She stopped at our table and rapped her gnarled knuckles on the top of it three times.
The song ended and the drone of a football game on the flat screen on the back wall simmered over the hum of the coolers.
“Brogan Gauge,” she said, her voice creakier than I’d remembered. “There you are. I’ve been waiting for you.”
“Miss Woodbury,” I said.
“Oh now, we’re friends. Or we might be, depending on how this goes.” She squinted, thinking. “Call me Eunice. We can start there.”
“I’m here like you asked.” I stood, and yes, I was using my size to make a point: I wasn’t going to let her hurt me, or my family. “Whatever you have to say, you can say it now.”
“Well, I’d like to sit down, if that’s all right with you. Old woman like me. Don’t move like I used to.”
“You were dancing.”
“That was ages ago.”
“Minutes ago,” I said.
She nodded. “That too. That too.” Then she sort of squeezed around me and folded layer by layer like a telescope onto my chair, sighing like she hadn’t been off her feet in years. “Would you look at all that soda pop? Just look at this place.”
The music came on again, the Beach Boys getting around, and Miss Woodbury—Eunice—tapped her finger in time.
“Have I told you why I called you here yet?” she asked.
I traded a glance with Lu over her head. Lu just raised one eyebrow.
“You mentioned a few things in the vision.”
“One vision?” she asked.
“There were two. You only seemed to want to talk in the second one.”
“Ah-yah, I’m that way sometimes, sometimes. So what I said in those visions is true, as much as any other time, but what you asknow, what I answerhere,is real. This is where you start forward again, Brogan Gauge, on this old road you’ve been following.”
She was still tapping, her bracelets keeping the beat. Her eyes had gone clear and sharp, a light in them growing.
“Why is the god bad?” Abbi blurted.
Eunice blinked, and blinked some more, her fingers losing the beat of the song. It took her a second to recover, to get that finger tapping again to the Beach boys still gettin’ around. When she did, she seemed to see Abbi for the first time, and focused on her.
I didn’t know if I liked that.
Hado clearly didn’t. He placed his big hand on Abbi’s shoulder.
It was a subtle thing, but when he touched her, it snapped the two of them into something more than what they were separately. They were the same, each their own person, but together they were heightened, defined, the magic, or power, or supernaturalness of what they were enhanced.
“Moon Rabbit.” Eunice nodded. “Shadow. Is that the question you ask this time? Exactly?”
Abbi tipped her head. “Yes. Why is the god bad?”
Eunice jangled the beads on her wrist. “These things, gods, are always wanting. This one seeks reparations. This god was slighted, power refused when the book was bound. Late to the party, I suppose.
“A god can create anything, control anything within their power. But this is not within the god’s power. Therefore, it is valuable. In claiming it, using it or destroying it, the god would have power and possession of something no other god possessed.
“That thing, that book, created by so many gods, is valuable simply for its impossibility of ever existing once, or ever existing again. If the god is clever enough, the lock and key will be easy to find, easy to break, then the god will have access to all the gods’ powers. Reality will change.”
Goosebumps rolled down my neck, and my stomach clenched. Cupid was a god of connections and destruction. He wanted us to find that book, and until this moment, I would have been happy to drop it in his hands and never see him or the book again.
