I inhaled and exhaled, forcing my feet to stay still, and forcing my gaze not to falter under the horror of the god’s delight.
“You do have the key,” the god said, “or rather, you could. Youwill. Once you are spirit again.” Mad Mat’s head tipped to one side, and his mask slipped. Beneath the image of Mad Mat was a visage of horror.
Sandpaper eyes, a woman’s mouth stretched over ragged teeth, her laughter brutal. I had seen her in the car crash. I had seen her in the storage fire. “Your bones will be my key.”
Her head snapped up, and the Mad Mat mask was back, the smile uncomfortably human.
“You see me now, too, don’t you? I know you are the key, because I made you the key, not the silver wing Lula hides. You and Lula are lock and key. Your souls, so tortured, so strange.” Mad Mat licked his lips.
“All the years neither fully alive, nor completely dead. All the years she carried a shred of your soul in her heart and you carried a shred of hers. Do you know how rare that is?
“Do you know how difficult it is to find? Two souls who could endure? Whoselove,” the god chuckled through Mad Mat’s mouth, “was strong enough to torture them, to force them to cling, hopelessly, to each other even though there was no promise of relief? Death never came for you, and yet you wouldn’t let go.”
Mad Mat flicked a finger. The book spun slowly, repositioning itself so that the front faced me.
The book was slim and tawny brown, worked with gold threads and bits of stone and metal. Its clasp had been carved in the shape of a bird in full dive, a loop of leather clutched in its talons.
The page edges were a deep red. For something so powerful, it looked like any other book.
Power, gods, people, books, were not always what they appeared to be.
“You were my greatest discovery. After years of scouring the universe looking for the spell book, I found you and Lula. Without you, this,” a gesture made the book bob like it was floating in water, “could never be mine.”
“Let Lula go,” I said again. “And I’ll do what you want.”
The god squared Mat’s shoulders, one hand still behind his back, the smile evaporating faster than dew in the desert. “Lula is mine now. She has always been mine. When I’m done with you, when I’ve used you up, she will still be mine. You will no longer exist. Alive or dead. No one will care that you’ve been crushed to dust.”
A flutter of movement shifted at the edge of my vision. Something small and quick in the darkened doorway to the left slipped into the room. It dashed along the baseboards, moving toward the line of ash in front of Lula.
Abbi’s rabbit form was smaller than I’d ever seen her before, barely larger than a mouse. I didn’t know if she could cross the ashes and find a way through the watery wall of magic to Lula, but I was going to give her every second to try.
“A lot of gods have promised me death.” I strode toward Mad Mat and the god who puppeted him, my hands loose at my side. “None of them have made it stick. I hated you from the day you came sniffing around Lula at our bakery. You were worthless then, and you’re worthless now. You’ve tried to kill me and failed. So shut the hell up.”
Abbi pushed through the ashes and wriggled her way under the wall of watery magic. She hopped behind Lula.
To untie her.
To break the magic that bound her.
To save her and run, run, run.
All she needed was time.
“You want to use me up?” I said. “Do it.” I stopped just out of arm’s reach, though a god didn’t need to lay hands on me to do damage. “If I’m the key, then use me. I’m calling your bluff.”
The thump was faint. It wasn’t coming from the corner where Abbi was trying to save Lula.
Greed and dark delight tightened those cardboard eyes. “You are not immortal, Brogan Gauge. Your usefulness will not last forever. Put your hands on the book.”
Abbi hadn’t gotten Lu untied, and Lu hadn’t noticed the little rabbit behind her. Lu hadn’t moved since I’d stepped into the room.
I tracked her from the corner of my eye. Abbi hopped around to the front of Lula. Then she jumpedthroughher. As if she were a projection. An illusion.
Lula didn’t flinch.
Abbi repeated the process two more times, then squeezed back under the wall of magic and crossed over the ash.
Lula still hadn’t moved, because that wasn’t Lula. That was an illusion. Lula was trapped, here, but somewhere else.
