For a moment, no one says anything.
“He’s not wrong.” Lanz, of all people, speaks up. “If we’re going to mess with…her,we should be very, very careful.”
Suddenly, I’m not following. “You mean Morgan, right?”
Slowly, all of them shake their heads.
“Not Morgan,” Kingston says. “Vivian. The Lady of the Lake.”
Two hours later,we’ve relocated from the eerie calm of the Black Table to the colorful disarray of a suite in Cornubia Hall.
Morgan, of course, had been fully on board with seeking out the Lady of the Lake. “I’m mad I didn’t think of it first, honestly,” she’d muttered to me when we got there. It was my idea to ask for her help—for magical purposes, but also as a kind of moral support.
“Tea?” Morgan hands me a mug, which I accept. She’s in full hostess mode, flitting around her living room and doling out refreshments in a ruby-red track suit and high ponytail, a veritablearmyof candles lit up on every single flat surface against the press of darkness from outside. Meanwhile, the four swordsmen look…incongruous, to say the least. Uncomfortable. Tense. Almost too broad and hard-lined for the flowy feminine energy of the space.
Morgan, of course, is oblivious. Probably by choice.
“Tea?” She leans over to Kai.
“From you?” Kai scowls at the mug like it’s poisoned. “Pass.”
“Oh, for—it’schamomile,” Morgan says, rolling her eyes. “I used one little spell to heat the water. You going to burn me at the stake over that?” But she retracts her offer, leaving the mug on the counter as she climbs into her own armchair. “So. You think we need to talk to a Lady.”
“Yes.” Kingston is leaning forward from his seat on Morgan’s plush, spindly-legged couch, elbows on his knees and face serious. “Can you help us?”
Morgan cocks her head. “Would I have let you all in here otherwise?” She exhales. “Of course. So, the Lady of the Lake. As Ibelievewe all know, the name of the game is getting her to appear.” She pauses. “Right?”
“Right,” Kingston affirms, while Kai grunts. The other two just nod.
Kingston’s seen her before. I learned that much. Kai, too, although she really only spoke to Kingston. Just once, last summer. To sort of…bestow favor on them on behalf of Caliburn itself.
“Right. So. We can’t ask her anything if she’s not around, and she won’t be around unless she, you know.” Morgan spins a hand in the air, then shrugs. “Feels like it.”
“What do you mean?” I say. “She’s not just always, I don’t know…floating? Haunting?”
“What? No.” Morgan gives a little laugh. “Why would she do that?”
“I don’t know,” I say, taken aback. “I thought that’s how ghosts work.”
“She’s not a ghost,” Morgan and Kingston say at the same time.
The rest of us look at them.
“She’s not,” Morgan plunges on first. “I mean, I guess if you want to be really broad about it, she’s aspirit,of sorts, but that’s like saying that human beings are animals, or that tomatoes are fruits. It really sort of misses the point of the classification. More properly, she’s a?—”
“Genius loci,” Kingston finishes for her. “Sorry, not to interrupt.”
The chivalry only makes Morgan roll her eyes. “Whatever. It means?—”
“The spirit of a place,” I interrupt, not bothering to apologizing. I think of the stone at the lakeside, the engraving: CUSTODIAT HUNC LOCUM IN AETERNAM.
May she watch over this place forever.
“Right,” Morgan says.
“And that’s…what, exactly?”
This, from Callahan. He’s sitting next to Lanz, I notice, actually kind of crammed next to him, but looks…hesitant, somehow. Like maybe he doesn’t want to touch his not-so-secret boyfriend in front of the others, despite everything.
