Adam swallowed thickly. “Can you see the future?”
“I see many futures.”
“Many?”
“As many futures as there are choices.”
“Do I defeat the Death Collector in any of them?”
“No.”
A wave of helplessness rolled over him. So all this was pointless. The Collective was going to win after all. He couldn’t breathe. He braced his hands on his knees as a devastating roar filled his head.
Abigail clucked with her tongue. “Look at you. So arrogant. So self-important. You’ve gone and cast yourself as the hero. Do you really think this war is about you?”
Adam’s head snapped up.
“Now I’ve finally got your attention. The demon does not die at your hands. I see only one ending for you, the same ending everyone in this world must face.”
Death. The knowledge took a painful, disappointed moment for him to process, but deep down he’d always known that he would not survive this war. He thought of Talia, Death’s daughter, and the pain mellowed. If she were anything like Death, the end of his life couldn’t be all that bad. He warmed slightly inside at the memory of her soft darkness sweeping over him. Not that bad at all.
But what about the rest of the world? The wraith war? “Does anyone else defeat the demon?”
“Perhaps.”
“Who?” But he already knew the answer.
Abigail’s eyes wrinkled with her smile. “Clap if you believe in faeries.”
Shadowman. “Then Talia’s voice must heal so that she can call Death.”
“Let me be clear,” Abigail said. “My Sight does not permit me to see the fae. Not the one you call Shadowman—”
Adam’s breath caught at the depth of Abigail’s knowledge. Someone had had the answers to his riddles all along.
“—nor the woman downstairs. The lives of the fae are not their own, their destinies are bound, existence predetermined by the function they were born to fulfill, and so I cannot see the paths before them. My Sight can only see those of the mortal world. You and me and Zoe and the poor man whose body hosts the demon. I cannot see the demon himself.”
Adam’s heart stalled. He leaned forward, elbows on his knees. “What do you mean ‘the poor man whose body hosts the demon’?”
“A demon has only as much power as a mortal gives him. This poor soul gave the demon his free will in exchange for…”
“Power,” Adam finished.
Abigail’s mouth made a disappointed moue. “No. Power is your weakness. You like to be in control, the one making decisions. The man who hosts the demon was tormented by fear. He was afraid to live, afraid to die, afraid of people. He wanted to live without that fear. To have peace.”
Adam was disgusted. All this because of fear. Unbelievable.
Abigail lifted an eyebrow. “Do you know what it is to be afraid? Truly, deeply afraid?”
“Of course.” Everyone is afraid. But trade yourself to a demon because of it? No.
She chuckled, mocking him.
“I’ve been afraid,” he said again. “Have you seen my brother? I’ve stared down his gullet as he prepared to suck the life out of me. It was fucking terrifying.” The memory alone had his heart accelerating, his stomach tightening. Yeah, he’d known fear.
Abigail seemed unimpressed. “There’s worse.”
Adam couldn’t possibly conceive of worse and pressing the issue was irrelevant anyway. He returned to his original question: “Can I kill the host, and therefore the demon?”
“Like a happy, convenient loophole in the sticky problem of the demon’s immortality?”
“Yes. Exactly,” he said, though he didn’t like the sarcastic tone she’d used to restate his question.
“You’d kill the man, but not the demon. Sooner or later—probably sooner—the demon would simply find another host.”
“So we’re back to the beginning: Talia must scream to call her father, and then Shadowman will finish this.” Adam rose. If there were no new answers to be found here, he had to get Talia moving before anyone caught up. He rose.
Abigail shrugged her shoulders. “That’s one way to do it,” she mumbled. She hunkered down into her chair and didn’t elaborate.
Adam wasn’t biting. He’d had enough of her games. “Can you tell me where to find the demon?”
“You thinking of joining The Collective?”
Irritation tightened the muscles across Adam’s scalp. He’d had just about enough of this. He bit back his desired response and said, “No. I need to know where to find him so that I can get Talia into position safely.”
“I think you underestimate her.”
“Can you tell me or not?”
She sighed a world of exhaustion. “I see water. I see the Styx.”
“Are you being needlessly cryptic again?” Spouting about ancient Greek mythology when he needed a modern address.
“I’m being literal,” she bit back. “The Styx is a ship, just an aptly named ship. Buy a ticket on the Styx and you buy a ticket to the underworld.”
“Can you see anything else? Anything that will help me or Talia?”
“No, that’s all—” Abigail broke off, her gaze shifting past Adam’s shoulder.
He turned and found Talia, framed by the field of stars on the curtain dividing the room.
“Welcome,” Abigail said behind him. “I’ve been waiting a long time for you.”
Talia gazed at the old woman in the chair. Light touched strands of gray hair, turning them to silver. Her skin was crumpled, sagging flesh. And there was something…odd about her that went beyond the dark glaze that covered the woman’s eyes.
Adam took Talia’s shoulders and searched her face. “You’re okay, then?”
“I’m—” Talia’s already thin voice broke. She delicately cleared her voice so the burn in her chest wouldn’t flare up. She tried again, keeping her words whisper soft, though the sound still came out stilting and rough. “I’m fine. Amalia, the doctor, says I was very lucky. I need to take it easy, rest, and after a while I will be back to normal.”
Normal. Not likely. The Earth-made component of the gas might’ve been slowly wearing off, but the Otherworldly part slicked her throat and lungs like malevolent oil. Neither water nor hacking coughs cleared it.
“This just confirms my suspicions,” Adam said. “If they wanted to kill you, they’ve had ample opportunity. They want you alive. The gas was meant to incapacitate us long enough for them to get to you. Did she say how long it would take for you to recover your voice?”
“I dunno—” Talia shrugged. The vibration of her vocal cords made her throat ache. Breathing through both her nose and her mouth seared. And that dark stuff coated, suffocated, and made her lungs scream for undiluted air. But she wasn’t about to burden Adam with the last part. The man was burdened enough.
“You shouldn’t speak.” His hands tightened on her shoulders as his jaw flexed in frustration. He dropped his forehead to touch hers, to rest there, mind to mind. His concern filtered into her consciousness. “Okay. We need to find a safe place to wait out your recovery. Somewhere solitary and inconspicuous. In the meantime, we can plan.”
Talia nodded shallowly, not wanting to jar their moment of intimacy. She really wanted to walk into the circle of his arms and curl against his chest, but his words from the loft, “another world, another time,” kept her back. She knew that Adam cared about her, but his priorities were unchanged: war first. That truth burned more deeply than the chemical gases she’d inhaled, though he was right. She was born to end this war.
“You can stay here for a while,” Abigail said. “It’s safe. I don’t see a future where The Collective searches the building.”