The Dark Calling

  "Of course I do. I want to know why she took such a turn for the worse on the one night I left the castle."

  "She'd been steadily declining." He turned to Aric. "You recall her condition when she first came here. You told me you'd feared she wouldn't survive the journey. I kept her alive for months more. When she passed, it was a mercy."

  Though Aric had in fact found her in dire straits, I demanded of Paul, "Did you show her mercy?"

  Meeting my eyes, he solemnly said, "I would never hurt anyone under my care. Never."

  He was so freaking believable. So why didn't I buy any of this?

  Aric gazed down at my face. "Let us leave and discuss things."

  Paul stood, addressing him: "Sir, you've always been fair to me. What do you want me to do? How can I make this right? I need to make this right."

  God, he was good. Aric looked sympathetic. Not me. The tiny hairs on my nape rose. This is all an act.

  "My wife and I will consider the situation at length. In the meantime, you'll be confined to your quarters."

  My head whipped around. "What?" Not good enough. Aric had said he'd keep Paul locked up until I decided his fate. I'd decided.

  Paul told me, "You've been through so much, Evie. If you need me to stay sequestered to feel comfortable, then I'll gladly do it."

  Baring my claws, I said, "I need you out of our lives--"

  Aric took my arm and squired me outside, then shut the door behind him. "I'll install a lock on this after I escort you back."

  "Locking him up won't be enough! If he'll do this, what else is he capable of?"

  "Sieva, I cannot fathom any motive for his actions."

  "What if he is crazy?"

  "What do you wish me to do? Execute someone for mental illness? After the apocalypse?"

  I didn't want Aric to kill someone he believed was innocent or sick, but . . . "I know he's acting. I sense malice in him."

  After a moment, Aric gave me a grave nod. "Then I will exile him. Once the blizzard passes."

  I ground my molars. "You expect me to wait for the weather to break?"

  "It would be a death sentence otherwise. How dangerous can he be, jailed in his room? What will a couple of days hurt?"

  "What will they help? If you believed me, you would cut him down!" Inhaling for calm, I said, "I can't wrap my head around this. My husband, the one who applauded my judgment, is doubting me." I turned back toward our wing.

  In the den, Lark and Finn both sat up. "Well?"

  I put my hands on my hips. "Don't you already know, Lark?"

  She shrugged without shame. Naturally, she'd used one of her creatures to spy on my confrontation. "What if Paul did get everything mixed up back then? This Arcana stuff would be a lot for any mortal to take in. Just a few months ago, he was in a coal bin, hiding from a rampaging troll." Ogen.

  "You want someone that messed-up to do surgery on your boyfriend?"

  "Paul sounds good now," she said. "Good enough to fix Finn's leg."

  I stared the Magician down. "Don't let him touch you. Please don't."

  Eyes wide, he shook his head. "Wasn't gonna."

  I looked from him to Lark. "Tell me you aren't trusting one of Paul's shots for protection."

  Finn's face turned red. Lark glared.

  Clearing his throat, Aric said, "Paul will be exiled once the weather clears. In the meantime, do not speak to him. Lark, you'll bring him meals and take over his duties."

  She opened her mouth to argue, then closed it. Her gaze landed on me, her eyes tinged red.

  Like a warning light.

  _______________

  Later that night, Aric and I lay side by side, staring at the ceiling in silence. The blizzard had strengthened, winds howling over the castle. Lightning flashed every couple of seconds.

  Inside, flames crackled in the fireplace and warmth emanated from his skin. I gazed over at his flawless profile.

  Before we'd gone to bed, I'd found the wedding ring I'd made him, still in my coat pocket. A startling thought had arisen: I'm glad I didn't give this to him. I'd hidden it in a drawer beside the red ribbon Jack had saved from before the Flash. That keepsake had survived even my run-in with Sol and Zara.

  Aric turned to face me and rasped, "Talk to me." As I struggled to marshal all the thoughts swirling in my head, he said, "We agreed that if either of us needed something out of this relationship, we should talk about it."

  "Can you not understand how trapped I feel right now? Not only have I had this pregnancy forced on me--against my will--I have to live in the same place with the asshole who betrayed me."

  In addition to wanting revenge against Richter, I'd come up with four new missions: to find out if Jack lived, to somehow strengthen my powers, to uncover proof that Paul had harmed my grandmother, and to get him gone.

  "I'm trying to protect you."

  "How?"

  "By making sure nothing is done that cannot be undone. You've never been pregnant before--all of this is new to us--so let's proceed with caution."

  Was he hinting that my judgment might be off because I was knocked up? When would my judgment ever be considered on? "Why won't you even look at the notes I made?" Earlier, I'd written down everything I could remember Gran saying. To be fair, I didn't understand the majority of it, but some fragments were beginning to make an eerie kind of sense.

  Aric hadn't even glanced at them. "Because I recall her vehemently accusing me of killing her. In light of that, I must discount her other statements."

  "Maybe she confused Paul's actions with yours, or thought you'd ordered him to harm her." On the day she died, she'd told me, "He's murdering your last blood relative. A rat! The agent of Death. A salamander. Noon serpents in the shadow. Midnight takes my life!" What if she'd considered Paul to be Death's agent?

  "Are you accusing Paul of cold-blooded murder?" Aric asked. "Even though he's never demonstrated a hint of anything sinister? Again and again, he's behaved with compassion and loyalty. Malice on his part isn't logical. It doesn't make sense."

  "But confusion on my part does?"

  Changing the subject, Aric said, "Are we not to talk about our baby?"

  "The li'l Bagger I'm carrying?" Sol had told me that his zombies transmitted a 'radiation-based mutation.' That couldn't be good.

  "Our child will be mortal or Arcana. No more, no less. I've lived a long time, and I feel that all will be well." He reached for my belly. "I am asking you to trust me."

  I brushed his hand away. "You have lived a long time. You've garnered a lot of experience. But not in this area." My head started to hurt. When would Matthew contact me again? Where are you?

  For the hundredth time, I replayed my last exchange with him. Through our spotty telepathic link, he'd whispered in my mind . . . .

  --Have a secret. He doesn't want me to tell you.--

  My nose had been bleeding, my temples pounding. I'd mentally shouted, Get out of my head, Fool! He'd killed me in the first game, and he'd let Jack die. How dare he contact me!

  He'd told me to listen. Then I'd heard Jack's voice: --"What kind of danger is she in? Damn it, tell me! What's coming, coo-yon?"--

  I'd whimpered. Jack??? Is that you? He'd sounded so close. Though I'd called for them, no one had answered, and I'd blacked out.

  Aric narrowed his amber eyes. "There's something you're not telling me."

  Until he trusted me and my memories, I wouldn't tell him about the message. "You, Lark, and Paul keep talking about how mixed-up I was when Gran was dying, that my head must not have been right."

  "You'd suffered through so much, love."

  "During that exact time, I made a big decision--to be with you. To be your wife. Maybe I really was mixed-up. Maybe I shouldn't have made any far-reaching decisions in that frame of mind."

  His lips parted. "Sieva . . ."

  "We either trust both my memory and my judgment, or we distrust both. What will it be?" When he didn't answer, I turned over on my side, giving him my back.
"Jack would believe me."

  I could feel Aric's gaze lingering on me. His troubled sigh made my chest tighten.

  3

  Day 514 A.F.

  "A baby on the way--how delightful." A stream of water had just slicked across the ceiling of the (plant) nursery, then descended in front of my face as a plume of liquid.

  Circe.

  I sat in a corner with greenery all around me. In my lap were my chronicles and the list of Gran's statements. "Is nowhere off-limits to you?"

  "Irrigation is my friend," she all but purred from the water. "Such a week you've had, Evie Greene. In your bid to save the Magician, you were attacked by the Emperor and Lady Luck, then aided by the Sun. Upon your return, you discovered you'd been impregnated by Death. Yet there is contraceptive drama . . . . Did I miss anything?"

  "I am not in the mood." The breakfast I'd helped Lark prepare sat badly in my stomach. My cooking skills hadn't improved with disuse.

  For the past two days, I'd come down here to search for clues, practice with my powers--and get a break from Aric. This morning, he'd tried to ply me with vitamins.

  Even with the sunlamps on high, I'd barely managed to germinate seeds. As my chaotic emotions all battled each other, fury and misery took the lead.

  I was furious at Paul for being a devious liar--and at myself for getting played. I was furious that Aric didn't trust me enough.

  I was miserable not knowing whether Jack was alive. What if he'd somehow survived but he and Matthew were now in trouble? Had the Fool's message to me been a garbled plea for help?

  Before that contact, I hadn't spoken to him in weeks, not since I'd read about his betrayal in the first game.

  According to my chronicles, in the second game, he'd vowed never to win again if I would forgive him. I'd spared him, allying with him, while planning to poison him at a later date--just as I'd done with my other allies: Aric, Lark and Finn, the Lovers, and even Circe.

  If my current allies could get over my vicious past, how could I hold Matthew's against him? Apparently, I could forgive him for my murder--but not Jack's.

  Matthew, are you there? Answer me! Jack? Are you . . . alive?

  Tears welled, so I turned away from the water plume. It slinked around to my other side. "Ugh! You're like a spider dangling from a web."

  "If I'm Charlotte, that makes you Wilbur." When I didn't remark on that, she said, "Come now, chin up. This isn't the end of the world. That already happened." Though she sounded playful, a strain of fatigue marked her voice.

  "You truly didn't hear me talking about that shot with Paul?"

  "No." At my irritated look, she said, "I do have to sleep every now and then. And I monitor other bodies of water all over the world."

  "Have you seen Matthew or anyone else out in the Ash?" I was tempted to reveal that I'd heard them, but my same hesitation arose. Something told me that in the very near future I'd need all the credibility I could muster.

  "I've seen no one. I would've told Death if I had."

  "But not me?"

  The plume seemed to shrug. "We're still not allies, even if I'm your child's godmother."

  A gust rocked the castle. Boards groaned, and grit dusted down from the ceiling. Were we headed into an ice age? "Is it cold in the abyss?" Circe had once told me she lived at the bottom of the sea in the Bermuda Triangle. She'd shown me her torchlit temple through a water window.

  "Yes, compared to the sultry breezes and bright rays I was always used to. To the north of the castle, the temperature has dropped even more sharply. No matter how much I churn my rivers and streams, they're icing over. Without them, I can't see or hear Richter's approach. Without flowing water around the castle, I won't be able to ward him off."

  If the Emperor found our home, we would be under fire. Literally. "Wouldn't Richter melt any ice?"

  "I'll be able to put out the flames, but I won't be able to prevent them. By then the damage would be done. Without advance warning, well, as Fauna would say: you're all sitting ducks."

  "Maybe the temperature is weakening him as well."

  "Yes, now he'll have the impact of one atomic bomb instead of two. All of the players who defeated him in the past did so before he grew too strong."

  Like Death. Two games ago, he'd strategized to get the enraged Emperor to blow all his power before striking him down.

  Aric had said he would teach me how to fight an Arcana like Richter as soon as I'd reclaimed my powers and invoked the red witch as never before.

  I didn't see that happening anytime soon.

  Circe murmured, "I should have drowned the Emperor before this cold came."

  "Why didn't you?"

  "After the Flash, I thought I wasn't yet strong enough, was greedy for the rain." She sighed. "Perhaps I was never meant to flourish in this game. Certain catastrophes affect some cards more. This seems designed to harm me--and you."

  Because I needed sun? I'd perked right up when bathed in Sol's light. "When do you think Richter will come for us?"

  "Sooner, now that we have company in the neighborhood. His high-value targets are the Centurion, the Tower, the Angel. The latter two have set up camp on the next mountain over, just beyond your line of thorn trees and my diminishing reach." I'd noticed that her river had receded since we'd left to retrieve Finn.

  Yesterday, Lark had said, "Finally, she's not breathing down my neck. What to do with all this elbow room? Maybe practice my faunagenesis?" That's what she called her animal regeneration.

  In theory, her blood could reanimate all creatures, not just her three wolves and falcon familiars. She'd never tried it before.

  I asked Circe, "Richter wants to take down those three Arcana even more than me?"

  "All of them can strike from afar. After Fortune's encounter with you, I doubt he considers you a threat."

  Zara had sneered to me, "The great Empress? You're just a weak little girl." Without my powers, I wasn't a threat. No wonder Aric hesitated to teach me about the Emperor. If I ever faced Richter, I'd get myself killed.

  I scowled at my stomach. Not helping things, kid.

  "Soon the Tower and the Angel will no longer be a worry for anyone either," Circe said. "They're starving. I suppose you could say they're at Death's door."

  I couldn't stand the thought of them going hungry. "There's got to be food out there somewhere."

  "Such as Olympus, the Sun's bountiful lair? The last I saw, the prisoners you freed were rioting. Chaos was the only thing you left growing there."

  Not my best moment. "What about the Lovers' shrine?"

  "Raided by the other half of the hunter's army." Jack's Azey army. "Without leadership, they've scattered to the winds. There were government facilities and stocked bomb shelters, but Richter keeps sending lava underground, incinerating them."

  Hell on earth. We were going to need every Arcana to fight against him. I would talk to Aric about giving my friends food. Maybe I could pay Gabe and Joules to do a search for Jack and Matthew! As soon as the storm broke, I'd contact them. "Are you going hungry, Circe? What do you even eat?" I'd never asked her before.

  "Whatever I can drag down."

  "Like a tiger?" Lark had suspected the witch of tiger theft.

  "What? Me? I would never!"

  If Circe's rivers froze over, what could she drag down? "Do you need us to send you food? We could try to waterproof a barrel or something."

  "It's much easier if I come to land in my true form and eat."

  "Not the water-girl form you use to sneak through the castle?" I'd seen her liquid body skulking around before the snow had come. We'd found wet footprints in the pool house.

  "Such aspersions!" she cried, but I could hear the humor in her tone. "You're not the only one struggling with powers these days. My water form is difficult to maintain. Materializing is simpler."

  "I thought we all agreed that your body wasn't coming to land as long as the game continued." Or until Aric and I died, and she came to claim our kid.
>
  "It's awfully quiet down here in this lonely abyss. You four sat together this morning to share breakfast." Her voice grew absent as she admitted, "I felt a scalding envy."

  "I'm sorry."

  Making her tone brisk, she said, "While you were unconscious, I officially met Lark and Finn."

  Apparently, the lovebirds had been bonding like crazy, whenever Lark had time off. The blizzard meant she was getting a break from her Richter-watch duties. Even if her falcon could negotiate the arctic wind gusts, visibility was nil.

  "Finn wanted to share magic secrets with me." Circe chuckled. "How adorable. He's only an illusionist, able to create lifelike scenes and fool the senses, but not much more. An entertainer versus a practitioner." At my raised eyebrows, she said, "He can't seal blood invocations to stretch over centuries or brew esoteric potions. He doesn't control a spell book that's as old as the oceans. While Finn can mimic the look of a tide, I can steer them. I explained all this to him." Circe wasn't one to sugarcoat.

  "What was Lark's reaction?"

  "Sharpened fangs and claws. Even her ears seemed to point. In her mind, he's one of the greats. They're already so in love, picking up right where they left off in the last game. Just before you murdered them."

  I can deny nothing. But her comment made me wonder what my relationship with Aric would be like if we'd had no animosity between us in the past. Maybe he would believe me about Paul.

  Earlier, Aric had told me, "I informed him that he will be exiled once the weather breaks. Sieva, I will not reverse myself on this." His gaze had gone distant. "We're giving him no mercy with this course. Exile equals execution."

  True. I'd often pictured the castle as a spaceship on a barren moon, with the only life support around: crops and livestock, clean water, sunlamps, and tankers of fuel. But I still wasn't satisfied with only a banishment, much less a belated one.

  I asked Circe, "Have you noticed anything off with Paul? Ever heard him say something suspicious?"

  "Not a single time. In light of current events, I suppose you no longer want to set me up with him?"

  I might have once mentioned that. "I got conned. We all did." But Lark and Aric still seemed to be under the influence. The jury was out on Finn. "What would you do about Paul if you were me?"

  "In the past, you would already have stabbed him with your poisonous claws, then desecrated his corpse with your plants. In this life, you've agreed to wait for an exile, with the added mercy of a storm break. Perhaps you are different from before."