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Boo barked, and the man stirred, tilting his head to the side. His eyes were gold. Obidias was a Dark Caster.
Link slid to his knees at the injured man’s side and realized why Boo was barking. Obidias’ hand was lying across his chest, but it wasn’t a hand at all. When Link got close, the heads of five black snakes the length of human fingers hissed and struck the air. The snakes were attached to the old man’s wrist, where his hand should’ve been.
“Holy crap!” Link jumped back.
“Don’t worry,” the man said, his voice strained. “They only like to hurt me.”
Link pulled himself together. He could deal with a few snakes. But this guy was in bad shape. “Mr. Trueblood? What happened?”
The man coughed. “Abraham Ravenwood sent me a visitor.”
Link’s skin crawled at the sound of Abraham’s name. “But why? You’re a Dark—I mean, you’re one of them.”
Obidias coughed, trying to catch his breath. “I am not one of them.”
“I don’t understand—”
“There’s no time to explain. Macon needs to know what Abraham was trying to confirm…” Obidias could barely breathe. He wasn’t going to make it.
Link took off his black AC/DC sweatshirt and pushed it under the old man’s head.
With his good hand, Obidias grabbed Link’s arm and pulled him closer. “I know what’s coming—the consequences. The Order is broken.” Obidias closed his eyes and opened them again slowly. He was talking about the Order of Things, broken on the night of Lena’s Seventeenth Moon.
“What’s gonna happen, sir?” Whatever it was, maybe they could stop it if they knew what they were up against.
“The apocalypse. The end of the Mortal world as we know it—” Obidias was fading.
“What do you mean by apocalypse? Like in the Bible?” Was there another kind? Link didn’t even know.
Obidias’ eyes were glassy. “Unimaginable plagues will rain down on the Mortal world until there is nothing left, and the Casters will be powerless to stop the destruction.”
“What should we do?”
“There are some things too broken to be fixed,” he said, struggling to breathe. “Some that are inevitable. Tell Macon I’m sorry. For a lot of things…” The old man’s head rolled to the side, his eyes still and unfocused. The snakes stopped hissing and fell against his chest.
He was dead.
Link grabbed his shoulders and shook him gently. “Mr. Trueblood!” But he was gone.
The end of the Mortal world.
The words kept replaying themselves over and over in Link’s head.
He walked over to the ashtray, where a pipe was still smoking, and knocked the embers out of it. Obidias Trueblood wouldn’t need it anymore. Link pulled the heavy cream envelope out of his pocket. Something else the dead Caster wouldn’t need.
He stared at Macon’s handwriting scrawled across the envelope. The letter wasn’t meant for Link. He knew that. But he also knew the guy it was meant for was dead. He tore open the envelope, cutting his finger on the edge of the paper.
He pulled out a card from inside, his blood smearing across the front. He stared at it for a long time, his hand shaking.
The card was completely blank.
“No way.”
Link looked from the card to the Dark Caster lying dead next to it. There wasn’t a letter. There never had been. The message was from Macon Ravenwood, but it wasn’t for the dead guy. It was for Link—even he knew that much.
If it was a test, Link hoped he had passed. It didn’t happen very often, but there was a first time for everything.
Besides, this time Link knew there was more at stake than summer school.
