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Such as roasted bodies. I shuddered.
In the past, Death had waited to attack until the Emperor had drained himself. Yet just now Richter had looked like he was only warming up.
"But you weren't summoning the great Priestess for help with Richter. Not yet. You want to defeat the Hanged Man. I sensed his activation at the castle."
My gaze shifted toward Circe. I needed my eyes on Jack, but I'd waited weeks to talk to this woman. She was the key to my future, the ally who'd just saved our lives. "Yes. He poisoned Finn and reversed the others' cards."
"The dark calling."
I frowned. "My grandmother spoke of that."
"We're all at risk for our card turning. Any uncontrollable emotion can reverse an Arcana. Fury, pain, sorrow. Remember, the Lovers' tableau was reversed."
Matthew had described them as reverse, perverse. "I've felt fury before, but I didn't succumb to the dark calling." So what would happen if I tapped into my well of wrath? Every time I called on my Empress gifts, I played with a primal force--and I had no idea of the cost. "After Richter's massacre, I nearly lost my mind."
"Yet you didn't. The reverse comes when you do. Or else the Hanged Man can turn a card with just a thought." At my exasperated look, she said, "The dark calling exists without the Hanged Man, but the Hanged Man doesn't exist without the dark calling."
Now that we're all clear on that . . . "Why couldn't Paul reverse me? I might be immune to brainwashing, but that's not his only power."
She glanced at my belly. "The Hanged Man can't control mortals. Perhaps your child shielded you."
A breath escaped me. My thoughts about this baby were as conflicted as ever. I hadn't felt much protectiveness toward it. But maybe it'd already protected me? "Paul told me he couldn't make Aric and Lark hate me unless they were predisposed to it. Is that true?"
"What you want to know is whether the Hanged Man can plant a tree where there is no soil. I can't say for certain."
"Aric's rage over the past was real." Again, what kind of future would we have?
"Clearly." She hiked one slim shoulder. "Since mine is."
My lips thinned. "Can he be saved or not?" What if Paul's influence did last even after I killed him? Aric might already be lost forever.
"So little is known about the Hanged Man, but I believe his demise will end his sphere. Without it, he has no influence."
"His demise? One problem: he's invincible, as far as I know."
"True. He can't be harmed by most weapons. To trump a card like that will take more than bullets or blades." Or claws. "I recall that he has a weakness to a specific weapon, but I don't remember what it is. I have been researching."
I swept wet hair from my face. "Maybe you could use a spell of some sort to locate it?"
"Perhaps. This temple is my spell book, the walls covered with incantations, all written in tiny letters. I haven't eaten or slept, too busy reading every word."
"How big is your temple?"
She rose from her throne. "Vast." The water window followed her as she meandered down a torchlit passageway. I could hear tentacles slithering but couldn't see below her waist. When she entered another chamber, a stone slab ground closed behind her.
Impatience gnawed at me--why hadn't Jack returned yet?--but I sensed I was on the verge of some revelation with Circe.
She paused beside a wall to trace her fingers along a section of foreign text, and firelight glimmered over one arm fin. Was she becoming more sirenlike, just as Lark had become more animalistic?
I'd seen Circe in my memories of past games. She'd looked like a normal girl, with a few scaly body mods. Now she might have tentacles for legs. "Circe, what's happening to you? Are you changing?"
"Maybe I'm more myself in my temple. Maybe I become more myself every day I remain down here."
"What does that mean?"
"I feel so tired, Evie Greene. The cold makes my bones ache. Trespassers claim my domain as their own. They pollute every last atom of me. I hear much of what they say. Some of what you say. None of what my currents sigh. The trespassers don't make the proper gifts to me."
"What do you mean? What gifts?" Decoder-ring talk from Circe? But hadn't I done the same on the phone with Aric? He'd told me, "You're not making sense, Empress."
"If I received a proper sacrifice--one that would be dearly missed--I could see farther, could regain my strength and control over my element." Revealing more of her domain than ever before, she headed into another chamber. Inside was a stone table carved with trident symbols, stained with blood. Was that a sacrificial altar?
No freaking way. "Ogen used to demand sacrifices."
"The Devil Card wanted power. Just as I crave it." Those tentacles slithered anew. "I am a priestess, you know. Didn't expect me to have blood rites?"
So much for making her my kid's godmother. Or godsmother. Which reminded me . . . "Earlier, you said your godson. Why do you think I'm carrying a boy?"
"Because I'm a powerful witch, and I know things."
Ah. So Aric would have a son. My hand drifted to my belly, but all I felt was conflict.
"By the way, Empress, I did eat Fauna's tiger--one she would dearly miss--and it tasted delicious."
I muttered, "We ate her lion."
"Bravo! And my ally Kentarch killed her bear. Lions, and tigers, and--"
"Don't. Just don't."
"Fine," she grumbled. "You were more fun in previous lives."
I gazed past her. Mosaics covered the walls, depictions of tidal waves destroying ports and monsters devouring ships. "Did you once control those monsters?"
She chuckled. "Of course not, Empress. I was the monster. The terror from the abyss."
How delightful.
"All who hear my call will fear my catastrophal powers."
Why did that sound so familiar? "Did we talk about that in a past game?"
"Hmm." Her gaze grew unfocused, and she swayed. "Much activity at the shore. I've been away too long. The suit I've been missing is right there."
"A suit? I don't understand." I was freaked out and exhausted, and I needed to know that Jack and our friends were okay. "Damn it, just tell me what to do."
No answer.
"Circe, give me some idea how long it'll be before I can face Paul. He's already killed one of our allies. What's to stop him from taking more of them out?"
"I don't know. I too have limited time. All my bodies are freezing. I'm starving down here. Maybe I can figure something out. But if this continues, I will perish. Coming to land might be my only hope."
"What kind of hope is that? You always die when you come to land."
Circe faced me with a wry half-smile. "Such worry, Evie Greene. It warms the cockles of my ice-cold heart."
Jack called from a distance, "We need some help here."
Her smile dimmed. "Go to them."
"How will I find you again?"
"As with all things, you'll find the answers you need on the shore. Wait for me there."
"Where specifically?"
"Go to the nearest coast. Then keep going." Her voice faded away, and her water window subsided into the lake.
"Ugh. That makes no sense!" I hurried through the pass, then around to the other side of the crater. Over here, fires still burned, the smoke needling my eyes.
Joules stumbled into view. "Goin' to get bandages out of the truck." He had blood all over him and a shell-shocked expression.
"Whose blood is that?"
"Tarch's hurt. Bad."
I rushed past him and found Jack kneeling beside Kentarch. The Chariot sat propped against a rock, cradling his arm. Staring at nothing, he demonstrated zero emotion.
Blood covered the ground, had splattered Jack's face. He'd used his belt to make a tourniquet around Kentarch's forearm. "Evie, can you give him something for the pain?"
"Of course. What happened?" I rubbed my gritty eyes, trying to make out the injury amidst all the smoke.
Jack rose, then crossed
to a small fire. His knife was heating in the flames, the blade red-hot. "We're goan to need to cauterize his wound."
I turned back to the Chariot and finally saw. Breath left me.
His right hand was gone.
24
Jack drove the Beast at a furious pace.
Kentarch was passed out in the back, mumbling in his sleep.
