Chapter 14

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

R icky’s kitchen was homey and filled with fresh morning sunlight.

“Honky tonk witches?” she said over the sizzle of bacon. “Texas, right? Around McLean? I’ve heard of them. Is Cassia still the head of the coven?”

I grunted in affirmation and forked down the thick, fluffy biscuit covered in rich gravy. I chased it with hot black coffee and went for another bite. I was feeling a hell of a lot better today.

Sleep had dragged me down into dreamless darkness, the comfortable bed with a floral quilt Lula had admired, and the soothing quiet of the house keeping me there. My wrist was sore, but only when I tried to move it. I’d woken this morning with a much clearer head.

“Haven’t met her son,” she said. “Variance? Or the granddaughter.” She placed three strips of bacon on a small plate with bite-size fruit and a muffin-sized quiche. “I haven’t even heard of Dominick, which is odd. I eventually hear about all the supernaturals.”

Raven was out in the yard throwing bread at the birds that sat in the old fruit tree. They were squawking down at him like he was a predator in their territory. He was trying to convince them to eat the bread and laughing at their noise like he was in on the jokes. Lorde was out there with him, lying in the sun.

“I’m not saying you should know,” I said, pushing my empty plate away. “I didn’t come here to blame you. But I think…hate to admit this…I think the god had a good idea in bringing us here. Lula needed the rest.”

I nodded toward the upstairs where Lu was still sleeping. She’d gone straight to the room, taken a shower, then crawled into bed before I’d even made it up the stairs.

“And you needed some food.” She eyed my plate. “Because you haven’t eaten in a…month?”

I shrugged. “You’re a good cook.”

“That sounded like a compliment, Gauge.”

“Take it as you want,” I said, full and feeling magnanimous.

“I will. But I don’t think a sleepover is the only reason you’re here.”

“No. We need information. About the witches, the vampires, the book.”

“Lucky for you information is another thing I’m good at.” She picked up the plate and gave me a smile, like we were friends. Which, really, I thought we might be.

Lula loved her. I was grateful she’d given Lula a place to come over all the years I’d been nothing but a spirit. I was grateful she was someone Lu could talk to, laugh with, cry with.

“But first,” Ricky said, “I’m taking her breakfast. Unless you want to?”

“She’d love to see you.”

“Brogan, I…” She stopped then shook her head. “We’ll figure this out.”

“I know.” I cleared my throat and changed subjects. “You wouldn’t happen to know Lula’s favorite dessert?”

“Of course I do. It’s…wait. Do you? You don’t? Why don’t you know your wife’s favorite dessert?”

“I have reasons.”

“All those years watching her, and you never paid attention to what she ate?”

“Hey, I thought we were friends.”

“Doesn’t mean I can’t find you absolutely hilarious. A hundred years. You had nearly a hundred years to notice.”

I scowled, and she laughed her way out of the kitchen.

I didn’t have anything to do, and was feeling restless, so I took my dishes to the sink and ran the hot water. I got enough soap going the bubbles reached up to my elbow.

The very ordinary monotony of scrubbing, washing, rinsing, stacking was a lot more complicated with only one working hand. But I got the hang of it and soon, the repetition calmed me.

The scent of artificial lemon mixed with the aroma of the breakfast Ricky had cooked up: eggs, bacon, gravy, salt, grease, and sweet buttered dough. I took a deep breath and felt my shoulders drop.

We were safe here. Could stay here if we wanted. I knew Ricky would let us. The house had power. Ricky had power. Enough we could withstand anything the vampires threw at us. Probably anything the witches threw at us.

But gods knew about this place. At? could know about it, or that we were here. I didn’t want to bring a war to Ricky’s home, to her place of safety.

It might be a Crossroads, a magical point along Route 66 that contained and could access many powerful things, but it was not a fortress.

Even Crossroads could be destroyed.

No, if we were going to finish this, if we were going to get the book and help save Rhianna, if we were going to kill Dominick and bring the witches his blood, we couldn’t stay here.

This was a place of rest, not battle.

“We won’t bring the fight here,” I told the house. “We don’t want Ricky or you to be involved. I don’t know what Raven wants out of this. Not really. But I’m sorry he involved you.”

The house seemed to be listening, seemed to be waiting. I wasn’t connected to it the way Ricky was, but it could make itself known when it wanted. Talking to it was a little like knowing a very large creature was watching you from just beyond the tree line.

I could hear Ricky’s and Lula’s voices upstairs, a buzzy, happy murmur. The room was far enough away from the kitchen, I shouldn’t be able to hear them.

That would be the house’s doing, then, letting me know they were okay.

“Ricky’s a good friend.” I placed a plate on the towel I’d spread on the countertop and used another towel to finish drying it. “Thank you for being here for her.”

The house went silent, the voices no longer in range. The birds had stopped giving Raven hell, and I could hear his slow sweet whistle as he called back to them in their own song.

The cupboard to my left flew open.

“Holy mother—”

A cookbook slammed down onto the counter, and a puff of wind blew into the room—even though the doors and windows were shut. The book flipped open to a page near the back.

“This better be good,” I muttered to the house. “About gave me a heart attack.”

The page had one recipe: Strawberry Angel Food Cake . The recipe was smudged with oil and stained red at the corner. Someone had dropped a strawberry on it, but the text was still legible.

Recipes that showed wear and tear were almost always the best ones. Still, it took me a minute to understand what I was looking at.

“This is her dessert, isn’t it? Lula’s favorite.” I placed my palm in the middle of the page, holding the book down, not wanting it to go anywhere.

Memories of when we’d first begun our journey on the Route popped like camera flashes behind my eyes. Those were dark, uncertain days. But every summer she’d make strawberry angel food cake.

She didn’t always eat it, especially not at first when she had been grappling with how to survive as half-vampire. But she would mix it up and bake it, just that small moment of normality giving her peace.

I couldn’t remember when she’d stopped making it, or why. But yes, the house was right. It had been her favorite dessert when we were alive, and for years afterward.

“Hang on. Let me find paper and pencil so I can copy this down.”

There was the feeling of a massive eye roll, which wasn’t something a house should be able to convey.

Then a drawer that had held silverware a minute ago, when Ricky had been in the kitchen, slid open. No silverware. Nothing in the drawer but a single index card.

I picked it up.

It was the strawberry angel food cake recipe handwritten in a tight, legible print.

I grinned and tucked the note card into my pocket. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” Raven said, coming through the door. “What are you thanking me for?”

“I’m not.”

“Huh. Feels like you should. Is Ricky up with Lula?”

“Not sure that’s your business.”

The house gave me another eye roll.

Yeah, I knew Raven had agreed to play by the rules, but that didn’t change my opinion on trickster gods.

Raven strolled over to the table and rested a hand on the back of a chair. “Don’t worry,” he said. “The house has its thumb pressed down so hard on me, I can’t exhale without its permission. I feel like a game of darts. Want to play?”

“No.”

But the house shifted. Instead of the wall with a door that opened on the back yard, there was a wall with a dart board.

Two sets of darts waited on the table.

Crow picked the set with black feathers, leaving the white-feathered darts behind. He took his place several paces away from the target.

“You know how to play, don’t you?” he asked.

“I’ve played darts, Raven.”

“Want to make a friendly wager?”

“No. I want the truth.” I picked up the darts with my good hand and stood next to him.

He nodded toward the target. “All right.” A flick of the wrist and the dart landed just below the bullseye. “Ask.”

“Can you lie to us while you’re here?” I lined up, threw the dart. Bullseye.

He made a small, impressed sound. “Sure. Lying doesn’t break any of Ricky’s rules.”

“Are you lying to us now?”

The corner of his mouth hooked upward. “Probably? But not about everything.” He threw the next dart. Close, but no cigar. “Be more specific,” he said.

“Is Dominick the vampire who attacked us? Who made us…what we are now?”

“Brogan, I wasn’t there when it happened. I didn’t see it happen.”

I threw the next dart. Bullseye.

Raven whistled. “I’m glad I didn’t set a wager on this game.”

“The witches told us Dominick was the one who turned us, then said they were lying. You told us he was turned by the monster who attacked us. Which is the truth, Raven?”

He took extra time lining up his shot. Then, finally, quietly, “I don’t think Dominick is the monster who attacked you, no.”

He threw the dart. Bullseye.

“Why?” I still held my dart, waiting.

“Because the monster who attacked you and Lula was turned into a monster by At?.” He raised an eyebrow at my expression. “Oh, you didn’t know that, did you? She made it into what it is—vampire, mostly—but twisted it into her image, all humanity and soul stripped. That kind of…influence from a god is difficult to survive. And yet.”

“It’s still out there,” I breathed.

It was cool in the house, even with the morning heat setting in. Still, sweat trickled down my spine. All these years Lula had been looking for it, I’d thought it was still out there. But there was a part of me that had begun to wonder if it had died, been killed. Not even monsters live forever.

“I think so, yes. Dominick is a vile, cruel, power-hungry creature. But he is not the vile, cruel, power-hungry creature that attacked you.”

“Fuck.” I threw the dart—bullseye—and turned to him. “Do you know where it is?”

Crow bit his bottom lip, and I could see the power in him banked and burning like black-feathered flame.

“I think you will know, Lula will know, if you kill Dominick. I think that connection between them will show you where the monster is hiding. But my guess? At? is protecting it, keeping it away, maybe even away from this earthly realm.”

I filed that particular horror away for another time. “Is it true At? can’t use the book without Lula and me?”

“At? has never understood mercy. She had never seen the benefit in sharing the universes with something other than herself. She was rejected by the gods, her power refused a place in the spellbook. She wanted to be the only god who could touch it, who could use it. We wouldn’t let that happen.”

“I’ve seen her touch it,” I said. “She had it in her hands.”

“Did she? Or was that an illusion?”

I replayed that time in the farmhouse. When Lula had been trapped beneath the floor, when I had just come back from the dead and was trying to save her. I wasn’t sure, couldn’t be sure if At? had actually held the book in her hands.

“Gods are very good at illusions,” Raven said. “Even gods who aren’t tricksters. So, yes. I am very certain she can’t use the book without Lula’s hands and your voice.”“That has to be bullshit.”

“It’s not. You know what’s bullshit? You throwing three bullseyes without even trying. You are a hustler, Brogan Gauge. If you ever get tired of the Route, you could make good money. Hell, you could make good money on the Route.”

“I don’t care about darts. Tell me everything. Any information you have on the monster that turned us.”

He stared at the ceiling a moment and nodded, as if dragging up old memories. “Lula’s not a full vampire, is she?”

“It’s called a thrawan ,” Lu said, walking into the kitchen. Her hair was braided back, but still damp from a shower. She’d changed into jeans, a tank top and boots—her standard traveling clothes.

She didn’t expect us to be staying here long.

The wall changed back into a wall with a door to the outside, the dartboard and darts disappearing in a flash.

“We know I’m not a full vampire,” she added.

Raven meandered over to the table and dropped down into a chair.

“Yes. Thrawan . But the monster that turned you thrawan isn’t fully vampire either. It’s god-turned, chaos-blooded, mutated. It was At?’s way of creating a tool she needed: hands that can touch the book and a voice that can cast its spells.”

Ricky wandered into the kitchen and put dishes in the sudsy water. She made a small, interested noise.

I didn’t want to believe Raven, but this wasn’t something we could change. We were a hundred years too late to change any of this.

“I’m the hands,” Lula breathed out, and the world was loud again, real again. “I can touch it. I have touched it. It knocked Brogan out when he tried. It repels everyone out who tries to touch it.”

Raven tapped his nose in agreement. “It chooses who can touch it. That was the protection woven into it. But there are ways around its protections, because there are always ways around things like that. Ghouls, for instance, can slip through certain god-placed loopholes. Ask me how I know, and I’ll tell you a funny story about a car falling out of the sky.”

“I don’t…” I cleared my throat. “There must be others who can handle the book. More than just Lula.”

Lula was looking at me oddly.

Raven was looking at me oddly too. But he shrugged. “Well, like I told you at the diner, there is one more. You,” he said simply. “You’re the voice.”