“Casey, you’re an Earth witch, right?” I ask.
“Yep. My affinity is the Queen of Pentacles. Why do you ask?”
“No reason.” I smile, feeling my mother’s presence surround me like a hug.
When Casey turns to leave, a Tarot card flutters to the ground behind her.
I don’t have to look at it to know it’s the Queen of Pentacles.
* * *
With nothing left to say, nothing left to eat, and nothing left to pack, the house empties in a surprisingly quite rush. Car engines start, then fade away. The sun rises a little higher above the horizon, already baking the red stones around us like a clay oven. Jareth swoops down to land on a tree in the front yard, letting me know he’s ready to rock.
“One more time,” Baz says, opening the closet door.
“Phase one,” I say. “Blast our way back into the Fool’s Grave, courtesy of our own personal wrecking ball.”
Kirin gives a tiny bow.
“Phase two,” I continue, “do the ritual to bust the Arcana objects out of magickal protection. Phase three, nab said objects, hightail it to the Void, and break our guys out of prison. Hopefully kill a few Dark Arcana dicks in the process. And if we survivethatfun, then it’s onto phase four—”
“Make our way to campus and roast the dark mage brigade,” Baz says, “along with any other yellow-eyed, undead corpse bent on murdering the people we love and stealing away our magick.”
“Sounds like a party,” I say.
Kirin sighs. “I still wish we didn’t need Ani’s blood for this. It would be a hell of a lot easier if we didn’t have to involve him at all.”
“Not only do we need his blood,” Baz says grimly, “but we need to steal it from him and take him down before he figures out we’re onto him, and all without seriously hurting him. That body is still Ani’s.”
“The timing has to be just right,” Kirin says, not for the first time this morning. “We can’t let him know we’re onto him too quickly.”
“No, but the longer we play along,” I say, “the more danger we’re in and the greater the risk to Doc andourAni. What if he makes a move on us before we make ours? What if he brings backup? What if he leaves the Wand with Judgment and we can’t get it back? What if we’re not strong enough to break through the rocks at the Fool’s Grave?”
Baz puts a hand on my shoulder, letting out a deep sigh. “There’s a lot of what-ifs in this scenario, Little Bird.”
His words hit me hard. Therearea lot of what-ifs. So many, in fact, that if I keep trying to list them all, I’m going to scare us all into running upstairs and hiding under the blankets while the world burns down around us.
As witches and mages born in a time where our kind is feared at best, murdered at worst, we all grew up with targets on our back.
As Keepers of the Grave, we’ll probablyalwaysbe at risk, no matter what we achieve today.
But the coming war is the most dangerous, high-stakes, life-altering thing any of us has ever faced. So many things could go wrong, and despite Baz’s insistence on multiple contingency plans, when it comes down to it, this time we don’t have an inch of wiggle room.
But wedohave one another.
A deep calm settles into my bones.
As long as my mages are with me, I’m ready to face those insane odds.
“You know what, though?” I say, finally finding my strength. My confidence. My inner doer of epic shit. “We’renot a what-if.”
I stretch up on my toes and kiss him breathless. Then, turning to Kirin, I press my lips to his, inhaling his scent and kissing him until my head spins.
Out front, Jareth swoops down from his perch, letting me know he’s with us before soaring up to the skies again.
“You ready?” Baz asks, his red-brown eyes searching mine in the morning light.
With one last glance around the house I’ve come to know as home, I strap on my pack, shake off the last of my jitters, and step into the closet.
