“Nothing.” Jessica barely shook her head. “I’m here as the Guardian.”
“What did he promise you?”
Okay, apparently answer number one wasn’t good enough.
Jessica met the woman’s black eyes clouded with suspicion and wondered where the hell this was going. “His help. That’s it. We’re here for the Umur’udal so we can end the Dalu’Rázj with—”
Ocaiye’s hand shot up to close around Jessica’s jaw in the most painful grip the bottom half of her face had ever experienced. She tried to lurch away but found herself frozen, unable to move. She wanted to give this screwed-up woman a warning, but her voice was shoved back down into her throat before she could even try.
The black eyes staring into her swirled and clouded over with a milky white as another furious wind howled through the clearing, kicking up leaves and debris and rattling the frame of the hut. Ocaiye widened her eyes and leaned closer, then Jessica was propelled away from the forefront of her awareness and shoved into the recesses of her own mind.
It felt way too much liked the bank settling into the driver’s seat of her body to take the wheel and use her as a literal conduit for Winthrop & Dirledge magic. Only Ocaiye wasn’t inside her body. She was inside Jessica’s mind, sifting through memories and intentions and desires.
The quick flurry of images racing through Jessica’s awareness made her want to scream, but she was helpless beneath the strength of this woman’s magic.
Tabitha showing her the witching vault.
The bloody footprints across the floor.
Leandras’ feral, predatory grin when he saw her behind the lobby’s desk for the first time.
The coin, the tin box, Leandras’ apartment and the smear of his black, sludgy blood across the binding they’d sworn.
Mel and Cedrick, the warehouse, the last piece of Mickey Hargrave’s soul sucked from his carcass to return Jessica to herself.
The Gateway and the Hruandír spell set into the hallway floor. Her flight across Xahar’áhsh with the fae man who’d brought her through Skirra tunnels and the underworld.
An agonizing bolt of pain lanced through her when she saw through her own eyes Leandras’ dying all over again beyond the walls of Ryngivát—his black, light-splintered hands clawing at his own throat as he thrashed around in the barren dirt. The orb of blinding light rupturing from his open mouth into the green storm of the sky before it was sucked away like water in the desert. His return from death to life at Jessica’s unknowing hand.
This had to stop. Whatever the fuck this was, it had to stop, because Jessica was sure she’d die if this bitch kept digging through her mind.
It didn’t stop.
The flashing images of her own memories overwhelmed her, the colors brighter and the visions so much more intense than reality when Ocaiye finally reached the private moments between Jessica and Leandras—outside the clearing, while they danced with the Laenmúr, and of course their little tryst inside someone else’s tent.
Finally, Ocaiye whipped her hand away from Jessica’s jaw with a violent jerk and sent the vestrohím stumbling backward.
“What the fuck!” Jessica shouted, her hand immediately at her own jaw.
“Jessica.” Leandras spun around, apparently breaking all protocol here, because now Ocaiye looked furious.
She whirled around to face the fae man and pointed at him with a crooked finger. “You stand at the mouth of the beast, Vem-da’án!”
“What did you do?” He stepped forward, his eyes wide with concern.
The clearing flickered in and out of existence again, and the ground at his feet splintered, sending up jagged shards of stone and earth where he stood to root him to the spot.
“I have seen,” Ocaiye hissed. “And you would take this so far that none of us may ever return!”
“It’s already gone too far,” Jessica muttered as she tenderly stretched out her lower jaw. Ocaiye didn’t look at her, but what else would she have needed to see? The woman had already gone through her entire mind. “We’re not stopping.”
“Jessica, please,” Leandras whispered. He didn’t try to fight the earth holding him in place but stared at her instead. “Let me—”
“No.” A bitter laugh escaped Ocaiye, and she slowly lowered her hand at her side again. “You will do nothing. The Guardian has already made her choice, whether or not it suits your purposes. I am not the one who will offer judgement at the end of this.”
“You’re offering it now.” Leandras had either lost his mind or had finally decided the cost of pissing off this superpowered mind-reader was worth whatever else she might do to them.
“I offer nothing but what is sought of me. You, on the other hand, are expected to deliver much more than that.” Ocaiye stood there unmoving for so long, Jessica wondered if the woman had gone into some other kind of trance.
If she could read Leandras’ mind right now from halfway across the small clearing, why the fuck had she needed to almost break Jessica’s jaw?
Another gust of wind tore through the forest, but it settled almost instantly after swirling around the barefooted woman in furs. Ocaiye took a deep breath, then slowly tilted her head. “And yet, these certain truths have all but eliminated your confidence. The Laen’aroth makes his final stand, hmm? Indeed. The cost is yours alone.”
She took off swiftly toward her hut, the wooden stairs creaking beneath her weight as she climbed and quickly disappeared into the darkness.
Jessica stared at the black, gaping hole of the doorway and didn’t know what the hell to think.
Had she just seriously screwed them both over because she couldn’t keep the woman out of her own mind?
This was the last artifact they needed from Leandras’ dying world to keep its consuming darkness from spreading into her own, and the one magical who could give it to them had just shot them both one giant middle finger.
“What just happened?” she whispered.
Leandras sighed and shook his head. “Only Ocaiye has the answer to that. Though I sincerely doubt she’d give it if asked directly.”
His feet were still glued to the forest floor, caged by all the jagged shards of earth circling him.
Jessica shot another wary glance at the hut before hurrying toward him. “She trapped you in a bunch of dirt.”
“Yes, well, Ocaiye certainly has her own methods for getting what she wants.”
“And what’s that? For us to never leave?” She kicked experimentally at one knifelike eruption of stone, but it didn’t budge. “We can’t just stand around waiting for this to disappear. Give me thirty seconds in there with her. Forty tops, and I’ll have what we need—”
“No!” The urgency in his voice made her freeze. “We do not enter.”
“Why? Or she’ll go through an entire lifetime worth of memories? If that didn’t kill me the first time, I’m pretty sure round two won’t be nearly as exciting for her.”
“She...” Leandras nervously licked his lips and turned his head as far as he could toward the hut, which was especially awkward with his feet rooted to the ground as he faced the complete opposite direction. “She saw.”
“Yeah, and she said that part already too.” Jessica puffed out a sigh. “If you have any other half-assed Plan B’s, now’s a good time to share them.”
“That’s completely unnecessary.” A smile flickered across his lips, but the fae man’s frown of comprehension overpowered it instantly. “She believes you, Jessica.”
“Kinda hard not to after taking a dive into my head.” Just like the bank did. Just like the Brúkii had found a way to do through her dreams. “Doesn’t look like that’s enough to convince her to cough up the Umur’udal. So we need another way to—”
A sharp crack and slice like a blade being violently sheathed cut her off, and they both looked down to see the last shards of rock retracting into the earth around Leandras’ feet. The corner of his mouth twitched, and when he looked up at her, the fae’s amusement
had returned. But it was tinged with a wariness Jessica had quickly come to recognize in him over the last few months.
“There is no other way,” he muttered. “It seems the decision has already been made.”
Chapter 12
A knot of dread coiled tightly around Jessica’s insides at the fae’s words.
No other way, and the decision had already been made.
That could only mean one of two things, and she did not like the sound of it at all.
“What decision?” she whispered.
Leandras lifted one foot and shook a spray of dirt off the top. “The only one that benefits us, Jessica.”
“But for how long it benefits the Laen’aroth,” Ocaiye added, her voice echoing inside the hut before one bare foot slid slowly through the doorway, “remains to be seen.”
He turned to face her, all traces of his amusement vanished now beneath the woman’s gaze.
Ocaiye fully emerged from her hermetic dwelling, this time with a bundle laid out in the palms of both hands. It was relatively flat and wrapped in a swath of tanned hide. The porch steps creaked again as she descended, then she slowly approached Leandras in the same creepy, starey way.
That had to be the Umur’udal. Unless, of course, the woman intended to smack Leandras sideways with it and tell them both to piss off.
“You are playing with fire, Leandras.” Ocaiye’s voice was so much calmer now, almost like she’d given up her old façade of hissed threats and magical violation. Her eyes, though—glittering black orbs once more—said everything she didn’t.
This insanely powerful magical might have believed Jessica, but she still didn’t trust Leandras one bit. Even as she offered the hide-wrapped bundle to the fae with both hands.
He took it gently without breaking her gaze. “I know the fire well enough.”
“Yes. But the punishment one knows is rarely as satisfying.”
Okay, right back to dark and creepy again.
Ocaiye turned her gaze onto Jessica and nodded. “Nothing beyond this point is as it truly seems, Jessica. Even when you are certain you know the answer. Use that when the darkness seizes you.”
Leandras nodded. “She has more advantages now than—”
“I am not speaking to you, Vem-da’án.” Ocaiye raised her eyebrows, then slowly turned her head toward the fae man again in what looked a hell of a lot like another silent warning. “You know once you leave this forest, there is nowhere left for you to hide. No safe haven for the lost or the reformed.”
He swallowed, his lips popping open for a long moment before he came up with a reply he clearly felt was suitable. “I know. If they mean to act, they must act quickly.”
“And you must act with even greater haste.” Ocaiye’s upper lip twitched in a sneer Jessica figured was meant to be a smile.
After millennia spent out here all by herself, protecting this artifact she’d known Leandras would someday return to retrieve, it made sense that she’d forgotten how.
“Thank you.” Leandras dipped his head and raised the bundle in his hands toward the woman. “When we meet again—”
“We will not.” Ocaiye nodded toward the shimmering wall of light between the two curving trees. “Take your leave before I reconsider.”
Leandras turned stiffly and headed that way.
Jessica found herself unable to look away from the Laenmúr outcast as the woman lifted her chin and stared right back.
“Nothing is as it seems,” Ocaiye muttered.
“Jessica.” Leandras stood in front of the trees with a deepening frown. “It’s time.”
She turned slowly away from the magical who now knew every facet of her life—probably more than Jessica herself did at this point—and hurried to join the fae at the doorway to another encapsulated world of frozen time. “Please tell me that’s the Umur’udal.”
“It is.” Leandras narrowed his eyes at the clearing, where Ocaiye still stood outside her hut to watch them depart. “We have a lot of ground to cover.”
“And not a lot of time. Yeah, I get it.” They stepped through the wall of light, and the same dizziness overwhelmed Jessica before disappearing again. It did, however, leave an aggravating ache behind in her lower jaw. There would definitely be finger-shaped bruises there soon enough.
Too curious not to, Jessica looked over her shoulder and found both the clearing and Ocaiye’s hut gone on the other side of the trees. At least the world hadn’t imploded on them while they tried to make their escape.
“What did she mean playing with fire?”
“Ah. Not literally, of course. But I imagine you’ve picked up on that one or two times while we’ve been here.”
“Honestly, I haven’t picked up on much at all. Which I’m guessing is what made Ahárra so damn important.”
“Indeed.” Leandras glanced around the completely silent, empty forest, then held the Umur’udal out in one hand and whispered something in Xaharí. The entire thing lit up with silver light, then disappeared. “That may in fact be the only thing Ocaiye didn’t find.”
“You mean in my mental strip-search?” Jessica snorted. “She saw everything, Leandras. Even... Oh.”
No, not everything. No memories of their time spent with Railen in that hallucinogenic dimension had filtered up to the surface under Ocaiye’s violating scrutiny.
“You’re right. She didn’t see that.”
“Which means she’s taking you at your word.”
“And she doesn’t trust you at all.”
Leandras grimaced. “No, I suppose I’ve been playing with fire far too long for someone like her to put much stock in anything I say. Without you, Jessica, I don’t believe I would have managed to collect the last item we require.”
“Which is where now, exactly?”
“Safe.” He kept scanning the trees like he expected some other surprise attack to come down on them at any second. “That’s where it will stay until you and I pass through the Gateway once more.”
“Okay...” Now he was being his aggravatingly cryptic self all over again. “So why don’t you tell me why you look so paranoid right now? We’re still in the Laenmúr’s forest. Protected, right?”
“Not as much as we were.” The fae man picked up his pace through the trees, and when the sound of his footsteps crunching across the dead leaves coating the underbrush filled the still-silent forest, Jessica had a feeling she knew exactly why.
“It’s too quiet,” she muttered, hurrying to meet his strides again. “Everyone else was just kicking up the party again when we left.”
“And now they are not. Yes, I realize this.”
“Why?” Jessica gripped his forearm and made him stop. “What happened?”
He studied her gaze and looked like he was about to fall right back into his old habit of not telling her a damn thing. Which was the exact opposite of what he should be doing, especially after she’d just vouched for him with the crazy...whatever-she-was back there in the clearing.
“Leandras.”
He inhaled sharply. “The Umur’udal is the last piece of what we need, Jessica. It is also the item responsible for having carved out the Laenmúr sanctuary from the beginning.”
“And you just did your little disappearing trick with the only thing keeping them all safe? Keeping us safe?”
“Our protection will remain until we leave the forest. But it is precarious, and I can’t say how much longer it will last. So if you don’t mind, I’d like to make our way out of this forest as quickly as possible. Our chances are greater if we fight off an attack out in the open where we can at least see it coming.”
So he did expect the Dalu’Rázj’s forces—or whoever—to come down on them at any second.
“I’m pretty sure it doesn’t matter where we’re attacked, but good to know it’s coming.”
“It does, in fact, matter, Jessica. Very much.” He didn’t look at her as they moved quickly through the trees, but when they breached the tree line and steppe
d into the Laenmúr clearing, even the fae’s warning to move quickly didn’t keep him from stopping in surprise at what they found in front of them now.
Just a clearing.
No tents. No bonfire. No Order of Laenmúr partying the endless night away.
Nothing but a wide circle of trees around a thin layer of undisturbed grass.
Even if the Laenmúr had been particularly skilled at packing up and spiriting away, they couldn’t have erased the evidence of a giant bonfire or made the grass grow back this quickly.
“Where did they go?”
“Somewhere else,” Leandras muttered before taking off across the clearing again. “Beyond that, I have no idea.”
“Then how do we know it worked? That they’ll show up when we need them to so we don’t die trying to push the Dalu’Rázj back all on our own?”
“They will come.”
“You have no idea where they are. That’s not really instilling the right kind of confidence in what we’re about to do.”
He stopped at the other end of the clearing and took a deep breath. “The Laenmúr trusted you enough to agree to what is required of them. Ocaiye trusted you enough to give us the Umur’udal, and I have every faith in your ability to carry this out.”
“I have a hard time believing in something when it just disappears without a trace.”
With a sigh, Leandras set both his hands on her shoulders and nodded. “You told Ocaiye you trust me. I can’t imagine you’ve acquired a sudden ability to bluff through her perusal of your memories, so I believe you meant it then. Do you mean it now?”
“Do I trust you now?”
“Yes.”
His gaze settled on her so intently, she couldn’t have lied to his face any more than she’d been able to keep Ocaiye out of her head. “Yeah. I trust you.”
“Good. Whatever happens, please don’t lose sight of that.”
And there he went with drawing the truth out of her before dropping another bomb.
“Tell me what’s about to happen.”
“If I knew, Jessica, I would most certainly seize the opportunity to share that with you. Meaning literally anything at this point. So just...be on your guard.” He pulled aside the thick curtain of vines that had served as their doorway into the Laenmúr party. It had held a certain mysterious excitement when they’d arrived, but now it just felt like another doorway into another series of screwed-up situations they both knew were waiting for them.
The Spellcast Gate (Accessory to Magic Book 5) Page 12
