Queen of Air and Darkness
Page 134

Kit hoped that was true. His stomach was in painful knots by the time they made it to the cave entrance. Ty stopped at the dark hole in the stone bluff, shaking his head at his sister.
“You can’t come with us,” he said.
Dru opened her mouth to protest, but Kit gave her a meaningful look. “It’s better if you wait outside,” he said, enunciating each word clearly so she’d know he meant it.
Dru flopped down in the sand, looking woebegone. “Okay. Fine.”
Ty ducked into the cave. Kit, after an apologetic look at Dru, was about to follow when Ty emerged again, carrying an angry gray ball of fluff.
Dru’s face broke into a smile. “Church!”
“He can keep you company,” Ty said, and put the cat into his sister’s lap. Dru looked at him with shining eyes, but Ty was already ducking back into the cave. Kit followed, though he couldn’t help but wonder if Ty had ever noticed how much Dru looked up to him. He couldn’t help but think that if he had a little sibling who admired him, he would have spent all his time showing off.
Ty was different, though.
The moment they entered the tunnel, Kit could hear scratchy music—something like the sound of a song that hadn’t downloaded properly. When they entered the main cave, they found Shade twirling slowly around the room to the sound of a mournful tune playing on a gramophone.
“Non, rien de rien,” Shade sang along. “Je ne regrette rien. Ni le bien qu’on m’a fait, ni le mal—”
Kit cleared his throat.
Shade didn’t seem the least embarrassed. He ceased his twirling, glared, and snapped his fingers. The music vanished.
“I don’t recall inviting you to come tonight,” the warlock said. “I might have been busy.”
“We sent a note,” said Kit. Shade beetled his white brows at him and glanced down at the scratched wooden table. An empty vial sat on it, the kind they’d used to distribute the Lake Lyn water. Kit was pleased to see Shade had drunk the cure, although a little worried he might be hallucinating.
Ty took an eager step forward. “We have everything. All the ingredients for the spell.”
Shade’s gaze flicked to Kit quickly and then away. He looked grim. “All of them?”
Ty nodded. “Incense, blood, and bone—”
“An object from another world?”
“We have that, too,” said Kit as Ty drew the folded letter from his pocket. “It’s from a place called Thule.”
Shade stared at the letter, the color draining from his face, leaving it the sickly hue of lettuce. “Thule?”
“You know that world?” Ty said.
“Yes.” Shade’s voice was toneless. “I know many other worlds. It is one of the worst.”
Kit could see that Ty was puzzled: He hadn’t expected Shade to react this way. “But we have everything,” he said again. “All the ingredients. You said you would give us a power source.”
“Yes, I did say that.” Shade sat down at the rickety wooden table. “But I won’t.”
Ty blinked disbelievingly. “But you said—”
“I know what I said,” Shade snapped. “I never intended you to find all the ingredients, you foolish child. I thought you would give up. You didn’t.” He threw his arms into the air. “Don’t you understand this would be the worst thing you could possibly do? That its effects would follow you all your life? Death is the end for a reason.”
“But you’re immortal.” Ty’s eyes were huge and pale gray, silver coins against his stark face.
“I have a long life, but I won’t live forever,” said Shade. “We all have the life that’s been allotted to us. If you pull Livvy to you from where she belongs, you leave a hole in the universe to be filled by black sorrow and miserable grief. That’s not something you can walk away from unscathed. Not now. Not ever.”
“So you lied to us,” Ty said.
Shade stood up. “I did. I would again. I will never help you to do this thing, do you understand me? And I will spread the word. No warlock will help you. They will face my wrath if they do.”
Ty’s hands were working themselves into fists, his fingers scrabbling at his palms. “But Livvy—”
“Your sister is dead,” said Shade. “I understand your grief, Tiberius. But you cannot break the universe to get her back.”
Ty turned and ran for the tunnel. Kit stared at Shade.
“That was too brutal,” he said. “You didn’t have to talk to him like that.”
“I did,” Shade said. He slumped back into his chair. “Go after your friend. He needs you now, and God knows I don’t.”
Kit backed up, then spun and ran, following Ty’s witchlight. He spilled out onto the beach to find Ty already there, bent over and gasping for breath.
Dru leaped to her feet, spilling a meowing Church onto the ground. “What’s happened? What’s wrong?”
Kit put his hand on Ty’s back, between his shoulder blades. He was a little startled to find Ty’s back more solid and lightly muscled than he would have thought. He always thought of Ty as fragile, but he didn’t feel fragile. He felt like iron hammered thin: flexible but unbreakable.
Kit remembered hearing somewhere that it was soothing to rub circles on someone’s back, so he did that. Ty’s breaths began to regulate.
“It isn’t going to work,” Kit said, looking firmly at Dru over Ty’s back. “We aren’t going to be able to see Livvy’s ghost.”
“I’m sorry,” Dru whispered. “I would have liked to have seen her too.”
Ty straightened up. His eyes were wet; he rubbed them fiercely. “No—I’m sorry, Dru.”
Kit and Dru exchanged a startled look. It hadn’t occurred to Kit before that Ty might feel not just disappointed but as if he had let others down.
“Don’t be sorry,” Dru said. “Some things aren’t possible.” She put her hand out, a little shyly. “If you feel bad, I’ll watch movies all night with you in the TV room. I can make cookies, too. That always helps.”
There was a long pause. Ty reached out to take Dru’s hand. “That would be nice.”
Kit felt a wash of relief so enormous he almost staggered. Ty had remembered he had a sister. Surely that was something. He had expected much worse: a disappointment he couldn’t calculate, a hurt so deep nothing he could have said would touch it.
“Come on.” Dru tugged on Ty’s hand, and together they started back toward the Institute.
Kit followed, pausing as they began to scramble up the first of the rock walls that blocked the way across the beach. As Ty and Dru climbed, he looked back over his shoulder and saw Shade watching them from the darkness of his cave entrance. He shook his head at Kit once before vanishing back into the shadows.
* * *
The wind was blowing from the desert; Cristina and Mark sat near the statues Arthur Blackthorn had imported from England and placed among the cacti of the Santa Monica Mountains. The sand was still warm from the sunlight of the day, and soft under Mark, like the deep pile of a carpet. In the Wild Hunt, he and Kieran would have found this a very fine bed.
“I am worried,” Cristina said, “that we hurt Kieran earlier today.”
She was barefoot in the sand, wearing a short lace dress and gold earrings. Looking at her made Mark’s heart hurt, so he glanced up at the statue of Virgil, his old friend of frustrated nights. Virgil stared back impassively, without advice.
“His worries are my worries too,” said Mark. “It is difficult to ease his fears when I cannot ease my own.”
“You don’t have to ease other people’s fears to share yours, Mark.” Cristina was playing with her medallion, her long fingers caressing the etching of Raziel. Mark wanted badly to kiss her; instead, he dug his fingers into the sand.
“I could say the same to you,” he said. “You have been tense as a bowstring all day. You are fearful too.”
She sighed and poked his leg lightly with her bare foot. “Fine. You tell me, and I’ll tell you.”