Rise of the Magi (3 page)

Sniffling drew my gaze to the white sofa. Brígh lay curled in a ball on her side, her mass of cotton candy pink curls tumbling over her face. Her pale lavender sundress sported enough tear stains on the bodice that she must have been crying for hours.

“I told you to stay out,” she said with little conviction, her voice thick with emotion.

I knelt by her head, spreading her hair so I could see her eyes, finding them bright and full of terror as if she’d just returned from a stint in one of my nightmares. “If you thought I’d listen, then you seriously need your head read, Pinky.”

The sight of her wet face, contorted from some internal agony, punched a fist into my center. Desperate to do something, I sat beside her on the sofa and pulled her against me. Like a little girl, she scrambled into my lap and hunched in on herself, sobbing.

For a long time, I held her, stroking her back, uncertain what to do. Afraid to ask. Afraid to know what would have affected her so profoundly. If she’d been anyone else, I could have shared her pain, taken it into myself, but as a Seer, Brígh could keep me out with ease, and usually did. I hummed the song from my mother’s music box until she calmed and relaxed against me, swaying to the melody.

Flaming hell.
My sinking stomach clued in that we’d gone from bad to worse. “This isn’t about Cas, is it?” I asked on a near whisper. “This is something more, something much more.”

Brígh snuffled and raised her head from my shoulder, running her arm across her eyes. “I snotted all over you.” Her failed laugh sounded more like she barked or maybe choked.

“Don’t change the subject. You’re scaring the bajeepers out of me here.”

Aided by a few grunts, she shuffled out of my lap, tucked her skirt under her feet, and hugged her knees beside me, chin wedged between them. Her rocking motion cranked up my alarm even more.

“You’re killing me here.” I turned to her, but she still didn’t look at me. What could have set her off so badly?
Oh.
A vision, of course. “Have you Seen something?”

Her rocking ceased, and she went rigid, remaining so still I wondered if she’d lost consciousness until she blinked. “They’ve forbidden me to tell you.” Her voice came out a mouse squeak.

I bristled, got up and crouched in front of her again so she’d be forced to meet my stare. “Who has?” Who thought they had authority over Liam and me?

She blasted out a scoffing sound, her blue eyes turning cold and as hard as a frog pond in the dead of winter. “The Overseers, who else? Geez, Lila. Have you been on the moon?”

I glowered at her, taken aback by her uncharacteristic swipe at me. I had been on a moon receiving some more head-shrinking sessions with Laerni, actually, or whatever planet the elves were from, but I didn’t think bringing that up would help matters. “And you don’t agree with their decision?”

“Ya think?”

I sat mountain-still as I considered what the Overseers had done. My muscles coiled that the knowledge sitting in that head of hers had been locked there by a bunch of old fuddy-duddies I hadn’t so much as laid eyes on.
No time like the present to change that.
Once my throat loosened, I said, “If your vision affects this city, the fae, or this Magi situation, then I don’t care who forbade it, you have to tell me.” At Brígh shrinking in on herself even farther, I reconsidered and asked, “What are the consequences if you tell me?”

Raising her head from her knees, she seemed to ponder that for a moment, confused expressions passing over her face. “They’ll take away my Sight.”

Could they even do that? Wasn’t that the Goddess’ job to bless and rescind?

Brígh nodded as if coming to terms with something. “I guess it doesn’t really matter. For this, it’ll be worth the price. If you can really change it.”

Losing her gift would devastate her. Guilt chewed at me.

Liam popped his head through the door, but I held up a hand and said,
“Give us a minute, okay?”
through our bond and left myself open for him to listen in. He offered a sympathetic smile and retreated, a reminder of why I loved him to pieces. No questions, no demands, I just asked, and he trusted me to take care of everything.

Afraid of breaking whatever little moment Brígh had slipped into, I climbed onto the cushion beside her and waited, screaming inside for her to spill it.

After a few agonizing minutes, that could have been a decade if my frantic perception had been doing the measuring, she finally said, “I can’t see my future.” She shook her head, sending her pink ringlets shifting across her pale, bare arms. “Nothing beyond the next few days or so. Zilch.” Hand flying in the air, she added, “I can’t have a baby with Cas. I waited so long to meet him, and now we’re going to be ripped apart before we’ve barely begun. This fucking blows.”

Unable to swallow the barbed wire from my throat, I stared at her. “I don’t care what you saw, it must be wrong. And if it’s not, I’ll change it if I have to hide you under my bed for the next century.” I all but growled. “You’re not going to die, do you hear me?” I paused to allow my heart to slow lest it splatter all over my guts, and fought the urge to plow my fist through the nearest hard surface. “What happens if you try to see anything else? Like, what’s threatening you? Is it the Magi?” I went stone cold again, waiting for the truth to crush me.

Her feet slid off the cushion and landed with a pop on the floor. Like a zombie, her head swiveled to me, lashes wet and eyes devoid of their usual zing and spark. “Whenever I try to See anything beyond the next few weeks, all I see are trees. The rivers run scarlet with blood. The great lakes are nothing but red wounds. Pain echoes against the hills, carried within piteous wails from near and far. And the world is swallowed by green … fucking … trees, like a plague of locusts devouring a cornfield. The rest of the human world, the elves, selkies, and the fae will all fall before the first autumn leaf hits the ground. We’re all dead.” The last, she said in a tone that reeked of prophesy, low and even, detached.

“Shit.”
Liam voiced my own thoughts in my head.

My cheeks burned with shame over the distant relief that she hadn’t mentioned me delivering death in her vision. Maybe what I saw when I slept were just dreams after all and not warnings of the future.

How could I stop it? The Magi were veritable ghosts, flitting in and out of existence while leaving no trace behind except mangled, half consumed bodies. Remembering how I’d found Galati, and nearly killed her while attempting to separate her from the tree trying to consume her, a deep shiver rattled from my fingertips to toes. Time was running out. We either had to find the Magi or die.

3

Cas slipped through the door, gaze fixed to the floor like a dog waiting to be beaten. I tugged Brígh off the sofa and brought her to her unofficial mate—the Goddess had yet to bond them officially, but, as I kept reassuring her, it was only a matter of time; nobody rushed the woman. Brígh resisted my pull for a moment, but when I took Cas’ hand and slipped hers into it, she collapsed against him.

My tendencies had always leaned toward suffering in silence until I exploded all over the problem, but I’d recently discovered—since Liam and Laerni had entered my life—how unburdening it could be to spread the misery around a tad.

“Tell him, Brígh.”
Don’t be like I used to be.
Somehow uttering words to a sympathetic ear made everything seem not as bad. Maybe it was delusion—all in my head. I didn’t care. It worked. Even though Cas wouldn’t know what I was talking about, to him I added, “I won’t let anything happen to her. You didn’t do anything wrong, and don’t take no for answer until she spills her guts, no matter how hard it is to hear. I have to talk to … oh, hell, everyone I can find, I guess.”

A tiny smile arched Cas’ lips as he guided Brígh back to the sofa, talking softly to her. They’d be okay. We all would, or I didn’t deserve to hold my station as queen of the fae. Too bad I didn’t have a clue how to start fixing the mess we were in.

Head hanging forward, I exited the bungalow. Liam paced on the front walk, hands gesturing. Mutterings tumbled from his moving lips. He looked as close to exploding as I’d ever seen him. At least he’d put some clothes on: a pair of dark jeans and a blue plaid short-sleeved button down.

He extended his hand to me. I hesitated only a moment before grabbing onto it. “Her visions change,” he said. “You know that.”

I met his troubled gaze, wishing I found more confidence in his thoughts to support the idea. “For them to change, we have to do something to alter the path we’re currently on. Isn’t that how she said it works?”

He nodded but didn’t look happy about agreeing with me. “Then, the million dollar question is how do we change our path when we can’t find these lousy tree people?”

“Dryads. That’s what Gallagher’s calling them, anyway. The true children of the Goddess are the basis for the dryad legends, not that I know lily-white-squat about that—I just smile and nod and pretend to listen to him.”

“Bitches-from-hell works, too.”

I couldn’t help but snort at that, though it didn’t last long before dying away in the face of the demon in the room. “I wonder what the Goddess thinks about her kiddies planning to destroy everyone on earth.”

“If they were mine, and I had the power she does, they’d be lightning fodder.” He cast a wary glance upward as if waiting for said lightning to find him.

“Yeah. Ditto on that. I’m thinking it’s more complicated than a simple discipline problem, though.” I frowned.
We have a stop to make.

“You told Gallagher the three of us needed to talk?” At my glower, he added, “I didn’t go digging, Lila, give me a little credit. You were thinking about it just now.”

“Oh.” I didn’t realize the thought had sailed through my head. “Yeah, sorry. He lost contact with Raze’s team.”

Liam shoved fingers through his hair, making it stand up in a way that reminded me of how he looked after we’d been for a naked tumble on the bed. Or in the woods. Or at the waterfall we’d found along the river in the north. It had grown long enough for me to tangle my fingers in.

Shaking off my pornographic thoughts, disgusted how I could even think such things during an imminent war, I grabbed his wrist and started down the street. We had only a few weeks to find a way out of our sinkhole. How could so many trees grow to cover the earth before the first leaf fell? Had the Magi needed the selkie pelts to make their forest spread like a disease?

My energy sparked, cracking the air as I considered anything happening to Brígh. If I could have plucked a perfect sister out of my twisted little fantasies to take the place of the two I’d lost to Parthalan, she would have been just like
Brígh. It couldn’t be a coincidence that her own future disappeared when her other vision of a tree-plagued earth began. Somehow, the two had to be related; I only had to figure out how. I also had to consider that whatever would happen to her would come before the Magi’s big move instead of being a part of it, or she’d have been able to see at least a little way into her future.

“Will there ever be a time when we aren’t walking around with an axe over our heads?” Liam asked after he’d exhausted his grunting and cursing.

I wished I knew. Every time I thought it was time to celebrate victory—like killing Alastair and Parthalan—that we’d done the seemingly impossible, another disaster fell on our shit pile. If I didn’t learn how to climb faster, and drag my people, half of them kicking and screaming, with me, it would bury me alive.

“I don’t know what I’d do without you here,” I mumbled, half hoping Liam hadn’t heard me. According to Laerni, I thought lots of great stuff that never made it out of my mouth. After a few months of intense psychotherapy, she suggested words would mean more if spoken of my own free will instead of having them pulled from my head.

Chuckling, he stopped, grabbed me and pushed me out to arm’s length. “I’m sorry, what was that?”

Feeling all squirmy and needing a boulder to hide under, I tried to wriggle free from his grasp without success. He slid his fingertip beneath my chin while hooking his free arm around my back, holding my lower half firmly against his solid frame.

A few seconds passed before I met his gaze. “You heard me.”

His smile did crazy things within my body, sending wave after wave of hot flashes to my deep places. Muscles down low quickened. Flutters started a rave in my belly.

“I thought I did, but I couldn’t have heard you right.” He kissed my nose, his lips never breaking contact until they made it to my forehead where he planted another and another until he’d thoroughly liquefied my bones. “Tell me again. Please.”

Lost in eyes like crystal oceans with golden treasures glistening on the white sands far below the surface, he could have asked me anything, and I’d have told him without hesitation. “I said … I don’t know what I’d do if you weren’t here with me. I need you. Now more than ever. You keep me from drowning in all of this.”

He stayed silent for a while. “Wow.” Another brush of his lips, that time at the corner of my mouth, followed with a wicked, shuddering breath. Instead of saying the words, he opened himself to me and let me feel what my admission had done to him. A rush of joy heated me from the inside out. I’d almost reduced him to tears, and he was letting me see it, feel it. That meant as much to me as my saying it had meant to him.

Once I found the will to tear myself out of his arms, we finished our journey to the Court garden. Gallagher still lay on the same dais, staring into the wilderness of his own thoughts or maybe at the spirits. By the grim set of his lips, and the even deeper grooves in his brow, I took it he’d already gone spelunking into my head and knew about Brígh’s vision.

“What do we do?” He sat up as we neared him, groaning as if in pain.

“No, Gallagher, you don’t ask me that.” I shook my head and jabbed a finger at him. “You’re the aide; I’m the newbie in this joint. I’m coming here to ask you what to do, and you’re supposed to know.”

The lost look in his opaque eyes shredded the remaining thread of hope I’d clung to. Guilt skewered me. “I wish … I do not know what to do,” Gallagher said. “This level of threat
is unprecedented and beyond my comprehension.”