Souls imprisoned in a tomb… Soldiers marching for our doom…
I blink back tears, the words blurring like tiny ants marching across the page.
“What do you think it means?” Kirin asks, peering down over my shoulder. “All that fire imagery is a little intense.”
“What it means is my mother was fucking stoned when she wrote this.” I grab the stack of papers and chuck them across the room, frustration and helplessness colliding inside me, pushing me to my feet. “I amsodone with this emo Arcana poetry. Fire, flames, death-death-death. Why couldn’t she just write about sex and breakups like everyone else? Maybe include a few guitar chords, make a whole song out of it all. What good is a tragedy if you can’t turn it into a song?”
“Sex and breakups aren’t going to help us beat the Dark Arcana.”
“Neither is this shit if we can’t decipher it.”
“We can, though.Youcan.” He pushes his glasses up his nose, offering an encouraging smile. “Stevie, you’re doing amazing. Even without the original material, you’ve translated so much more in a short time. Under extreme duress, I might add.”
“But the translations don’t make any sense!”
“Not yet, they don’t. But it will come to you. It always does.” He shifts in the chair, motioning for me to sit with him, but I’m too amped up. I pace the room, trying to work off the anxiety running through my veins.
“Goddess, my mother’s mind is like a maze with no way out.” I pick up the scattered papers, stacking them on the coffee table, flipping over the top page so I don’t have to look at it anymore. “That verse… Is it about the fires that happened a couple months back, when they first started rounding up all those witches and accusing them of arson? Is it a clue about future attacks? The whole thing about the flames and rising from the ashes reminds me of Judgment, but beyond that? I don’t know what to make of it. For all I know, it’s completely unrelated to any of this. And that’s the problem, Kirin. It all comes down to my interpretation of my mother’s interpretations of whatever messages she was channeling at the time. There’s alotof room for error here, and we don’t have the luxury of getting it wrong. People’s lives are at stake.”
“You’re saying you want to give up on the prophecies? After all the work we’ve put in, all the late nights, all the breakthroughs? You want to forget about it and go back to the textbooks?”
“I… No. Of course not.” I blow out a breath, my frustration no match for Kirin’s calm, steady presence. With a soft smile, I join him again, sitting in his lap and drawing my knees up to my chest. His strong embrace is like a reset button, and I rest my head on his shoulder, sinking into his warmth. “I guess I just want all the answers, and no one has them, and Ani’s still trapped in the dream realm, and everyone here is working so hard to master their magick, and we have no idea whether the Arcana objects are safe, or what the Dark Magician is planning, or whether Judgment can still get to us… Goddess, Kirin. For all we know, he’s holding Ani hostage, and that’s why he can’t return to us.”
“Shh.” He pulls me closer, pressing a kiss to the top of my head. “Don’t speculate like that. We may not understand what’s happening in his mind, but Ani is physically stable. I’m taking that as a positive sign.”
“Maybe we should work in Ani’s room today. He might call for me again.”
“It’s been two weeks.” Kirin says gently, his breath stirring my hair. “We can’t keep putting everything else on hold, pacing his bedroom and just hoping it happens again.”
“Itwillhappen again. He just needs more time.”
“Yes, and in the meantime,weneed to keep moving forward. That means you can keep working on this research with me, or you can practice your mental magicks with Cass, or potions with Professor Broome, or water magick with the girls, or any of the other magickal skills you still need to learn. But youcan’tkeep climbing the walls, waiting in limbo for Ani to come back to us. That won’t help anyone.”
“I can’t just leave him like that. He’s…” I trail off, my words lost to the wave of emotion rising inside me.
“We won’t leave him,” he says, stroking my back. “Never. We just need to keep working on the prophecies until… Baz?”
Kirin’s energy shifts so quickly I barely have time to process it, hopeful and encouraging to raw, unchecked fear in a heartbeat.
“What’s going on?” I glance up just as Baz comes barreling into the room, keyed up like a live wire. Totally ignoring us, he digs the remote out from between the couch cushions and clicks on the TV.
“We’re working in here,” I say, but he holds up his hand to shush me, eyes glued to the newscaster who just appeared on screen.
“…reporting live outside Moonlight Bay Beach, California,” she says grimly, “where authorities say an explosion of unknown origin has decimated the entire city.”
She’s standing on some sort of dock, and behind her, gray smoke billows across the horizon, the blackened skeletons of buildings barely discernible through the haze.
“This is a rapidly evolving situation,” she continues, “but initial estimates place the death toll in the hundreds, with scores more grievously injured. The explosion occurred at approximately two p.m. Pacific Standard time, when… wait, we’re getting an update…” She presses her fingers against her earpiece, nodding as she processes the new info. “We’ve just confirmed that the explosion was both intentional and magickal in nature. I’m being told that the FBI’s Magickal Enforcement Unit has just arrived on the scene via military escort.”
“Holy shit.” I rise from Kirin’s lap and stand next to Baz, reaching for his hand as the others flood into the living room.
“Guys!” Isla says. “Did you hear?”
“What’s going on?” Nat’s face is pinched with worry. “I just saw something on my phone about an explosion in California?”
Doc comes to stand at my other side, wrapping a protective hand around the back of my neck as the reporter approaches a fire chief and a group of police officers, all of them black with soot, their eyes haunted.
“Excuse me, can any of you tell us whether you’ve made contact with the survivors? Are rescue operations already underway?”
