“It’s a spell. Nothing written in any book you would ever read.”
“Is it written in theRauðskinna?”
“No.”
I groaned. “So we have more than one dark magic book we have to deal with?”
“Not every book of magic is dark, Delaney.”
“Is this one?”
Rossi looked like he didn’t want to answer that. Then: “Yes.”
Great. It was a dark magic dagger. Still, if I had to fight Lavius, I’d need more than a gun at my disposal.
“Does everyone get a magic dagger?” I accepted the knife, getting used to the weight in my hand. I didn’t take it out of the sheath.
“No. Only those who he is connected to.”
“Neat.” Since I wasn’t wearing a jacket, I stuck the dagger, sheath and all, in my back pocket.
“You’ll be there tonight?” It came out sounding a little small. Needy. I tried to feel ashamed about that, but couldn’t have managed it even if I still had full-access to all my emotions.
“Yes,” he said immediately.
Good.
“So now we wait?”
“I have a few matters to deal with. Preparation. For now, you rest. Go home, Delaney. Get some sleep. This will not be easy.”
“Is there anything else I should know? I don’t want to be surprised here, Rossi. If there’s something…uncomfortable you don’t want to tell me…whatever Bathin was hinting at, I’d rather hear it from you than be surprised.”
He paused, there in the sunlight, an anomaly in this world, but no less beautiful because of it. The weight of his years seemed to gather around him, stretching across the many things he had been, the many things he had done.
All the choices he had made, good and bad.
He nodded, just once, and I knew he had made another choice. Maybe even his final one.
“There is nothing more you need to know, Delaney.” His gentle voice. His kind voice. The one I’d known from childhood. “We’ll meet at the Putt Putt at eleven and then all this will finally be done.”
He reached out to me, his cool fingers brushing across my cheek so faintly, it could have just been the wind. “All things come to an end.” There was sorrow in his words, and forgiveness.
Then he turned and walked away, across the parking lot and down the narrow footpath toward the cliffside that would lead to the beach. He was pulling his shirt off over his head as he went, baring that impossibly pale skin that should not endure the sunlight to the wide judgmental sky.
I wondered if he was going to strip everything off, as he so often did. Wondered if I should follow him and either give him comfort, or write up another indecent exposure ticket for his collection.
Decided, instead, to give him his time.
It didn’t escape me that he was going to kill a man who had been a soldier beside him, a man who had been a brother. I didn’t care how old you were, or what that person had become as time tread through multiple lives. Killing someone who had once been at your side, at your back, had to be a hell of a thing to get right with.
“How about I drive?” Ryder asked.
“I don’t want to go home and just wait.”
“What do you want to do?”
Good question. “Patrol. Check in on Jean. Write some traffic tickets.”
