She ran faster, even though she had less than a block to go, her goal so close as her jacket flapped and her hair stripped back from her face in her self-created windstorm. And still she ran. Until it felt like the silver Honda was just getting farther and farther away.
Finally. With heaving breath, she fumbled with the key fob, hitting every button there was on it as she juggled the guns—until the trunk popped at the same time the doors unlocked. She left the back open as she threw herself behind the wheel. Slamming the driver’s door, she was more with the slapping and flapping while trying not to shoot the dashboard or herself—where was the lock button!
When there was a thunck of those latches engaging, she felt a split second of relief. It didn’t last. As she glanced out the driver’s side window, the sight of the grungy building she had come out of filled her with a terror so intense it was as if a dagger was at her throat—
Between one blink and the next, she saw Balthazar putting a sharp blade up to his neck. His mouth was moving, he was yelling, his eyes were vibrant with anger… as he confronted that brunette, the one from down under the bridge the night before, the one who had been the old man in the bookshop before she had been herself.
And then Balthazar was bleeding heavily. He was falling to his knees, and bleeding down the front of his chest…
Erika looked at the guns in her hands. Felt the weight of the clips in her pockets. Remembered the way a man she shouldn’t know had looked into her eyes as if he saw all parts of her soul.
Please let me go.
At her request, he had set her free with her memories, but the liberation was only physical. Mentally, she was trapped by what she had seen tonight, what she knew now, what she could not believe. And meanwhile, he was still in the chaos with the brunette, with those shadows, with those other fighters.
“I gotta go,” she said to the windshield. “I’ve got to leave.”
When she went to punch her foot into the brake, she was too far back to reach the pedal. She put the guns on the passenger seat and reached between her legs to find the pull bar for the seat. Scooching up, she tried again with the footwork and was able to start the engine.
Gripping the wheel, she looked forward over the Honda’s hood… but could not go forward.
Turned out she wasn’t as free as she’d thought. Not as free as Balthazar had promised.
Stuck—
One look back over her shoulder at that garage, which was disguised as just another rundown, nothing-special in the rundown, nothing-special neighborhood, and a wave of terror mobilized her.
Freshly gripped with panic, she stomped on the clutch, threw the old-fashioned gearshift into drive, and punched the gas—
As she swung out of the parallel parking spot, she caught a glimpse of the door she’d come out of. It was just closing. Balthazar had kept his word and watched her to make sure she got to the car safely.
Just like he had protected her before.
Leaving him seemed wrong, but the fear inside her was so powerful, she had no choice but to give in to it and flee the garage, flee him and his world.
As she shot down Shore Avenue, she had no idea where she was going. Or where she was except for, well, down on the shores of the Hudson River, traveling deeper into downtown. Which was the wrong way. She should go home.
That was what she had to do. She needed an on-ramp to the Northway, so she could head in the opposite direction than she was going now.
She needed to go back to her apartment… which wasn’t actually an apartment, but a townhouse that she had not properly claimed as her home because there had been no home for her, not since she was sixteen.
Her place. That was right. Even though she was no more safe there than anywhere else, she was like someone in the hospital with a dreaded disease, whose only thought was that if they could just get back to their own bed, everything would be okay.
It was a foolish belief.
But an undeniable one.
* * *
Standing over the Book, Devina read the spell that had been created for her and her alone for the third time. Which was what the spell informed her she was supposed to do. Three times with the reading, like it was worried that she’d be so excited, she couldn’t concentrate.
Which, of course, she couldn’t. But she got the gist of things just fine.
Turning to her collection, she had to smile.
It was so fucking remarkable, and yet completely apt, how perfect the spell was for her. Then again, over the course of eons, she had come to understand the way the Book worked. Between those covers, in all those infinite parchment pages, was a portal that opened in a different way for whoever it chose to serve, as if each soul who approached it had a separate key for a specific unlocking. And as for the written words themselves? They were infinitely transmutable, all the languages ever spoken or read within its grasp, an endless horizon of power available, expressible in an incalculable number of ways.