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The moment he saw Sky, he stepped into the chamber and gathered her into his arms. Sky wrapped her legs around his waist and buried her face in his neck. She breathed in his warm, spicy, familiar scent—the scent of home and safety and protection, she realized. The scent of the man who loved her.
“I love you too!” she whispered in his ear. “Oh, Torin—I love you so much!”
“Oh—is it really you, Commander Torin?” The High Priestess asked anxiously, when Torin finally set Sky down, still holding the space vacuum carefully in one big hand. “But…where is the killer?” she asked, peering around his muscular bulk to the hallway outside.
“In here.” Torin lifted the vacuum and waved it at her. “Shot him into pieces and vacuumed them up. Oops—looks like I missed a few.”
He was looking at the little black slugs that had been part of the killer’s fingers, Sky saw. Leaning down, he pushed a button and sucked the little slimy bits of goo into the silver cylinder of the vacuum.
“But…is he safe in there? I mean, he can’t get out, can he?” Neen’ya asked anxiously.
“Nah—it’s vacu-sealed. He’s stuck in here,” Torin said, grinning at her. “I think I got all of him, but just to be sure, let’s look around. He’s made out of soul poison, you know—we don’t want any of that shit running around.”
They all took a moment to look around the circular chamber. Neen’ya found one more slug-like piece of oozing black goo which Torin promptly sucked up with the vacuum and that seemed to be that.
As they were about to go, Sky thought that maybe she should check The Book Which Writes Itself one last time. After all, if she was a piece of evil goo, she would definitely try to hide in a holy artifact that no one dared to touch.
Leaning over the yellowed pages, she looked carefully to be certain not a single bit of the killer remained. The last words the Book had given them still remained—“One of you is going to die.”
Well, I guess it’s wrong sometimes, Sky thought, feeling relieved.
And that was when she heard a rustle of pages and the invisible hand started writing again.
The old words disappeared and what she read was this:
“You are the one.”
FIFTY-FOUR
TORIN
Sky’lar was strangely quiet on their trip to the Mother Ship. She’d agreed to come with Torin to see the killer—who was the scion of the Cruel Father, as he had explained to her—properly imprisoned for all time. Torin would have thought she would be ecstatic—especially after they had expressed their feelings for each other. Instead, she sat quietly in the passenger side chair, staring at the viewscreen, not saying a word.
“Darlin’? You okay?” he asked, throwing her a sidelong glance. “You’re awfully quiet over there.”
“I’m just…thinking.” She was absently rubbing her fingers against her palm—a nervous habit, maybe.
“Are you, uh, regretting what you said to me in the Chamber of the Book Which Writes Itself? What we said to each other?” Torin asked, hoping like hell that wasn’t it.
“What? Oh, no—no, of course not.” She gave him a shy smile that did all kinds of crazy things to his heart. “No, I meant it. I know it sounds crazy, since we just met not that long ago but, well…it just feels like we belong together. Do you know what I mean?”’
“I know exactly what you mean, Darlin’. “Torin grinned at her. “So why are you so quiet over there? What are you thinking about—where we’re going to live? Because I can ask to be assigned to Portex Three or you can come live on the Mother Ship—it doesn’t matter to me as long as we get to be together.”
“I want to be together, too.” But she still looked troubled.
“Baby, what is it—you can tell me,” Torin said earnestly.
“Oh, just…something The Book Which Writes Itself said—or, wrote, I guess—right before we left its chamber.” She shook her head and looked down at her hands, her fingers still rubbing restlessly against her palm. “Do you think it’s always accurate? Like one hundred percent?”
“I don’t know,” Torin said honestly. “You’d know more about it than me—you live on Portex Three. I was only visiting to solve this case.”
“They say it never lies.” She looked down at her hand, the fingers still restlessly rubbing. “How deadly is soul poison? You know—the stuff the killer was made of?”
“What? Why are you asking that?” Torin was beginning to be really worried about her now.
“Because I think…” Sky’lar looked up at him at last and he saw that her blue eyes were suspiciously shiny. “I think I might have it. Soul poisoning, I mean.”
“What?” Torin put the ship on autopilot and turned to face her. “What are you talking about? Show me!” he demanded.
Suddenly, the words poured out.
“I cut myself on my on dagger and then I tried to stab him,” Sky’lar told him. “And then some of his poison—the black stuff—ran down the hilt and got into the cut. It burned and stung but I was so busy running for my life and trying to save the High Priestess and her two acolytes, I barely noticed. But then while we were in the Chamber, the Book Which Writes Itself said one of us was going to die. And then the last time I looked at it, it said that I was the one who was going to die.”
