“Your writing is worse than mine, and I don’t even have hands,” Evan commented.
“You can write?” I asked. “With what? A pencil nub?
“Stylus. Gotta have it for some of the handheld games,” he said.
Rose took the piece of paper. Her eyebrows went up. “That’s a bit of a trip.”
“Maybe on the honeymoon,” I said. “Considering that I’m giving you-”
She raised a hand. “If this works out, then I promise. Even if it means going to Wisconsin for my honeymoon with Alister.”
I nodded, smiling just a little.
“Okay?” she asked.
“Okay,” I said. “Yeah. There’s tonight still to do, and this is contingent on you looking after the others, Evan in particular, and-”
“With regular purchases of video games,” Evan cut in, more than a little sullen.
“Even if it means regular purchases of-”
“Blake,” Rose said, cutting me off.
I stopped.
“It’s okay,” she said.
She lied to your face so many times. She didn’t take the oath just so she could.
I dismissed the thoughts that whispered through my mind, sowing doubt.
She made your friends keep your identity and your origins a secret from you. Subverting people you genuinely loved.
“You’ll probably need to use the Hyena to destroy me,” I said. “Otherwise, I’ll just come back, and you can’t taint our existence with Conquest, so you need to be doubly careful, if you’re going to-”
“Blake. I’ll do what you need me to do. Whatever our differences, we both want the same sort of things.”
I nodded.
She made you weaker, when you needed to be strong.
The voice of doubt in the back of my mind had taken on a different quality. Gravely, deeper, a more fundamental sort of doubt. Where the initial suspicion might be to worry they weren’t my own thoughts, I had no doubt they were. They were thoughts welling from a deeper part of me, one that didn’t do a lot of talking.
“You’ll do it, then?” I asked.
“Yes,” Rose said. “I’ll do it.”
There were rules, expectations. Everything we’d done up to this point had emphasized the need for carefully worded deals. Our deal here was… pretty godawful, in terms of terminology. There were too many holes to exploit.
Rose, perhaps, wasn’t willing to test what we’d made, here. I wasn’t willing to reflect too deeply on it.
“We should get moving,” I said, to forestall the voice of doubt. Worrying that it might say something I couldn’t simply ignore. “None of this is much good unless the town survives, and if the universe really is conspiring against us-”
“Me,” Rose said. “Conspiring against me.”
“Then it goes double. We’re racing against a lot of tilting dominoes if we’re going to keep the universe from dismantling our little truce.”
Rose nodded, then hesitated.
“What?”
“I have one thing I need to ask for.”
I went still.
“I know I’m already asking for and taking so much, but… can we please not call him Russel? I really can’t picture us as a Russel.”
“Ross?” I asked. “Russ?”
“Ugh. Awful,” she said, but she smiled a little.
I managed the smallest smile back.
“Rusty?” I offered.
“Forgive me! I give up!” Rose said. “I yield!”
She raised her hands, and held them up as she turned to go make her way toward Mara.
Her hands dropped after the first few steps, as she worked her way across the one patch of deeper snow. Slower going. She was heavier than I was, but not as strong, nor quite as tall. She sank in deeper into the snow, worked harder to move despite that fact. She had more substance.
She turned her head to one side, glancing at the smoke, and I caught a glimpse of her expression.
A smirk?
I was frozen in place as I watched her continue onward.
The tension, anger, and stillness eased out of me as I saw her raise a hand to wipe at one eye, then the other.
Not a smirk. Just overwhelmingly relieved.
“Are you okay?” Evan asked.
“I think we’ve long since established that that is one of the worst questions to ask a person who can’t lie.”
“You’re not okay, are you?”
I looked at Evan, “Are you?”
He ruffled his feathers.
“Nincompoop.”
I couldn’t put words to what I was feeling, to describe how I felt.
“I’m going for Peter and Roxanne and Green Eyes,” Evan said.
“Shit,” I said. “Green Eyes. We can’t tell her, or at least, we really, really shouldn’t. We need to figure out what to do about her, because I can’t see her being okay with it.”
“Yeah,” Evan said. “Oh wow, yeah.”
“Mum’s the word,” I said.
“Yeah,” he said.
He took off. I watched him go, turn, as if to check on me, then go again.
I turned my face skyward, and for just a moment, enjoyed the sun.
The others were talking in the background. I heard Tiff say something about Mara, then my name, a question.
I heard Rose say something. I was pretty sure it was, “Leave him.”
Ironic as it might have been, I let my head turn away, and I started my way toward the others. Faster than Rose.
Rose, arms folded, stood off to one side. She was giving me the opportunity to confront the monster I’d defeated.
“Mara,” I said.
“Monster,” she replied.
“You’re going to break your word,” I told her. “I’m not picky, but I want you to start by telling us what, if any, involvement you have in Jacob’s Bell being swallowed up by the abyss.”
“Start?” the young crone asked me.
“Start. Because when you’ve told us that, you’re going to swear oaths and you’re going to break them. Over and over, until we have no doubt that you’ve relinquished all relationships with spirits and the practice.”
She squared her shoulders, raising her chin. “You think so, do you?”
“I know it,” I said.
I could somehow breathe easier now, even though I didn’t breathe.
A burden had lifted from me. I felt taller.
“You know so very little,” she said.
“Oh, for sure,” I answered. “But I know this. All that you’ve built, all that you are, the cycle that you’ve built your power on, it’s one has been turning for a very, very long time, and that counts for something. You asked me if I was going to kill you. I told you I wasn’t so merciful. I intend to make you kill yourself, in a roundabout fashion, and there’s nothing you can do to stop me.”
Her eyes narrowed.
“If you don’t swear never to practice or take action against another intelligent being again, on your blood, on your power, on all that you are and were, I’m sure one or two of these guys would be willing to finish you off with the Hyena,” I said.
Mara didn’t respond.
“You started the wheel turning, Mara,” I said. “If you refuse to swear, then you’re killing yourself, in a way. You’re stopping the wheel from turning. I don’t think you’re capable. You have no choice but to swear it, because if you swear that oath, you get to live to the end of this lifespan. You have to live, given the choice. You don’t avoid death for as long as you have, if there’s any question.”