“I… the god called Aemon pulled me into his world. He wanted me to join him. When I refused, he became violent. He attacked me and told me that I’d tried to kill him when I was at full strength and failed, so how do I plan to succeed now that I’m in this state?” I leave out what he said about how it’ll kill me if allof the sand spills out. I really don’t want to upset Torin when it might not be anything.
Because Kit has been staring at me, I don’t notice Mickey until he squeezes my hand. “Do you think that’s why there was a two-hundred-year gap where he didn’t continue? How the hell were you planning on killing him?” he asks, sounding thoughtful.
My grip on the hourglass is beginning to hurt, so I loosen my hand, but I can feel the grains of sand between my fingers. It makes me ache because I need this comfort. I can’t lose it.
“We’ll find a way to free your horse,” Torin assures me. “I promise.”
“I need to run back to my world for a little while. I’ll be right back,” I say.
He shakes his head. “I don’t want you to go alone.”
“I’ll go with him,” Mickey offers.
Torin seems uncertain, but he has so much going on that he reluctantly nods and lets us leave. The second I’m through the new Door that leads right into the Magical Interference Unit building, I hurry over to the supply closet and grab some tape to cover the crack on the hourglass.
“What’s going on?” Mickey asks.
“With what?”
“You left out something when you were explaining what happened.”
Mickey and his annoyingly perceptive ass. “I definitely didn’t,” I say while I wind the tape around the hourglass three times, but just as I cut it, the hourglass becomes so hot that I end up dropping it. It hits the end of the chain where I watch the tape shrivel up and melt away. “No, no, no… I need some glue or something.”
“There’s probably something on the glass that will keep you from repairing it,” Mickey says, but he sends Tommy off to find some glue. “Riley, I won’t tell Torin. Now what’s going on?”
“Nothing.”
“Something is.”
Tommy returns with heavy-duty glue that I use to seal the hole, but it won’t even dry; it just drips off while the glass becomes so hot I can’t even hold on to it. And when the glue sloughs away, I watch grains of sand fall with it. I wrap my hand around it even as it burns into my flesh.
“Stop! Riley, let go of it!” Mickey shouts while pain eats into my hand, but I can’t let my horse die. I can’t let him die.
Mickey grabs my fingers, prying them up and ripping my hand off the hourglass.
“What the fuck did that solve?” he asks as he pushes my burned hand away from it.
“I’m a monster who killed thousands of people, a monster who has fallen in love with the man I’ve hurt the most… and as soon as the last grain of sand falls out of this, my horse will die and I will die with him.”
“Why the fuck would you keep this to yourself?” Mickey demands, releasing my hand. “Let’s… put something around it to catch the sand, okay? Something that’s not touching the glass but can still catch the sand. And we’ll figure this out.”
“I have to go free Conquest.”
“Conquest? The dude who tried destroying this world? There’s still so much destruction left that he caused,” Mickey says while he bats a soul at my face, like he hopes getting smacked with one will wake me up some. I’ve gotten so used to them bobbing around me that I barely notice them until someone decides to harass them. “We don’t know if Conquest is lying to you. We don’t know if he’s trying to use you. What if this god is using Conquest to draw you out?”
I know everything he’s saying is true, but we have to dosomething. “I don’t think we can stop War. I really don’t. So then we have Conquest, whether that means we have to lock him up somewhere or gain some control over him before Aemon convinces him to strike again. And then… if I die, you guys will have a horseman who can help. One who’s actually powerful.”
“You’re pissing me off,” Mickey growls.
I grab his shoulders and force him to face me. “You’re the smart one here. Tell me what the fuck I should do, then.”
“I believe there’s more to that first book you found and translated than what we have. There might even be a second book,” he says.
“What?”
“The book you—the former Death—were carrying when Torin attacked… it’s all just… ramblings I believe were written by Aemon, but there are a few sections where someone else adds things… I think that person might have been you. And I feel like there’s a possibility that you added more elsewhere. Possibly a journal or something. I think there’s a chance that you left details on how you tried to kill the god. It might explain how we can stop him.”
“It’d be nice if I knew where that info is, but I have no idea. It might have been destroyed, for all I know. All I have is the medallion I found out in the battlefield and the book.”
