She swam off to wherever undines go. Her light-up fish went with her so I could barely see a thing.
“Was that it?” Graham asked in a low voice. “Did we pass another test?”
“In my book, we did,” I said.
The final map was wrapped in cloth, just like the others, but even under the fabric it had a faint glow. Maya swam back toward us, holding out the bundle. “There you are,” she said. “Sam’s precious map. What the gods have joined together, let no one tear asunder.”
“Do you…know what Sam was planning?” Graham asked.
“I do know,” she said. “I also know it’s why he would never marry me!”
“Because of this map?” I asked.
“He told me he had to sacrifice something he loved to bring back the god who protects that thing,” she said. “And guess what it was!”
“Ouch. That is pretty rough. No wonder you’re a feisty little thing.”
The full importance of what we were doing hit me. This was it. The final piece of the puzzle. If we all meant what we said…we were about to blow the magical world open.
“So if you meet any nice lonely men who want an undine to settle down with, send them my way,” Maya said.
“We’ll see what we can do,” I said. After all, it was going to be hard to sell this house to a gay couple if they kept getting kidnapped by a horny female sprite every time they tried to have a pool party.
Chapter Eight
Helena
“Jake!” I ran to the pool to help the guys as they suddenly came up out of the depths. Jake was holding a familiar bundle. Graham was just behind him.
Jake spat out some water and rubbed his eyes. “Wolves are not meant to live underwater. But we got your last treasure from the undine. Do I still have gills?” he asked Jake.
“No, you’re good,” Graham said.
“Oh…? So…the undine…”
“Are you jealous?” He grinned up at me. Sexier when wet, I thought.
“You wish. I don’t care what that undine did to you,” I said stubbornly. “Enchantments, you know, a necessarily evil as long as you got the treasure.”
He kept grinning at me and I narrowed my eyes. “I mean…what did she do?” I said.
“Ha! There it is.”
I moved my boot to make contact with his face. I fully expected him to pull me into the pool, frankly, and was almost disappointed when he didn’t, but I suppose we had business to take care of. Damnit. He handed me the bundle and Jasper offered him a hand to help him out of the pool, and then Jake offered a hand to Graham.
“Phew…just another weird day in the magical world.” He looked at me as he started taking off his wet shirt. “Any towels around here?”
“Uh…here.” I handed him one and he slowly toweled off his sculpted chest while I tried not to let any drool escape my mouth. Jake was stripping too but he stopped to grab me.
“We had an epiphany down there, Baroness.”
“Oh?”
“Clan huddle.” Jake motioned for Jasper and Byron to get in closer to us. Billie and Gaston didn’t step into our circle, but they were listening. “We have all the pieces now, so this is about to get real. We just need to find Byron’s body now, right?”
“You’re looking at it,” Byron said, patting Jake and Graham’s shoulders.
“What?”
“Yes, some events happened on our end while you were gone,” I said.
“We were only gone for—what—an hour?” Graham asked. “Or is time strange?”
“I time traveled, had some Medieval sex with the OG Byron, saw his lips get sewn shut, cut them open…sat in a wardrobe for hours while a brutal battle raged around me…a lot of death… You know, I started that sentence meaning to sound kind of flippant and fun but I’m actually very traumatized.”
“Aw, Hel. Can I make you a drink?” Jake asked.
“Yes. That would be welcome.”
“So we’re all ready to open Pandora’s Box?” Jake asked.
“Yes,” Byron said. “I can put the pieces together tonight.”
“Are we doing that tonight?” I asked. My heart started to beat faster. Of course, I had made my decision to do this. I knew that we would reach this moment. “Maybe we should…prepare first.”
“Helena…,” Jake said. “I don’t think there is any way to prepare. What would we do? Get a good night’s sleep? Go buy some guns? Brush up on magic skills? None of that is going to matter if shit goes down.”
“It is pretty intense when you put it like that,” Jasper said. “But…it feels like everything that’s happened so far has led us here.”
“When the worlds are joined together, our fight will not be alone,” Byron said. “When the magical world realizes that they can now move into the world that aligns with them best rather than the gates being barred, for everyone who is furious, someone else will be grateful. When I join the worlds, it won’t just be chaos. For some people, it will bring peace as well as power. Be ready to call those souls to your side, and they’ll stand with us.”
“Will we feel it right away?” I asked Byron. “Do you what happens once you join the maps?”
“I can’t honestly answer that,” Byron said. “Originally, I was born to a union of three, with the blood of all three worlds in my veins, and I inherited the maps from my father. They were already joined. I was taught to be their keeper, from what I understand, although these are the memories I lost when I died. My sister Marisa saved my hair and blood, but for a long time the maps were passed around the magical world, split apart. She didn’t find a way to call me back to life until she knew I’d be able to get my hands on them, when their legacy had been forgotten. But she couldn’t revive me like a necromancer would. The best she could do was try to get my soul to attach to a new life. When I was born in this life, I thought I was just a normal incubus for the early years of my life. I certainly understand what Graham has been dealing with learning about the magical world. It was a shock to find out I was once a demigod, and that I had a chance to restore Lord Abiron’s legacy…” He trailed off a moment and then he took my hands in his. His golden eyes met mine with an expression that was raw, meeting my fears with his own.
“Angel,” he said. “I’ll be honest. I still feel more like a normal incubus than a demigod. But maybe all demigods feel that way at first. I’m scared too. But I also believe in my purpose, and in you—all of you. Except maybe Gaston.”
“I have no idea what I’m doing here,” Gaston said, “except that I thought you caused my friend Deveraux trouble. Now I see that the ones causing you trouble are definitely more odious people. After three hundred years of living, I suppose I have some duty to do some good.”
“Well, that’s the spirit!” Billie said. “I’m ready to go. I’ve been waiting for this for years.”
I was still looking into Byron’s eyes, remembering the sight of Lord Abiron’s fallen form, mere hours after he made love to me. And I still remembered the sense that Lady Hulda actually wanted to marry him, not kill him. Her mother reminded me all too much of my own mother. That woman told herself she was protecting the Ethereal witches from chaos…but she killed the man her daughter loved. What could be more chaotic than that?
It really has been all wrong for a thousand years.
It’s likely my own family will be hurt by this, and never speak to me again, but no matter what, I’ll have these people. And I’ll have my brother. They love me just as I am, and not for how they hope I might change.
Of course I was scared. It was silly to expect otherwise. But I had also seen enough. I told Byron I trusted him, that I would be his queen, and that felt more true than ever now. I could hardly imagine the strange life he had lived, being thrust into this role.
I never realized how brave you were until this moment, I thought, and in his brooding beauty and the magnetic golden eyes, I also saw the heaviness of courage gained bit by bit.
“I’m ready too,” I said. “What the he
ll. I didn’t do all this for nothing. But I do know that Sam left a hell of a liquor cabinet, so let’s have a Pandora’s Box cocktail first.”
Chapter Nine
Helena
I was really glad that if we were going to do something crazy and possibly apocalyptic, it was in this house. Jake mixed some cocktails and we all gathered around in the sunken living room with the three pieces of the box laid out in their wrappings. Once they were removed from the cloth, they would beam light and emit power, and after that? I had no idea.
Byron, Billie and I were sitting crosslegged together on the floor in a circle while the other guys took up the couch.
“The difficult part is over,” Byron said. “I will bring these pieces together. Once I do, the fabric between worlds will melt away. However, I do have the ability to close gateways. If chaos ensues, I might be busy concentrating over the maps. As you know, the council has been trying to get these pieces and stop us, but they don’t seem to fully understand what they are trying to stop. Once we accomplish our goal, they will know. I’m sure they will arrive shortly to try and kill me as they did then. As witches, you two will be best suited to channel the power from the maps and summon allies to our side. I don’t want you to fight unless it’s absolutely necessary. It’s more effective for you to call help.”
“While we fight to defend you,” Jasper said.
“You four only have to defend the ladies and myself just long enough for more powerful help to arrive,” Byron said.
Jake threw up a hand. “Here we go again. You think we’re useless.”
“You’re not useless,” I said, getting a tiny bit worried that Jake’s ego would lead him into stupidity. “You do the most work on the houses. But you’re not Gandalf, okay?”
He scowled and I could tell he was nervous too, which made me feel a little better, because I was deeply nervous.
“I’m just making sure we’re all on the same page,” Byron said. “I wish I could tell you exactly what will happen when I join the maps together, but we need to be prepared for a fight.”
“Gaston, are you listening?” Billie glanced back.
“Of course I’m listening. What else would I be paying attention to besides your loud voice?”
“It’s loud for a reason,” she said. “Just checking.”
“Deep breaths,” Byron said. “We are ready to join the worlds together. Helena and Billie, would you hand me the maps of Sinistral and Wyrd?”
“Should we…maybe…call our loved ones first? Just in case we get killed?” I asked, musing over how my brother would feel if I died without even asking him for help. He’d be mad. Maybe I should have called him here to help. But of course, I didn’t do that because he was a father of young children.
“No way are we calling our parents,” Jasper said. “They would just freak out and treat us like kids out past curfew all of a sudden. Our mom is not going to understand why we should have to put our lives at risk to save the world, but…someone has to do it, and I don’t think we’re going to die.”
“Me neither,” Jake said.
But I’d seen them stand one-legged on ladders while reaching for stuff. Risk assessment was not their strong suit.
“I don’t have anyone to call, really,” Graham said.
“Okay, okay.” I picked up the map, feeling the magic emanating so strongly off it that it felt alive. It was going to be very intense to unwrap them all at once.
“Here’s the Wyrd map…” Billie put the second piece in front of him.
Byron slowly unfurled the cloth from the maps and light streamed out of them, shooting to the ceiling like spotlights. The power was undeniable, and we could all feel it, every one of us edging back just a little by instinct except Byron, who tamed the maps. He carefully rested them on the carpet and brought the two seams together, pressing them with his fingers.
He chanted words I didn’t know, although I picked up a few fragments—“holy”, “life”, “death”.
The two triangles began to emanate a hum, and the vivid light that filled the roof died back as the hum lessened and then swelled again, like a song, or the heartbeat of a sleeping dragon—a very slow pulse that carried an edge of heat and danger.
Now the light seemed to become contained within the maps, drawing down into the stone surface and lighting it from within. Pinpricks of light sprung up all over the surface of the stone.
“Now, Etherium,” Byron said.
I handed him the third map, holding my breath.
This was the moment of truth. When he placed the Ethereal map against the edges of the others, the gates would open for the first time in a thousand years. Demons, angels, and fae would be able to dwell in each other’s realms. Byron unwrapped the map of the Ethereal world and its light struck all of our faces in the dark room.
He didn’t hesitate at all, his hands as steady as I was with a caulking gun as he put the last map in place. The light was consumed into the map and the three maps briefly flashed as one, sealing together into the pyramid that Lord Abiron called the Way of Paths.
Byron gazed into the pyramid, watching millions of tiny lights appear all over the surface, some of them brighter than others, many of them seeming to move very slowly, each single one almost imperceptible to the naked eye but contributing to the sense of movement. It was like looking down on a planet from space.
“Wow…,” Billie breathed. “I wish I had more eloquent words, but just…wow.”
“It’s like a living thing. Is this…the whole magical world?” I asked.
“The magical world is a pyramid?” Graham asked.
“The magical world consists of planes,” Byron said. “This is the best way to convey it visually, I guess. Each plane is separate but parallel. And now, their edges meet. The Way of Paths is, in a sense, the entire world that I can fit between my hands. But this thing is not the actual world. It’s just a living, breathing replica of what is happening right now.” His eyes were reluctant to tear away from it, but he finally looked at me. “I hardly have words for this moment. I have never felt like a god in this life, but now…”
I was a little awed by this strange man who had once greeted me as a handsome ghost telling me to get out of his house. “It’s so strange the way life works,” I whispered. “I just knew I had to pay too much for Lockwood House.”
Byron leaned over the Way of Paths and kissed me, right in front of my other three men, and it actually felt more right than embarrassing. I didn’t feel any jealousy or shame. I felt like we had all come together to accomplish something astonishing, for Byron, and we were all in this together.
As our lips drew apart, there was a pounding on the door.
Chapter Ten
Jasper
I knew the shit would hit the fan any moment. I was just glad to see that there was no regret on Hel’s face before it did. The three of us sprung off the sofa.
“Hide the Way of Paths,” Jake said. “You three go to the basement and try to summon help. We’ll handle this.”
It couldn’t be the council, not that quickly, I thought. Unless they were already in the neighborhood, watching us. But maybe it’s just an advance guard of their familiars. I can handle that.
Thankfully, my broken leg was almost back to normal by now.
But if it is the council, and if they somehow do know what we’re doing…we’re mincemeat. Byron was just being realistic when he said we only had to hold the place down for a few minutes. We’d be lucky to survive that long.
But Jake and I had each other. If we went down together avenging all of our ancestors who were kept down by generations of smug wizards, I was okay with that. I loved living, but I’d never been afraid to die either. I looked at it like, where was I before I was born? Somewhere just as wonderful. I had always felt that. Maybe it was the sort of hubris you had when you shared your birth with a twin, but I didn’t feel like I was ever alone in the world.
I opened the front door, my reflexes braced to turn wol
f instantly if needed.
It was an older man, although probably one of the neighborhood youngsters, as I would guess he was about seventy, with unruly white hair, dark glasses frames and a tweed jacket. “Oh, hello,” he said. “So you’re the ones who are working on Sam’s house, then? Which one of you is Graham Capello?”
We all let out our breath at the same time, and hopefully he didn’t notice. It was just another nosy neighbor.
“I’m Graham.”
“I couldn’t tell. You all look Italian.”
“Irish,” Jake said.
“And you’re a Red Sox guy. Boston? You from Boston? Brooklyn Dodgers over here. I’m Isaac. So Sam and I were pretty good friends—well, pretty good. He always kept to himself. And I’m a lot younger than him, though you kids probably can’t tell. So I had him over at holidays and I wanted to talk to you because I always helped him with the garden. Sam had this garden but he didn’t know gardens from a pile of concrete. Sorry excuse for a wizard if you ask me, and I say this as a city warlock, but I think that’s why I appreciate it so much. I heard you were…”
My heart was still beating stupidly fast considering the obvious lack of threat here. We were all glancing behind us. After a second, Jake broke away to go tell Byron and Hel that it was a false alarm, as the old man went on,
“…I could help you get the garden going again, and if you need to know anything about the medicinal plants of California, because I know, the east coast wizards don’t know anything about the plants we got out here, and—are you wizards? You’re not wizards. I just realized that I already sensed that. You’re shifters or something. By the way, I wanted to ask you about that light that came blazing out of the house a little bit ago. I don’t mind it but it felt pretty strong. We have an ordinance against summoning anything without permission.”
“Nah, we didn’t summon anything,” I said. “We were just trying to get the undine to move out of the pool.”
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