Licking my peanut butter spoon, I shook my head and then explained in detail what had gone down. His expression darkened as he listened, and by the time I finished my account, his gray eyes were lightning fierce with outrage. This was the second time I’d pissed him off; and he had a pretty even temper. If we hung around much longer, he might throttle me.
“You should have called me. I wasn’t performing open-heart surgery . . . I was just having a bit of fun.”
“But you haven’t had any in a long time. At least not like that. I didn’t want to interrupt—”
“Shut. Up,” he bit off. “Your other friends seem unwilling to speak, but I am not. You have all the common sense and self-preservation of a tinned ham. Furthermore, you place your pride ahead of your own well-being, and that simply will not do. Not anymore. Your child must come first, now and always. You can’t fret about being a burden or any such rubbish. You’ve been alone for so long that you can’t imagine you can truly trust anyone and that, too, is bollocks. Unless you really mean to die alone, then stop it. Immediately.” He ranted longer, leaving me speechless. Not because the things he was saying shocked or hurt me. More that it had been ages since I had a friend who cared enough to yell at me.
Even Shan doesn’t go off on me like this. Ian Booke loves me.
I must’ve had a goofy, ridiculous smile on my face because he paused in the tirade to demand, “What?!”
“I’m sorry,” I said meekly. “You’re right. About everything. I need to stop feeling like I’m a pain in the ass when people want to help me. It’s just . . . hard. When you grow up the way I did, you have issues.”
His tone gentled. “Believe me, I understand, Corine. I was alone longer than anyone should be. But I’m letting the world in now. You should try it.”
“I will,” I promised. “I am.”
Starting with you.
And I truly hoped the nightmare had been only that, not a portent of dire misfortune to come.
Last Call
Three days left. By this point, I was a total knot of anxiety, but when Booke’s phone rang, I froze. Hope stirred, but it was faint and unfamiliar, a tremulous shadow on the wall cast by someone else. He moved off down the hall toward the bedroom, speaking in low tones. I strained to overhear, but he was a master at turning his body so the sound didn’t carry.
What the hell, Booke.
Of course, maybe it was one of his lady friends. At this point, he was one of San Antonio’s most eligible gifted bachelors between his courtly, old school manners, his giant throbbing brain, and the accent. He probably had other assets as well, but I wasn’t placed to appreciate them. Pushing off the couch, I edged closer. He caught me trying to eavesdrop, as he was already off the phone . . . and vibrating with excitement.
“Good news?” I asked.
“I didn’t want to get your hopes up, should this last effort prove fruitless, but that was Ms. Devlin.”
I raised a brow. “You still call her Ms., after . . .” At his pointed look, I shook my head. “Never mind. Go on.”
“She found a copy of the scroll and someone who might be able to translate the text for us.”
“Fast enough?” I demanded.
There, he paused. “It’ll be a near thing, Corine. It’s a rare language . . . and we can’t pay the fees that would cause a professor to put aside his other responsibilities. We can certainly offer an honorarium that makes it worth his time, but the sort of people who go into dead languages don’t tend to be motivated by money anyway.”
“You mean there’s not huge profit in ancient Babylonian? Huh. Never would’ve guessed.” Kel could read and translate this ritual, but he was busy protecting me from Barachiel.
As a last resort, I’ll call him.
“May I borrow the car?”
“I dunno, it’s a pretty sweet ride. Can I trust you not to do doughnuts in it?”
“I don’t even like doughnuts,” Booke said.
Right, though he’s kept up with some of the world via the Internet, he’s still not 100 percent current. So then I had to explain the joke, which eliminated all humor. But he promised me soberly not to do anything that would impact the life of the tires, so I agreed. I stayed behind, cuddling Butch and fretting more.
When he returned, he said, “Ms. Devlin has called in a few favors for us. The collector agreed to send copies of the scroll to the university in Cairo.”
“I wish we knew enough to start gathering supplies.” I didn’t mean to sound snippy, but his face fell.
“As do I. I feel as though I haven’t been nearly useful enough, particularly since you delayed your quest to help me.”
“I delayed it for Kel too. Those were my decisions, nobody else’s. And I don’t regret either of them.”
I might, if we ran out of time, and I lost Chance forever, if my kid grew up never knowing his father because of choices I’d made. But I hadn’t realized that the ritual had an expiration date or that the other realm would strip away his ties to the mortal coil. It made sense, but there was no way I could’ve acted based on information I didn’t have at the time. In that case, it would’ve been a tough call, as I had never been one to walk away from a friend in need. I remembered too clearly how it felt to have your back to the wall and nobody in your corner.
“Anyway,” I went on, “we’re not down to the wire yet.”
Two days later, we were.
It had to be tonight . . . or I lost everything. And we still didn’t have a translation of the ritual. Booke had been on the phone, bitching at the professor in Cairo, who was sorry, but he didn’t have the fluency necessary for a detailed translation such as we required, plus the pages from the scroll appeared to be in dialect. While he might be able to work out an approximate meaning, that would take months, not days.