I quietly closed the door of the last queen of Egypt.
Just before five A.M., I entered my chamber to get my coat. I had fifteen minutes until I was supposed to meet Menessos at the front entrance. We were going to take my car and leave for Headlands Beach. The rest of them had left an hour before.
The fairies knew I would show up with Menessos. WEC had sanctioned it. Of course, the fey had to have a plan ready in the event that we didn’t just easily surrender. But what kind of plan?
I had my coat in my hands and had started back to the door when I stopped short, captured somehow by the painting on the wall. I stared at The Charmer as if I’d never seen it before.
The lute-playing woman in the picture was peering down at the fish that were drawn to her by the music she played. Or was she? Far more intent on the water, she didn’t seem to see the fish. I could imagine her using the water to examine her emotions, as I had, but from the safety of the shore. Perhaps she was using the surface of the water to scry into her future.
I rushed to the closet and retrieved my suitcase. Throwing it open, I took out the shoe box with Nana’s scrying crystal. Shutting off all but the dome’s starlight, I drew a circle on the floor with my broom. I sat cross-legged within the circle, facing the closet to keep the light from reflecting on the surface of the crystal globe. While making my quarter calls, I used my T-shirt to wipe my fingerprints from the crystal.
Cradling the heavy ball in my hands, I grounded and centered. Gazing softly on the clear surface, I let my mind hit alpha. In seconds the crystal grew cloudy. Keeping my breathing even and steady, my mind receptive, I waited for the images.
Nana was more accomplished at this, but I was not entirely unskilled. I just preferred the stable symbolic images of Tarot. My interpretations seemed stronger with the cards than with the fluctuating fluidity of scrying.
I quickly settled my intention on seeing something to help me know if we were prepared for what would come to pass.
The murk within the crystal thickened and lathered into seafoam. It receded, showing me the wet sand. No, this was not the sea, it was a lakeshore. Another wave crashed, foam stretching . . . the splash of bodies falling into the water, screams.
My breath caught and held.
A flash of red. A lick of flames. The face of Fax Torris, the fire fairy, laughing. At her feet lay a man. Naked. His back . . . was that sand sticking to his skin, making patterns? She kicked him, rolling him over.
Johnny!
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Menessos and I stood on the beach, shoulder to shoulder. With my hand up to block the wind, I watched for any sign of the fairies. Lake Erie was veiled in mist, yet the air was gusty onshore. Weather wasn’t supposed to work that way. “The fairies are creating this mist.”
“Yes. They wouldn’t dare arrive without making it a spectacle,” Menessos said.
Magic mist or not, it was chilly. I wore a tank and a tee under a hoodie and my blazer. A pair of thermal leggings under the jeans would’ve helped. Of course, I’d made sure Beau’s charm was on its long chain around my neck. I wished it would kick in and warm me up as it had when I’d first touched it.
“It wouldn’t surprise me,” Menessos added, “if the fairies painted the mist different colors just before they appeared.”
“I’m more worried that they’re hiding something in there, not just making a grand entrance.”
“You may be right,” he said, “but it is too late now for us to alter our position, our strategy, or our numbers.”
If the mist came ashore, the sniper in the lighthouse wouldn’t be able to see us. If everything we couldn’t see was going according to plan, then Johnny and the other waeres and Beholders were in the switchgrass, a disturbingly far distance behind us.
“Is this wind going to be a problem?”
“The conditions are not perfect for what our outlying friend does.”
It had been explained to me that snipers don’t aim directly at their targets, but have to calculate a height above the target based on distance and how the bullet will drop, as well as calculate a distance to the side of the target based on wind direction and speed. So snipers basically shot at nothing and hoped the bullet landed where the math said it would.
“So maybe once you call the fey we should prostrate ourselves like we’re worshipping them and let the guy get his shot off.”
Menessos touched me. “Persephone.”
My hand was visibly shaking. I let it fall to my side. I hadn’t told anyone that I’d gotten out the scrying crystal, or what I had seen. How could I? Uttering the words would make it more real. But I was ready. I had my own plan. I’ve never gotten a chance to tell Johnny that I love him. “What?”
“Do you know what it meant to me, the night you destroyed the stake, to take that walk alone?”
I shook my head no, not trusting my voice.
“I was utterly alone.”
He sounded happy about it, so I waited to see where he was going with this before I cut in, asked anything, or interrupted.
“I hadn’t felt so alone since I buried Una and . . . I revisited my greatest fear.”
He put his hands on my arms; even through the layers, I could feel the warmth in his hands. It steadied me.
“I knew what you had done. I knew the Goddess had touched you and lifted you up, declaring that She had chosen you over me. I was terrified. It meant I had been bested. I feared you would learn this and be compelled to destroy me . . . and my family.”
I shook my head again. That had been Johnny’s first thought. Not mine.
“In the nights since then, Persephone, I have struggled with what it means, struggled with how to proceed. I had been so accustomed to being the master of all around me . . .”
Yeah, being top dog for a few thousand years tends to give a guy a definite attitude.
“. . . that I could not see the truth. Everyone else looked up to me. It should have been easy to pass that reverence on to you, but it was not. It finally hit me. Last night during the ritual.”
During?
“The memory you gave me, Persephone.” He stood straighter and lifted his face to the sky, inhaling deeply as if relishing the lakeshore breeze that lifted his hair in a mesmerizing dance of curls. “I can see you in my mind, so clearly. A child. Innocent and afraid. Yet defiantly alone.” He brought his face down again. “And She chose you. She lifted you up with Her power, lifted you high above the stalks. She kissed you with stardust, bathed you with moonlight, and swaddled you with destiny. It was a revelation,” he whispered.
My memory of that was gone, but as he shared it with me, it was restored. It came back to me completely, totally. I hadn’t remembered floating up in the air that night, hadn’t remembered the touch of Her grace upon me, but as he said it, I knew it was true.
A chill ran through me. It seemed the only warmth in the whole world radiated from his hands on my arms.
“When you burned the stake, you unshrouded the destiny that had always been right in front of you, hidden, waiting for you to be ready, waiting for you to claim it. Sparing me, you fastened your grip on the reins of your future. And”—his hands fell from my arms down to hold my hands—“you held in these fated hands, my own life. My future.” He let his statement stand for a heartbeat, then added, “I detected something special in you from the very start. I feared it at first. Now . . . now I look up to you for it.”
“Being the Lustrata?”
“No. Heroism.”
I swallowed hard enough to be heard.
“What I have learned from all these long years is that everyone who knows what I am has expected great things from me. And it is the same with you.” He touched my cheek. “It will never end. The demands only grow. The stamina to provide . . . that is harder to maintain. To be successful, I have had to stay ahead of the demand, to anticipate it. And sometimes, to squelch the ungrateful and those whose demands are exorbitant.” His expression became the saddest smile I’d ever seen. It conveyed tiredness and inevitability and it made me want to cry.