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“You were there when what happened to me happened.” Adam remembered their last conversation, at the creek, when he’d hovered between life and death, ritual magic pouring through his guts like too-greasy food and his body mending itself with that same power. “And you know what I did.”
She leaned closer, to look at him over the top of her round, purple sunglasses.
“You mean, I know who you killed.”
“White.”
“Not to mention the other one.”
Adam closed his eyes for a long breath.
“I was hoping it wouldn’t count. If you didn’t know about it, then it didn’t happen.”
Sara waved her hand in a so-so gesture.
“Death is death, but it remains in flux. It hasn’t happened yet.”
“So it may not?”
“I won’t know until it does, or does not.”
“But you know I killed him?”
“I do keep my ear to the ground, Adam Lee.”
“Is it inevitable? Does it have to happen?”
“It already has.”
“It can’t. I have to stop it, stop him from becoming that.”
She sighed. “And here I was hoping this was just a social call.”
“I’m sorry, but I can’t exactly bring it up at Sunday dinner.”
“That’s fair. This is a tricky one, even by your standards.”
“Can I stop it?”
It was a loaded question, and he didn’t expect her to answer for free.
“Maybe.”
He blinked.
“So there’s a way that doesn’t break the rules.”
“None of the ones that apply to me.”
She was bound by cosmic laws, ones pertaining to balance. One said that what was dead was dead. There weren’t any return tickets from the afterlife. Another was that the living and the dead could not dwell together. He’d seen the side effects of that firsthand.
“I did something to Patrick Wilcox, Annie’s father. I used the sword to sever his magic.”
Adam traced one of the scars on his right arm with his fingertip. He couldn’t help it, couldn’t talk about it without touching the fine, white lines.
“And you’re thinking of doing it again, to Ian. Ian Vale Binder—what a name. I like it. If he never has magic, he’ll never become the Wolf, and you’d never have to kill him in the Between.”
“Yes, but every dream tells me that if I do it, I’ll break him. I’ll ruin his life by trying to save it.”
