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Julie stared at me. "Why?"
"I don't know. That's the way it always is."
Julie drew back. "I don't want it. If that's the way it's going to be, I don't want to have any babies."
Life had finally scarred Julie deep enough. Now my kid had decided not to have children, not because she didn't want to be a mother, but because she was too scared of the world into which she would be bringing her children. That was so screwed up. I wanted to stab something.
Julie was looking at me, waiting for something.
"Having children or not having them is your choice, Julie. Whether you do or don't, Curran and I will love you anyway. You don't ever have to worry that we'll stop."
"Good, because I don't want kids."
We fell silent.
"You're leaving," she said.
"Yes. Are you scared?"
Julie shrugged. "You're the alpha and you have to go."
"That's right."
"And if anybody will get the medicine, it's you. I understand." Her voice was tiny. "Don't die. Just don't die, okay?"
"I have no plans to die. I'm coming back with panacea and we're getting Maddie out of the healing tank."
"I heard Jim talking," Julie said quietly.
Oh boy.
"He said that it was a trap and you might not come back."
Thank you, Mr. Positive Peggy, we appreciate your vote of confidence. "Does the spy master know you're spying on him?"
"No. I'm very careful and he doesn't look up very often."
Eventually I'd have to figure out what that meant. "It is a trap. The people who laid it think that we're weak and stupid. I promise you that if they try to hurt us when we get there, they will deeply regret it. We'll sail away with panacea, and they will still be figuring out why they're sitting in a puddle of their own blood trying to hold on to their guts. You've seen me take on dangerous things before."
"You get hurt, Kate. A lot."
"But I survive and they don't." I hugged her with one arm. "Don't worry. We've got this."
"Okay," she said. "I just . . ."
She clenched her hands together, staring straight ahead.
"Yes?"
"I have bad dreams."
So do I. "What do you dream about?"
She turned to me, her eyes haunted. "Towers. I see them being built on the grass. They are terrible towers. I look at them and cry. And I see you, and you're looking at me, and you're calling me . . ."
Oh no. Cold claws pricked my spine.
Why would we have the same dream? It had to be magic. If my dream was the result of my magic or the result of Roland looking for me, it shouldn't affect Julie. He couldn't possibly know about Julie.
The ritual. That was the most likely explanation. When I healed Julie, I'd mixed my blood with hers. Some of my magic had tainted her. Now we shared dreams. If we were lucky, this was just a by-product of my magic stretching itself while I dreamed. If we were unlucky, then Roland was trying to find me by broadcasting visions into my head, and Julie was picking up the signal.
Damn it.
It must've shown on my face, because Julie focused on me. "It means something, doesn't it? What does it mean, Kate? I saw you. You were in my dream. Did you see me, too?"
I didn't want to have this conversation. Not here and not now. In fact, I didn't want to have it at all.
"Tell me, please! I have to know."
I wasn't planning on going to my funeral, but one never plans to die. If something happened to me, Julie would be left without answers. She had to know something at least. In her place, I would want to know.
"Kate, please . . ."
"Hush, please."
The need to hide had been hammered into me since I could understand words. The number of people knowing my secret had gone up from one to five in the past year, and thinking about it shot me right off the beaten path into an irrational place where I contemplated killing those who knew. I couldn't kill them-they were my friends and my chosen family-but breaking a lifetime of conditioning was a bitch.
If I didn't tell her and I died, she would make mistakes. Roland would find her and use her. She didn't realize it yet, but she was a weapon. Like me. I had created her, and I had a responsibility to keep her safe and to keep others safe from her.
"What I'm about to tell you can't be repeated. Don't write it in your diary, don't tell your best friend, don't react if you hear about it. Do you understand?"
"Yes."
"There are people who would kill you if they knew about you. I'm very serious, Julie. This is a life-and-death conversation."
"I understand," Julie said.
"You've learned in school about the theory of the First Shift?"
"Sure." Julie nodded. "Thousands of years ago magic and technology existed in a balance. Then people began working the magic, making it stronger and stronger, until the imbalance became too great and the technology flooded the world in waves, which was the First Shift. The magic civilizations collapsed. Now the same thing is happening, but we get magic waves instead of technological ones. Some people think that it's a cycle and it just keeps happening over and over."
Good. She knew the basics, so this would be easier. "You heard me talk about Voron."
"Your dad," Julie said.
"Voron wasn't my biological father. My father, my real father, walked the planet thousands of years ago, when the magic flowed full force. Back then he was a king, a conqueror, and a wizard. He was very powerful and he had some radical ideas about how a society should be structured, so he and some of his siblings built a huge army and rampaged back and forth across what's now known as Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Iran, and eastern Egypt. The world was a different place then geologically, and my dad, the wizard-king, had a large fertile area in which to build his kingdom. His magic kept him alive for hundreds of years, and he succeeded in creating an empire as advanced as our civilization. And wherever he went, he built towers."
Julie blinked. "But . . ."
"Wait until I finish, please." The words stuck in my throat and I had to strain to push them out. "When the First Shift came, the technology began to overwhelm magic. The magical cities crumbled. My father saw the writing on the wall and decided it was time for a long nap. He sealed himself away, how or where nobody knows, and fell asleep. A tiny trickle of magic still remained in the world, and it was enough to keep him alive. He slept until the Shift, our apocalypse, woke him up. He got up, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, and immediately started to rebuild his empire. He can't stop, Julie. It's what gives his existence meaning. This time he started with the undead."
