“The vampire still has the watch and at least ten humans with magical talent?”
“I think that’s a pretty safe bet,” I say.
She rests the book in her lap and huffs out a sigh. “Then there’s no way around it—we’ll have to run.”
My heart sinks. “It’s that bad? There’s no way to stop him?”
“We don’t want to be within 500 miles when Savadeva re-enters this world,” she says, matter-of-fact. “I would expect the population of San Francisco to perish within the first hour. The necrotic effects should permeate the remainder of Northern California shortly thereafter.” Sherests the ancient book down on my desk, next to the discarded burger wrappers, and rises. “I have another penthouse in Montreal. That should keep us clear until things settle.”
She takes the few steps to the couch and removes a cell phone from her purse. Standing behind her, I see her pull up the number of her Fixed Base Operator at SFO. (Because, yes, my mom actually owns her own private jet.)
“Wait, what about calling the Feds or something?” I sputter out. “I mean, once they know what’s at stake, couldn’t they, like, send in the paranormal equivalent of Seal Team 6?”
I get another you-stupid-idiot look from her. “Even if the United States government did have the resources and know-how to effectively fight intelligent mind-controlling vampires—something I deeply question—by the time you were able to convince them to act, this would be all over. As it stands, I’d be surprised if the ritual isn’t complete by midnight.”
“Um, then maybe we could go to the Dragon King?”
She doesn’t even bother with a withering glance this time, just keeps tapping at her phone—but I don’t need to get spanked to know I’m grasping. Even if there were some way to alert the royal court in time, the supernatural hierarchy considers Earth a complete backwater, almost certainly not worth the effort of saving. And the Dragon King doesn’t exactly have a reputation for compassion. (He’d probably just get popcorn. Or, worse, steal the watch for an even more evil purpose.)
“Butyoucould stop it!” I protest. “I mean, you’re notscared of vampires at all.” Desperate, I lay it on a bit thick. “And you are a total badass, right?”
That at least gets me an amused snort instead of scorn, but it doesn’t change who she is. “I will admit that I am fond of this city. But once begun, the spell can only be disrupted in one very specific and very dangerous way. And the whole time, the ritual space will be filled with toxic magic. A single misstep, and it would tear me apart.” She raises her brows at me with a pointed look. “I have no interest in throwing away my very long life on a very long shot.”
“You mean you aren’t willing toriskyour life for anyone else,” I say, sullen.
“Potato, potahto, my darling boy.” She returns to her screen and presses the button to begin her call before smoothly raising the phone to her ear. I drop myself back into my chair, sulky, as she arranges for her Gulfstream to fly out in the next hour. When she finishes and puts away her phone, she says, “We’ll get you a hot shower and a change of clothes on the plane. I keep a capsule wardrobe for both of us onboard that I think you’ll find quite flattering.”
And there it is. A convenient and even luxurious path out of the mess I made with no real consequences for me except being in more debt to my mother. A debt she doesn’t even seem all that interested in collecting at the moment. I actually get the impression this is her looking out for me.
But she just revealed there was only one way to end the ritual and it’s in that book, so I already know my answer.
“I’m not going with you, Mom.”
I expect her to chide me for being stubborn or not holding up my end of trusting her, but she seems to know exactly what I mean.
“I could make you,” she says, hard.
“No, you really couldn’t,” I reply, just as hard.
And maybe it’s the resolve in my eyes, or maybe Collin was right and she suspects I’m more than your standard incubus, but she relents and throws up her hands.
“Ay! Why do I even bother worrying about savage gods and toxic magic when it’s painfully clear my ownsonwill be the death of me?!” But it’s not a guilt trip. Again, she seems impressed.
“How do I stop the ritual?” I ask.
She sits back down next to me, clicks her tongue against her teeth, and makes a non-committal gesture with her hand. “Well, first of all, you would need to get back into that room.” Her stare becomes flat and dubious. She knows I’m out of juice. “Is that something you really think you can do again?”
“Let me worry about that,” I say. I honestly have no idea how I’ll get back in without getting torn apart, but I at least want to find out what she knows. “What do I do once I’m there?”
My mother quirks an eyebrow, letting me know it’s my funeral. “Well, I have some good news for you. If you succeed, you actually get a twofer. The way you stop the ritual is by setting the Avatar free, just like you wanted. In the early steps of summoning Savadeva, your ‘Collin’ will be separated from the artifact so he can act as a bridge between our world and that of the gods.” She leans pastme to snatch up the book and quickly flips to an earlier part. Then she grabs a random piece of printer paper and a pen from my desk, lays the sheet on one of the pages, and quickly scrawls out a few sentences in perfect old-school cursive. “It turns out the grimoire contains another, shorter ritual that would instead release the Avatar safely to the other side, and it starts nearly identically. With your friend already outside the bounds of the artifact, you would merely need to grasp the watch, activate your mana, and say these words.” She crisply hands me the paper. “This incantation cuts the tethers that bind the Avatar to his prison. Say them when the moon is traversing its deepest arc below the horizon—any time between the hours of eight and ten o’clock tonight—and your vampire king will lose the bridge along with any opportunity to reach his god.”
Huh. Casting a spell with actual words. Supposedly that’s how wizards used to do it before almost all magic was lost to the world, centuries ago. Even Stryker just uses runes…
There’s a lot I could learn from a book like this—if I could figure it out. I look at what she wrote, and she’s phonetically spelled out everything. I scan it over to see if there’s anything I’d have trouble with, but it actually seems super clear. Mom really knows her stuff.
“Of course, you’d actually need to be able toaccessyour mana for the incantation to work,” she coos, before reaching over and sucking in a sip of my Diet Coke, lamb-eyed. “It’s not automatic like the physical boost you get from feeding. So—have you figured out how to do that yet?”
She might be unaware of the fire I conjured with Collin and its limitations, but she’s fully aware that I’ve struggled with not feeling any mana inside me, and that she has deliberately taught me nothing about how I might find it. She also knows I’ve recently had access to the Avatar of Knowledge, which might have changed that equation. She’s clearly fishing.
