“So,” Mordy says, stopping in front of me, my nose slamming into his ribs. “I need to get something off my chest before we continue.”
I rub my nose. “Okay,” I say. The girls are far enough away that they’re not in earshot anymore. “If this is about what happened at Little Henge—”
“It’s not.” He raises his glasses, placing them on top of his head. “For the past couple a weeks I’ve been pretty tore up, completely lost in my feelings. When I came to Avalon, I didn’t come here to help anyone. I just wanted talk some sense into my uncle and get the fuck outta here, head back to California.”
“I know,” I say, looking at Mordy’s grass-stained pants. “There’s not a lot to do out here.”
“No.” He shakes his head. “The people are what make this place bearable. You make this place bearable. You all do. But being around you does something to me, fucks my brain all up.”
My phone buzzes several times in my side bag. Someone must be actually calling me because it just keeps going, but I don’t want to detract from what Mordy’s saying or break his concentration, so I leave it alone to mess with later. He takes a step forward, engulfing me in his slender frame. His arms wrap around my shoulders and he leans into the hug.
“You are a magickal, dope dude, Lance Lotte.” His lips touch my earlobe. “You’re an old soul, and you are true to yourself and others. I can’t just fall out of love with you overnight, because I’m not built like that—I don’t think anyone is—but I want you to know that I’ve got your back. No matter what. You, me, your nut of a sister, my nut of a sister, we are all in this together, as family.”
I take a fistful of his T-shirt into each hand, then rest my head on his chest and begin crying. I’m not sure if it’s exhaustion, the hysteria from earlier or my allergies, but the deluge rushing down my face won’t stop. Mordy stands very still for the next few minutes, letting me work through whatever the fuck it is I’m working through. When I’m finished, he unsnarls his long arms from my grasp and places his hands on my shoulders.
“And I respect the fuck outta Arthur,” he finally says, looking into my eyes. “Weird, huh? Yeah, I know. But a man like that, who will wait around for another man to sort out his personal shit, especially in this goddamn town, that’s a diamond in the rough right there.” He pauses, then continues, “Now don’t get me wrong, I would do the same for thing for you, but then again so would Gwen, and my sister, for that matter. We will do whatever we have to do in order to save Arthur. You are not alone.”
I laugh and wipe my snotty nose with a sleeve. “Sounds like our holler magick is rubbin’ off on you.”
Mordy pats me on the back and replies, “You act as if I actually had a choice.” The twinkle in his eye sends a ripple of a sob through my chest, and I do everything I can to catch it before it turns into another wave of melancholy.
Gwen is sitting by herself in a patch of dirt when I find her. Morgan is off somewhere else, examining the tombstones, trying to see if the graveyard from her dreams is, in fact, this same exact one. The big pile of plucked violets sitting at Gwen’s bare feet indicate my sister is likely preparing for a protection spell of some kind—that, or a floral liqueur for later. Knowing her, I’d say there’s a fifty-fifty chance of it being either. I sit on my haunches and join her.
“Morgan’s really sick,” Gwen says, tying a violet stem into a knot and hooking it through another flower. “Whatever it is that’s in there, it’s drainin’ her like a swimming pool. Do you know that she sleeps like, sixteen hours a day? Every day? The shit her uncle’s doing is keeping her alive, but at what cost?”
“What do you mean? Keepin’ her alive?”
A twig snaps, calling our attention to the graves behind us. “I mean that he has to exorcise her every goddamn day. A ritual that takes hours sometimes to complete. She’s barely allowed to live, Lance.”
I’d known things were bad, of course I’d known they weren’t good, horrible even, but I hadn’t known the extent of it. Not truly. That Mordy didn’t feel comfortable telling me about it…hurts. Maybe he doesn’t trust me. Or maybe he thinks it’s a family affair. But Morgan is our sister now, and we have to find a way to rid her of this possession. There’s no other option.
“Do you know which way she went?” I ask. Gwen shrugs, and points to her left with a knotted string of flowers. “All right,” I say. “I’ll be back in a second. Don’t go anywhere.”
From the looks of things, the sun will be setting in the next fifteen minutes or so, and it will take that long to walk back to the car. Mordy isn’t as strict about being inside at night as Morgan, but that’s probably due to the fact that he isn’t sharing his body with a goddamn demon. When I round the corner, a black form flashes before my eyes, and I have to ask myself if I actually saw it, or if it was a fleck of dust in my line of vision.
I rub my eyes. “Morgan?” I say. “Are you over here?”
I take two steps forward, and a huge, black, shaggy-haired dog jumps on me. The sound of claws ripping my hoodie ricochets off the large concrete pillars beside us. Its body is heavy, much heavier than mine, and the only thing I can do is shield my face with my relatively puny arms in the hope that someone will find me before I succumb to the beast’s attack.
“Far below, where the one-eyed raven king crows, our goddess—the holy queen—peacefully sleeps, while the hounds of hell are free to roam and creep. But where you shall go, no one will ever know.” Morgan’s voice slices through our blend of growls and human cries. “Now get the fuck off of him, you big ugly shit!”
After one deep, terrible howl, the gigantic animal releases my arms from its grip and backs away slowly, a mixture of foam and my blood dripping from its yellow fangs, then suddenly transforms into a swarm of angry blowflies. Morgan rushes to my side, swatting at the flittering insects, her eyes awash with pain and confusion. The swarm hovers a few feet above our heads before flying off, a ghastly black mass heading in the same direction.
“I’m all right. I’m okay,” I say, inspecting the gashes on my forearm. “What the hell was that?”
“A shuck.” Morgan gets down on her knees and places her hands on both sides of my head, her irises completely swallowed by the pupils. All traces of her identity have been completely replaced by something else entirely.
The entity.
Morgana le Fay. I wrench my head out of her hands and put a few feet between us, my body moving faster than my mind.
Her eyes narrow and a shadow sweeps her face. “Tell us what the death queen said to you.” Her voice is not her own, an amalgamation of oscillating sounds, no hint of Morgan anywhere. “Or else your crusade ends here,” she hisses. “Paladin.”
“Morgana le Fay.” I use her name. Her true name. “Your fight is not with me. I’m—I’m trying to save Arthur,” I stammer.
Her eyes soften for a second. “The death queen,” she repeats, her voice more or less the same pitch. “What did she say?”
I say the first thing that comes to mind. “A life for a life.”
“No! There has to be another way!” Morgana punches the ground several times, leaving the skin across her knuckles broken and peeling. “Wait.” She raises a bloody finger and points it at my head. “What if we find the scabbard?”
“What scabbard?” she asks, her voice changing in pitch. “Oh, don’t play dumb, girl.” Her hands then explode into the air like fireworks, soil flying everywhere. “Search our memories. You know the legends, the stories. The holy sword’s sheath. Oh, right! Why didn’t I think of that? Let’s just go to the fucking store and ask for one. I wonder if Macy’s has them.”
I’m not sure what’s happening, but I think Morgana and Morgan are actually arguing with each other.
“The tomb. Where is the tomb? What tomb? The one we see every night. There’s not going to be a king’s tomb in this cemetery, you dumb bitch. Call me that one more time and I’ll take a blade to our throat.”
“Whoa! Okay,” I interject, finall
y getting up from the ground. “Hold up. No one is going to be slitting anyone’s throat.”
Morgana turns to me, her face flushed with frustration and anger. “You,” she squawks. “You never do enough! Every time, it’s you. It’s your fault! You and that fair-haired girl! No one has ever been able to stop Emrys. No one. The last time you ended up…” Her voice trails off, never finishing the accusation.
“Look, lady, I know I’m a fuck-up,” I reply. “You don’t need to tell me. I already know that it’s in my blood. But we won’t lose, not this time around. I will do everything in my power to protect Arthur.”
“I am so tired,” Morgana says, dropping to the ground. “I just want to go to sleep. I’m tired of doing this.”
“Of doing what?” I ask, heading straight for the crack in Morgana’s outer shell. “Fighting Emrys?”
“Being reborn. I don’t want to live anymore. I’ve lived enough lives. Aren’t you tired?”
Me? If I have someone living else in this skinsuit, that’s news to me.
When I don’t answer, Morgana pulls herself up from the ground and starts flailing her arms in the air, screaming for me, for us, to do something, anything. The last time I’d witnessed a meltdown like this, we’d been at the lake house and Mordy’d had to swaddle her until the spell passed. She’s dangerously close to a set of concrete stairs, so I sprint to her side and latch onto her arm before she can smack into the side of the building. Her body goes flaccid in my arms, and seconds later, I nearly collide with the top stair.
“Lancelot,” she blubbers, spit spraying out of her mouth. “The scabbard. It’s the only way. Your dying won’t save Arthur. It never does and it never will. Two deaths won’t make a life, you have to remember that.”
We stumble up the stairs, her arm intertwined with mine. After we reach the top, I position Morgan’s head in my lap and prop mine against the tomb, or mausoleum, or whatever the fuck it is. I am tired, I realize.
Coming home wasn’t a mistake, but it wasn’t supposed to be like this. My plan had been to lie low, work as much as Emmett would let me, then head back as soon as my dorm became available. No drama, no fights, nothing.
Magick, witchcraft, none of it has ever meant anything negative to me, not even the darker aspects of brujería. But killing a man to save a man…murdering my boss to save my boyfriend…the idea is ludicrous. I don’t know if I can do it.
“Lance?” Morgan’s eyes fly open and she springs forward like an overwound clock. “Lance?”
“Yes,” I say. “I’m here. Are you okay?”
“The scabbard,” she says suddenly. “I know where it is.”
“What?” I smack my head on the pillar directly behind us. “Fuck! Where?” I ask, clutching the back of my skull. “Jesus Christ!”
Morgan clambers away from me. “In here!” she shouts. “The one-eyed raven, he’s led me to it before. I don’t know why I didn’t see it before now.”
I jump to my feet and rub the back of my head. “Do you know where it’s kept?”
Morgan places her hand on the doorknob. “No, not exactly. I’ve never been in here, because he usually just leads me to the door, never actually follows me inside or anything like that.”
We both walk into the mausoleum. The room is compact, unremarkable, and unlike the other tombs, there are no flowers or decorations anywhere, no pictures or etchings, just a plain bronze casket in the center of the small building, suffused with the now-dying sunlight. The stench of decay and rot hit me like a backpack full of books—I don’t know if I’ll be able to stand it. Morgan takes my hand anyway and guides me over to the metallic box. Our eyes meet briefly before we both place our hands on the lid, and I swallow, uncertain of what we’re about to do, or possibly undo.
“You haven’t told my brother that you’re planning on dying, have you?”
“I don’t plan on dying,” I reply. “I just plan on helping Arthur live.”
Morgan snorts. “And if the scabbard is missing, then what? What will you do? You heard Morgana. Both you and Arthur will die. What do you think that will do to my brother? To your sister?”
“I’m not going to die,” I say finally. “You saw them. At the lake house. The children.”
A grin cracks through her glower. “You should know that my visions aren’t always correct. Foresight is an imperfect magick.”
“Yeah,” I reply. “But we don’t really have a choice either way, do we? Because we both know that I’m gonna do whatever I have to in order to keep my best friend alive. That I would do the same for Gwen, Mordy and you.”
After one last, long look at me and my resolve, Morgan’s attention fixes on the rectangular box, and we both grip the sides of the bronze casket. I’m not sure how heavy the lid is, but it feels like it weighs six hundred pounds. Once we realize it’s not going to budge without another set of hands, we let go and take a step back. Morgan is already so weak from Morgana’s always-untimely appearance that I don’t think it’s going to happen for us. I’m ready to voice this concern, the fact that Morgan shouldn’t lift six pounds, let alone six hundred pounds, when I hear Mordy and Gwen calling our names.
I race over to the door to let them know where we are. Morgan and I don’t have time to fully explain everything that’s just happened, or why we’re standing in the mausoleum, because it is dark outside, and because the twins are out past their curfew. Again. Myrddin is going to be pissed.
“Mordy, you grab that side,” I instruct. “Gwen, grab the end there. When I say ‘heave ho’, I want you to lift with everything you’ve got, because this lid is a bitch.”
The first two heaves are pointless, and do nothing to loosen the top. Mordy looks exhausted after our second attempt, but I implore him to try once more, the desperation in my voice as thick as oil. When the lid moves ever-so-slightly, life returns to Morgan’s eyes, and I readjust my grasp on the metal.
Inside the casket lies the corpse of a young man. When Gwen starts sobbing, I take this as a sign that either she knows him, or that the sight of a dead person is too much for her, and ask Morgan to take her outside. The two women exit the room while Mordy and I lift the listless body out of the box, the smell of death now filling the air. Mordy pulls his shirt up over his nose and pinches the area between his eyes.
“Holy shit, man. What the hell are you doing?” he finally asks. “Are you looking for something?”
When I plunge the snake dagger into the inside of the casket, Mordy leaps back a few feet, startled by my savagery.
“Damn, boy! Be careful!”
But I can’t stop hacking until I find Excalibur’s sheath. I won’t stop. Because fuck, it’s not like I want to die, or have any intention of dying. We’ll find the scabbard, Morgan will explain its significance, and I guess I’ll kill the Merlin, even though I really don’t want to do it.
I remove the interior of the casket and come up empty-handed. There’s nothing but stuffing and cloth inside the damn thing. Mordy peers into the box and whistles. I know I look like a maniac, tearing a dead person’s forever home to bits, but it’s not like I’m doing it without purpose or anything. The scabbard means life or death for Arthur, for me, and Morgana’s madness has infected me, spreading to my heart first and my head last. Anxiety and restlessness have replaced any rationality that I might have had before coming to this fucking graveyard.
I fall to my knees and hold on to my sides, my head swaying back and forth. We’re going to die.
“What the fuck is this?” Mordy asks. “Yo, help me turn this shit over.”
Underneath the lid, Mordy has discovered a heavy object that’s being held in place by several leather straps, something that feels like a sword, he explains. I saw through the straps with my death dagger, and the large weapon falls into the lid, then drops onto the floor, the sound of metal hitting concrete echoing throughout the tiny room.
“Holy shit,” he exclaims. “Would you look at that? Another fuckin’ sword.”
I’m afraid t
o touch the sword because of what happened at Arthur’s earlier, and instead scuttle away from it, putting several feet between us. Mordy picks up the weapon and inspects the scabbard. I’m not sure what we’re supposed to do with two magickal swords, or what we’re supposed to do with the scabbard.
“This is what you were lookin’ for, isn’t it?”
I nod once. “Yes. Morgana said Arthur would need it.”
Mordy’s forehead scrunches. “Morgana? You spoke to Morgana?”
I don’t say anything, stuck in my feelings, trying to figure out why the fuck I’m sitting in a mausoleum next to a decomposing corpse and another magickal sword.
“Looks like Arthur’s sword,” he says. “Might be its twin.” He holds out the sheath, inspecting the surface closely, then draws the sword from it, and I know he’s right as soon as I see the tip of the blade.
“Excalibur has a twin sword,” I say, getting to my feet. “The Galantine. According to legend, it’s a sword that rivals Arthur’s in every way.”
Mordy turns to me. “Oh yeah?” He sheaths the blade and holds it out horizontally for me to take. “Go on.”
I approach the blade with caution. “Yes.” I pause, and continue. “It was given to Sir Lancelot by the Lady of the Lake.” I take the leather case into my hands and unsheathe the sword, its power rushing into me like a heavy current. The tide of energy slams me into the wall, and I drop the blade.
I soon find that I can’t breathe, and Mordy slowly fades from my line of vision. Everything dims to black, and I can’t see. I swear to God, if I’m being summoned to the Underworld, I’m going to be pissed, because I haven’t had time to even use the Xiuhcoatl. I can’t return it just yet.
“I am surprised it’s taken you this long to find Galantine,” a soft, feminine voice calls from the darkness. “To find me.”
“Mictēcacihuātl?” I ask, still completely enshrouded by darkness. “Where are we?”
“At the bottom of a lake,” the voice responds politely and very matter-of-factly. “And I’m called Viviane, not Mictēcacihuātl.”
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