“What if you were right? What if they’re trapped there, like a cork in a bottle neck?”
“What if they are,” I whisper, even though I know.
“Then you might need to consider what you would choose,” Gideon replies. “If there is a way to separate them, will you pull her back, or send her on?”
Send her on. To what? To some other dark place? Maybe someplace worse? There aren’t any solid answers. Nobody knows. It’s like the punch line from a bad spook story. What happened to the guy with the hook for a hand? Nobody knows.
“Do you think she deserves to be where she is?” I ask. “And I’m asking you. Not a book, or a philosophy, or the Order.”
“I don’t know what decides these things,” he says. “If there’s judgment from a higher power, or just the guilt trapped inside the spirit. We don’t get to decide.”
Jesus, Gideon. That’s not what I asked. I’m about ready to tell him I expected a better answer when he says, “But from what you’ve told me, this girl has had her share of torment. If I were cast as her judge, I couldn’t condemn her to more.”
“Thank you, Gideon,” I say, and he bites his tongue on the rest. None of us know what’s going to happen tonight. There’s a weird sensation of unreality, laced with denial, like it’s never going to happen, it’s so far away, when the time remaining is measurable in hours. How can it be that in that small space of time, I could see her again? I could touch her. I could pull her out of the dark.
Or send her into the light.
Shut up. Don’t complicate things.
We walk side by side to the kitchen. Carmel has stayed true to her word and has broken at least one dish. I nod at her, and she blushes. She knows it’s petty, and that it doesn’t make an ounce of difference to the Order if she breaks twelve entire place settings. But these people make her feel powerless.
When we eat it’s surprising just how much we manage to put away. Gideon whips up some hollandaise and assembles some wicked eggs Benedict with a heaping side of sausage. Jestine broils six of the biggest, reddest grapefruits I’ve ever seen, with honey and sugar.
“We should keep as many eyes trained on the Order as we can,” says Thomas between bites. “I don’t trust them as far as I can throw them. Carmel and I can keep tabs while we help prepare the ritual.”
“Make sure to put in a call to your grandfather as well,” says Gideon, and Thomas looks up, surprised.
“Do you know my grandfather?”
“Only by reputation,” Gideon replies.
“He already knows,” says Thomas, looking down. “He’ll have the entire voodoo network on standby. They’ll be watching our backs from their side of the world.”
The entire voodoo network. I chew my food quietly. It would have been nice to have Morfran in my corner. It would have been like having a hurricane up my sleeve.
* * *
In observation of Carmel’s rebellion, we left the kitchen a complete disaster. After we got ourselves cleaned up, Gideon took Thomas and Carmel to meet with the Order members. Jestine and I decided to walk the grounds, to nose around and maybe just to kill time.
“They’ll be coming for one or the other of us before long,” I say as we walk the edge of the tree line, listening to the trickling whisper of a stream not far off.
“For what?” Jestine asks.
“Well, to instruct us on the ritual,” I reply, and she shakes her head.
“Don’t expect too much, Cas. You’re just the instrument, remember?” She snags a twig off a low-hanging branch and pokes me in the chest with it.
“So they’re just going to shove us through blind and hope we’re good at winging it?” I shrug. “That’s either stupid, or really flattering.”
Jestine smiles and stops walking. “Are you scared?”
“Of you?” I ask, and she grins. There’s early adrenaline coursing through both of us, springy tension in our muscles, tiny, silver fish darting through my capillaries. When she swings her twig at my head, I see it coming a mile away and trip her up with my toe. Her response is a crisp elbow at my head and a laugh, but her moves are serious. She’s practiced and fluid; well trained. She’s got counters I haven’t seen before, and when she catches me in the gut I wince, even though she’s pulling her punches. But I still knock her backward and block more than she lands. The athame is still in my pocket. This isn’t half of what I can do. Without it, though, we’re almost an even match. When we stop our pulses are up and the adrenaline twitch is gone. Good. It’s annoying when it doesn’t have anywhere to go, like waking up from a nightmare.