“Ah,” she said, her gaze locking on me. “There you are. I wondered how long it’d be until you came back. Almost took myself to bed, figuring it would be morning before your brain fully connected.”
“I—what time is it? What…what day is it? Year?” The last word came out as a punched whisper, panic wrapping fingers around my throat and squeezing.
Lorde moved and plunked her big head into my lap. My hand dropped automatically to pet her.
“It’s been one week since I saw you last. It is almost midnight. You are at my house outside of Geary, Oklahoma.”
I stacked and restacked that information, hoping it would take me back to understanding what the hell had happened to me.
“You’ve had half a pot of tea, two pieces of bread, and two aspirins. You’ve been here about six hours now, and I’m happy to say you’re no longer catatonic. Let’s talk. What happened?”
“I thought… Shouldn’t you know?”
“I know what might have been, what probably was, but I didn’t follow you to see what decisions you made. It’s always better for me to hear it out loud. Did all the things I told you were going to happen come true?”
“I don’t…I don’t remember what you said.”
“Did you touch the book?”
“Yes.”
“Did a god betray you?”
“Yes.”
“Did Death his damned self come for your soul?”
I scowled. “Yes.”
“Well, there you have it. I was right. About everything. Why don’t people listen to old women? Am I invisible over here? Like I can’t see the damn futures.”
“You also…you said it would break Lula’s heart.”
She lowered into the chair across from me, her back to the door. “When you find her, you’ll see I got that right too,” she said, not unkindly. “Tell me your story, Brogan Gauge. Let me hear what future you’re headed to.”
So I went over it, starting at our meeting with Cupid, call to Headwaters, and then finally, the Junk Hunt, Mad Mat, and the book. By then I was slurring my words, exhaustion catching up with me. She handed me a cup of coffee and a slice of spice cake and I finished the rest of the story about Death between bites of pecan and maple frosting.
“Now that I’ve told you everything, I need to know what you wanted us to find for you. Maybe it fits into all this.”
She turned her empty cup on the table between her hands. “It is a reed. It sounds inconsequential when I say it like that. The reed is a mouthpiece, a focal, a manifestation of my power. It was taken from me, from us, from the muse I am. It leaves us, me, vulnerable, unable to hear all the notes of destiny.”
“Stolen, not lost?”
“Stolen. A god. The one who hides as another. Mad Mat used it to find and to see possibilities. To find you. To press on the scale of the future and bend destiny.”
I rubbed my hand over my face, tired. “What does it look like? A stick? A piece of grass? A cane?”
“It’s a reed. It is used in the mouthpiece of musical instruments. Clarinet, bagpipe, shehnai, harmonica…”
“Trombone?” Mad Mat had been carrying a trombone when he’d found us in that gazebo in Galena. He’d kept forgetting he was holding it, but had been reluctant to set it down. If it was part of a muse’s power, if it had something to do with seeing the future, or futures, and influencing them, then it was a powerful item indeed.
“It could fit a trombone, though you’d never get a sweet tune out of it.” She stood and returned to the same cupboard, opening it, and shutting it again. “You’ve seen it, haven’t you?”
“I think so.” I leaned back in the chair, and the joints creaked and popped. “Mad Mat was carrying an instrument, a trombone. That might be it.”
She moved away from the counter, every line of her tense. A faint echo of how I’d seen her before—all the versions of her—flipped through her like shadowed notes written behind flame.
“Help me, Brogan Gauge, and I will help you.”
