“Tomorrow where?” Alarm flashed in Shireen’s eyes. “No, Alex, what are you planning? She won’t listen to me. It has to be you.”
“She’s going to listen to someone. Only question is who.”
“Wait!”
“Tomorrow, Shireen,” I said. “It’s time to end this.” I stepped out of Elsewhere, and back into my own dreams.
chapter 9
The next day dawned hot. It was September, but the summer weather had lingered, and the morning sun shone down out of a brilliant blue sky. Even this early, it was warm: come midday, it would be scorching. I stood in the shade at the edge of the woods, looking across the grassy valley.
We were in Wales, at Richard’s mansion. Or what was left of it. The once-elegant building was a mass of rubble and shattered walls, so thoroughly destroyed that you couldn’t even tell where the rooms had been. It looked as if a bomb had hit it, which it had. The front lawn was wild and overgrown, scattered with pieces of tile and stone that had been thrown outwards in the blast. A pair of crows hopped between the rocks, pecking at the ground.
To me, Richard’s mansion had been many things. A home, a school, a prison, a graveyard. I’d loved it and feared it and hated it with a burning passion. Seventeen years ago, for the four of us, this was where it had all begun. Today, this was where it would end.
A muffled footstep announced Cinder’s presence. He moved quietly for such a big man. “So?” he said.
“We’re clear.”
I started walking down the slope, and Cinder fell in beside me. The morning sun lit us up, casting bright shadows behind us. “Council?” Cinder asked.
“They won’t interfere.”
“Thought they wanted you.”
“Two days ago, they were hunting me,” I said. “Day after tomorrow, they might be doing it again. But not today.”
From across the valley, the ruins looked as if they could have been made yesterday. Up close was a different story. Grass had grown around the scattered tiles and bricks, and new bushes and saplings marked where last year’s battle had scorched the earth. The crows took off as we approached, flapping away down the slope, cawing in their harsh voices: arrh, arrh, arrh.
Cinder nodded at the rubble. “Dig through?”
“Don’t have to,” I said. “Council earth mages cleared a way.”
“Basement might have caved in.”
“I was the one who called in that airstrike, and I was the first one down into the basement. It’s still there.”
“Anyone moved in?”
“Who the hell would want to?”
We climbed over some rubble, skirted the remains of a chimney stack, and found ourselves at the top of a set of stairs leading down into darkness. It was easy to miss: in the bright daylight the stairway was a small shadow with nothing to mark it out. Searching with my magesight, I couldn’t see many auras. The summoning trap was long gone, and the gate wards that had once protected the mansion were ragged and patchy, many of their nodes destroyed. They would hamper gate magic, but wouldn’t prevent it.
Cinder called up a light and we descended into darkness, leaving the warmth and sun behind. Our footsteps echoed on the stone steps as we went deeper. At the bottom of the stairs the dark red of Cinder’s light illuminated a door.
We didn’t go far. One short corridor and we came out into the room the four of us had once called the chapel. The statues in the corners had been removed at some point, but the murals were still there, strange and unsettling. The archway by which we’d entered led back into the corridor and up the stairs. A second archway at the far end led deeper into darkness. I walked to the middle of the room and stopped.
“This is it?” Cinder asked.
I nodded.
Cinder’s light lit his face from below, casting strange shadows from his features. “So?”
I began to lean against one of the walls, then saw the murals and thought better of it. “Now we wait.”
Cinder looked at me. “Wait?”
“What, you thought I was going to use the fateweaver?” I said. “Lure her in?”
“Can you?”
“I’ve seen her twice the past few days,” I said. “Once in Tibet, once in London. Both times she gated in on me. Know what I did to lure her in?”
Cinder looked at me.
“Nothing,” I said. “I was trying to deal with other problems, and both times Rachel somehow managed to show up at exactly the time and place to make my life as difficult as possible. So no, I’m not going to lure her, or do any kind of fancy tricks. I’m just going to hang around somewhere suspicious, like here, and wait for her to show up and ruin my day. Because that’s what she does.”
Cinder studied me. “Called her Rachel.”
“I did?”
Cinder gave a nod.
I shrugged irritably. “Slip of the tongue.”
“You sit here, she shows up?”
“Best guess.”
“So why’d you wait so long?”
“Because bringing her here is all I can do,” I said, and pointed up and out. “You and I have been allies two and a half years now. The deal was that you’d help me out if I got R—split her from Richard. Well, I’ve done it. But you wanted more. You want things back the way they used to be. Right?”
Cinder looked at me for a second, then nodded again.
“And that I can’t promise,” I said. “Right now, she walks down those stairs and sees me, she’s just going to kick off and we’re back to square one. The way I see it, the only thing that has a chance of turning her off the path she’s on right now . . . is you. And it has to be now, because I can’t keep doing this. She’s been trying to kill me too long, got close too many times. If after you’ve said your piece she still goes for me . . . then it’ll be the last time.”
Cinder looked at me silently.
“You okay with that? I can’t keep softballing any longer.”
“Enough chances,” Cinder said. “I get it.”
We stood in silence for a little while. The chapel was dark and cold. We would only have to turn and walk up those steps to return to the warmth and the morning light, but somehow it felt very far away.
“Mind if I ask you something?” I said.
“Yes.”
“I’ve never asked how you two got to be partners. Figure it’s not my business. But I really want to know why you haven’t given up on her.”