gained my bearings.

And I don’t mean the forest.

Kierce labored in the pit among the bones. His shirt slicked to his spine, the white fabric translucent where it outlined his musculature. His dark hair dripped sweat, and mud streaked his cheeks and forehead. A certainty swept through me, almost déjà vu, but I couldn’t put my finger on what about this moment had struck a chord with me.

“Can I have more water?” I accepted the bottle from Josie and chugged it. “Why am I so thirsty?”

The longer I watched Kierce, the hotter my skin grew until I was amazed when I didn’t burst into flames.

“I can’t imagine,” she drawled, snorting, then pressed a second cold bottle into my hand. “Go on.”

“I will take this water to him—” I huffed as I exited the wagon, “—but not for perverted reasons.”

“It’s not like you salivated until you ran out of drool and were forced to rehydrate.” Her eyes laughed at me. “Therefore, I would never assume you only wanted a fresh bottle of water as an excuse to allow you to ogle him from close-up.”

“You’re not fooling anyone.” I rolled my eyes at her. “You made that exact assumption.”

“And you’re a perverted water-bottle-toting ogler, but I was trying to be nice.”

A flush blasted into my cheeks as I spun on my heel and aimed for Kierce before our conversation drew his attention.

Gentle rustles in my wake piqued my curiosity, and I glanced back to find Josie had sent a sapling tree to follow me with its branches outspread to catch me if I wobbled over the uneven ground.

“You’re awake.” Kierce spotted me the second I reached the pit. “How do you feel?”

“Pissed off I left you to handle this on your own,” I grumbled. “My battery was slower to recharge this time.”

“You’re pushing too hard. A magical fix won’t help much longer. You need real sleep soon.”

“I’m not the only one.” I chuckled when the tree formed its roots into a set of stairs I took down to his level. “We’ve all been working overtime on the case. We’ll deserve a week’s vacation when we’re done.”

“I like the sound of that.”

“Water?” I forced him to take it then nudged him against the dirt wall. “It’s nice and cold.”

“I’m almost done.” He drank deep, the muscles in his neck flexing. “Two more.”

As I processed that, I recalled who else should have been helping. “Where are Keshawn and Tameka?”

“They don’t have long left together. I suggested they go eat then wait for us in Josie’s garden.”

“I offered to drive them. Just to make sure they don’t get lost,” Josie cut in, staring down at us. “But Kierce was all blah, blah, trust, blah, blah . He let them take a Swyft.”

The bone I had chosen tumbled from my fingers. “And you listened ?”

“What?” Josie sat on the rim, swinging her legs, looking like a kid again. “I can listen.”

“I’m aware you can , I just didn’t know you ever did .”

“Oh.” She snapped her fingers. “That reminds me. The vanishing-car thing was driving Carter bonkers, so I asked the Ezells. Keshawn was the brains behind it. On nights when a drop-off was scheduled, she got her witchy BFF to cast a daylight spell to temporarily blind any other motorists to what happened next.”

“Weird that it banished Vi, but spells cast on someone other than their intended target can go awry.”

“The girl was in the woods that day, checking they hadn’t left evidence behind. You guys got too close to her hiding place, so she hit the area with a blast of light to conceal her escape. Maybe she panicked and used more oomph than usual?”

“Maybe.” I pursed my lips. “That doesn’t explain the disappearing trick.”

“Oh! You’ll love this part.” Her eyes glittered. “Keshawn used her gremlin magic to fold the car into a cube. A cube! Like one of those car-crusher things in the movies. Then carried it into the woods as far as she could get before the magic ran out and it unfolded to its normal size.” She winced. “Apparently, it’s a rare type of magic that her mother forbade her to practice because of how often young gremlins overestimate how much time they have left and end up crushed under whatever they’ve stolen.”

“Ah, the lure of the forbidden.”

“From there, Keshawn called gremlin friends to dismantle the vehicles and disappear them.”

“Clever,” I had to admit. “Kierce?” I noticed he had finished his drink. “Do you need me?”

“Yes,” he said too earnestly for the moment, then held out his hand and dropped a bone on my palm.

Using the technique he taught me during our first visit, I located a skull Kierce had flagged as the head of an incomplete skeleton. I checked to see if I held its missing piece. Nope. I moved on to the next and got lucky there. As it turned out, I didn’t have to rely on magic to tell me where to place it. The earth had created a cast that made it as simple as matching a final puzzle piece to the whole.

As I returned it to its resting place, a sharp gasp snapped my head toward Josie.

Except I couldn’t see my sister.

But I heard her scream.

There was always a firm snap when you broke a shaken glow stick to ignite it.

That was how I felt.

Ignited.

I leapt out of the pit. I don’t know how. I don’t remember.

Patty stood with Josie plastered against her front, a living shield, and held a blade to her throat. Not quite blood, not quite sap wept from a thin line under her chin. The woman glared at me over Josie’s shoulder, her eyes sparkling with hatred, her teeth bared in a rictus grin.

“You ruined everything,” she spat, black saliva stringing from her jaw. “Our life’s work.”

“Let my sister go.”

“My sister is dead. My twin . The other half of me.” Her hand trembled. “Why should I spare yours?”

A distraction. That was what I needed. To buy us an opening.

And then we had to make it count.

“You ate from an apple tree.” I sensed Kierce behind me. “How did it make you feel?”

“Like a god,” she whispered, her eyes frantic in their search of me, as if I hid fruit in my pocket.

“Where did you find the tree? How did you know where to look?”

“We prayed for a miracle, and God sent us one.”

“Let me guess.” I registered the hand motion Josie was making at her side and kept talking. “A man came to you in a dream and told you where to find a tree that would grant you the power to build the safe haven you and your sister always dreamed of creating.”

“We didn’t understand, at first, but our eyes were opened after we ate the fruit.”

A long tree root arched above her head, the tip a flat diamond shape like a viper.

“After you ate the fruit, you knew where to find the bones and how to use them,” I surmised, certain Ankou had feasted well on both Anunit’s rage at having been woken to find her people missing parts and her grief over the innocent women she was forced to kill in retaliation. Never mind the buffet of terror the women trapped in the wards fed him. “Why take so many bones?”

“Each person required a token to pass through the ward.” Her hand trembled, drawing fresh blood-sap. “It wasn’t greed but necessity.”

“And since you had them, you might as well use them.”

“The world turned their backs against those women. Against me . It was our duty—our calling—to protect them. Why shouldn’t we use the power offered to us?” Her lip snarled up at one corner. “Your trespass has angered Him. He took back his gift. I’ve been barred from the tree.”

Finally, she reached her point. “You want me to help you get more fruit.”

As punishment for their failure, Ankou must have reinforced the ward around the tree when the outer perimeter collapsed.

“Tear down the barrier, and I’ll set your sister free.”

Holding Josie’s gaze, I read her intent and let her see mine too. This woman was a victim. Her sister had been too. Ankou trailed them like footprints left in sand. But she was threatening my sister now, and that I couldn’t allow.

Neither would Josie.

The root snaked around the woman’s neck, cinching like a noose and hauling her down to restrain her.

With a snarl, the woman swiped the blade across Josie’s throat, splitting open her skin and spilling pinkish-brown fluid from the deep gash.

Slapping a hand over the wound, Josie stared at me through wide eyes. “Mary?”

That earlier spark, kindled by the woman threatening my sister, burst into a flame.

And I roared .

Magic speared Patty, piercing her chest, cracking open her ribs, and her soul flickered like a candle.

Just like a candle, I blew it out.

The gory mess of woman sprawled in a puddle of entrails I welcomed the crows to feast on.

Rising into the air, feet lifting off the ground, I glided as if in astral form toward my gasping sister.

I planted a hand on the earth, so rich with the magic of the Alcheyvāhā, and I drew their energy into me. Kierce screamed my name from a great and terrible distance while I gorged, and as their magic gilded my insides, I placed a hand over Josie’s wound and forced every ounce of my will into a single command:

Live .

“Fine tree,” the crow who was not Badb remarked. “Figure it might have been a crepe myrtle once.”

The tree stood five feet tall, a perfect miniature apple tree, its limbs heavy with gleaming black fruit. The ground wept blood around its poison roots, and its rancid scent made bile rise up my throat.

“Where am I?” I imagined my words echoed. “How did I get here?”

“Oh, come now.” The crow fluttered its wings. “You must remember.”

“No.” I picked at the fraying edges of my memories. “I…”

“You’ve been searching for this, haven’t you? This tree. Now you’ve found it. Well done.”

The distant roll of my voice thundered around us. “I have?”

“You worked so hard, my duck.” The crow sailed onto my shoulder. “Why not take a rest?”

“Hmm.” I scratched her head, and wrongness unfurled within me. “Do I know you?”

“I’m a friend is all. Just a bird. A kindly little feathered thing come to help you.”

“Help me?”

“You’ve worked up an appetite. Why not rest by this tree? And look. There’s fruit. Why not take a bite?”

Why not take a bite?

The smell. The blood. The bile.

“No.” I swatted the bird off me. “Get away.”

“Aww.” Her eyes reflected hurt. “I’ve helped you before, haven’t I? With the girl? Let me help you now.”

A tickle on my nape preceded the weight of a wide palm encircling the back of my neck, and the ember glowing in my gut heated a few degrees, burning away increments of my confusion.

“I’ve been looking for you.” Warm lips brushed the shell of my ear. “Frankie.”

The gentle but possessive touch, a soft caress of his voice across the syllables of my name returned it to me and made it mine again. “Kierce?”

“I’m here.” He rested his forehead against my temple. “You’re safe.”

Slowly reality crept in, filling in the blanks. Most of them. Enough for me to grasp the situation.

“I don’t remember how I got here.” I sounded broken in my own ears. “What happened?”

I was back at the commune. In the flesh. Not astral projecting.

“You dematerialized, like I do.” He stroked my cheek, my chin, my jaw. “I followed you.”

Followed me from…the pit. Where the Morgan…died. After she…

“Oh, God.” Hazy memory crystalized into bone-juddering horror. “Josie.”

“Josie is fine.” Kierce kept soothing me. “You saved her.”

“She’s alive?” Tears flowed down my cheeks. “You promise?”

Time warped around me, leaving me cold with uncertainty how long I had been gone from her. Not too long, surely. Ten or fifteen minutes? Twenty max?

“I promise.” He wiped them away with his thumbs. “I wouldn’t lie to you about that.”

“The crow.” I gripped his wrist. “She was here.”

“The omen.” He nodded. “What did she want?”

“For me to eat from the tree.” I flinched from the prospect of its mealy fruit rolling on my tongue. “Who is she?”

“Someone like me, or Ankou, I suspect. A mere omen wouldn’t possess the information she gave you on how to summon Him by marking Little’s soul as His. She wouldn’t press you to eat from this tree either.” He kept his touch gentle. “She must have hoped to earn your trust by offering her knowledge for free.”

“So, the next time I would remember her good turn and do as I was told.”

“That would be my guess, yes.”

“Except her advice got me dead, so… Yeah. No. She’s not going to be my one phone call any time soon.”

“I doubt she has a phone,” he said, perfectly serious, and I did my level best not to laugh even if it would have felt good right about now.

“How do we destroy the tree?” I battled nausea standing so near it. “I’m not leaving it here.”

The oily sickness seizing my guts was familiar, convincing me it had been the cause for my queasiness at the scene of Anunit’s first kill. The first we found, anyway. Maybe the tree had wanted a taste of the rich earth surrounding the god bones. I doubt, with Anunit on patrol, it got one before the Morgans brought it to its current location.

That I could sense it now, and I hadn’t before, meant the ward protecting it had fallen. The only reason I could think for that would be if the Morgans’ sequential deaths had weakened it and then collapsed it.

“Do you remember how you called divine fire down on Patricia?”

“No.” I noticed my sooty hands for the first time. “I don’t…” I shook my head. “There are gaps.”

Gaps large enough to drive a semi through with one of those Home Depot skeletons riding it bronco-style.

“That’s all right.” He tipped my head up to look at him. “We’ll do it together.”

“Yeah,” Josie panted, her voice scratchy as she stumbled from the tree line. “We will.”

“Mary.” I tore away from Kierce and threw myself at her. “Oh, God, Mary.”

“You are bad ass .” She rubbed her hands up and down my back. “I am so in awe of you right now.”

The smell of her, the familiar touch, anchored me deeper into my skin.

“You’re just saying that because…” I saved your life , “…you lost too much blood.”

Horror reared up in me, sharp and fresh, as I traced the new pink scar on her throat with my fingertip.

“Yes, well, maybe Carter will be so grief-stricken she’ll carry me around like a princess.” She kicked me in the shin. “It’s not fair short girls with tall boyfriends have all the fun.”

“Ouch.” I laughed and kicked her back. “Stop being a menace.”

The teasing helped. So much. It made me feel like me again.

“How did you get here?”

“After you vanished, Kierce poofed, so I tracked your phones. You were together, so I decided to join the party. I took the wagon, and then I ran, and then I realized running fucking sucks. Please don’t make me do it again.”

“We found the tree.” I gripped her shoulders, angling her toward it. “Any ideas on how we destroy it?”

“Yank this fucker out by the roots then burn it.” She didn’t wait for my permission. She waved to the nearest tree, a poplar, and it bent in close as if she were about to share a secret. “Can you lend us a hand?”

Bark creaked as it twisted, flexing its limbs. The thickest two wrapped the apple tree’s trunk like a fist. Wood groaned as the poplar righted itself, ripping the apple tree out of the earth. Its roots writhed like worms, its branches thrashing, but divine or not, it was only a tree. Without help, it couldn’t take us on, and no aid was coming for it.

“Set it there, please.” Josie indicated a bare patch of soil. “We’ll handle it from here.”

With a popping moan, the poplar righted itself, cleaning the ichor off its leaves with one firm shake.

“Kierce?” She peered around me. “Care to do the honors?”

About to protest that I could handle it, I jumped back when twin lightning bolts struck the apple tree. Fire gnawed its fleshy bark, sizzling through its heavily veined leaves. Fruit exploded as the temperature rose to unnatural heights, and sweat drenched me as the flames grew taller, hungrier.

“Oh, no you don’t.” Josie made a sweeping gesture with her hand. “Get back here.”

A younger, more flexible tree scooped up three apples attempting to roll away in a cage made of its limbs.

Josie went to fetch them, but Kierce cut in front of her. He crossed to the small tree, removed his shirt, and used it as a sling to carry the fruit. He tossed the whole thing into the fire while I did my best not to gape at the ripple of pale muscle exposed to moonlight.

He stood over the fire, bringing down lightning each time the flames lowered, ensuring the tree burned to fine ash. I scouted the area to make certain no more fruit had escaped while Josie crouched over the hole where the vile tree had been planted, drawing out any concealed roots. She coaxed them to the flames, and they burned themselves on her command.

Certain we had destroyed the tree, we stared down at the remains, debating what to do with them.

“We need to cleanse the earth.” I trembled with fatigue. “We can’t leave it like this.”

“You’re right.” He cupped my elbow and led me to the hole. “Besides, you need to get your strength back.”

Strength, yes. I would welcome some relief. The side order of lust? That I could do without.

“What about you?” I searched his face. “You must be exhausted.”

“I’ll rest when you’re safe.”

Heaving a sigh, I stuck my fingers in the dirt and parted my lips on the now-familiar hymn.

As energy suffused me, I sensed eyes on the back of my head. I remained focused on my task, but then I pivoted toward the source of the sensation. I found Anunit easily and locked gazes with her.

“The final bone.” I breathed past my heart dropping into my feet. “Do you still have it?”

“Yes.” Kierce patted his pocket. “I brought it with me.”

“Tell your consort not to fear,” Anunit rumbled. “He is yours, and you are ours.”

“What does that mean?” I rubbed a knuckle between my eyes. “The part about me being yours.”

“You drank of our energies. You welcomed our magic into yourself.”

“I’m sorry to be just another person taking advantage of you .” I smoothed a hand over my aching chest. “My sister was dying, and I didn’t think. I reached for help, and your magic came to me.” I swallowed the excuses filling my mouth, grateful Kierce and Josie couldn’t understand us. “I will pay whatever price you demand of me.”

“I am weary of my vigilance. I tire of my burden and wish to know peace. I have watched you, Frankie Talbot, and I have seen your heart. I will absolve you for your crime, if you agree to act in my stead.”

Karma bit me on the butt swiftly this time, twisting the same terms I set down for Tameka onto me.

“Desecration of your people’s graves is wrong, but I won’t kill them for it.”

“That was my wish and my curse and my burden. I offer you a different path. Protect us. Watch over us. Keep us safe always. In exchange, we will gift you our magic whenever you need it. Come to us to heal. To grow strong. We will name you guardian and bless you in ways you cannot conceive of.”

“Always is an awful long time.” I preferred firmer start and end dates on employment offers. “Are you sure about that?”

“I trust in your sense of honor.” She slid her golden gaze toward Josie. “Consider what benefits a dryad might reap were she to sink her roots in our soil.” Her sharp eyes glinted, aware she had caught me fair and square. “Are there not trees who have existed for a thousand years? How much longer might your sister live with our essence flowing through her veins?”

Clever to dangle a solution for Josie’s longevity, the greatest new fear plaguing our family, in front of my nose. “Do you mind if I confer with Kierce? He has more experience in god bargains than I do.”

“He will tell you not to take it. To avoid gods and their schemes.” She rolled a shoulder. “He would not be wrong to caution you against trusting us. He was trapped by honeyed words once.”

A sliver of hope she knew what he had forgotten about himself stirred in me. “How can you be sure?”

“He wouldn’t be the Viduus otherwise.”

That fast, her logic dissolved the sliver into nothing. “There is that.”

“Make your decision.” She swished her tail. “You have minutes before the curse takes me again.”

“That’s why you waited until now. You wanted a ticking clock to hold up to my ear.”

“I admit that was part of it, but you were unconscious for some time. I could have hunted then. Would it have been better if I had claimed another life or waited to propose this compromise?”

Head hanging loose on my neck, I locked gazes with Kierce then Josie. “I’m about to do a stupid thing.”

“How stupid?” Josie stepped forward, and the trees leaned in. “Mary?”

But Anunit had taken my wrist in her mouth, and before Kierce could lunge for me, she vanished us.