“I’ve seen her touch it,” I said. “She had it in her hands.”
“Did she? Or was that an illusion?”
I replayed that time in the farmhouse. When Lula had been trapped beneath the floor, when I had just come back from the dead and was trying to save her. I wasn’t sure, couldn’t be sure if Atë had actually held the book in her hands.
“Gods are very good at illusions,” Raven said. “Even gods who aren’t tricksters. So, yes. I am very certain she can’t use the book without Lula’s hands and your voice.”“That has to be bullshit.”
“It’s not. You know what’s bullshit? You throwing three bullseyes without even trying. You are a hustler, Brogan Gauge. If you ever get tired of the Route, you could make good money. Hell, you could make good money on the Route.”
“I don’t care about darts. Tell me everything. Any information you have on the monster that turned us.”
He stared at the ceiling a moment and nodded, as if dragging up old memories. “Lula’s not a full vampire, is she?”
“It’s called athrawan,” Lu said, walking into the kitchen. Her hair was braided back, but still damp from a shower. She’d changed into jeans, a tank top and boots—her standard traveling clothes.
She didn’t expect us to be staying here long.
The wall changed back into a wall with a door to the outside, the dartboard and darts disappearing in a flash.
“We know I’m not a full vampire,” she added.
Raven meandered over to the table and dropped down into a chair.
“Yes.Thrawan. But the monster that turned youthrawanisn’t fully vampire either. It’s god-turned, chaos-blooded, mutated. It was Atë’s way of creating a tool she needed: hands that can touch the book and a voice that can cast its spells.”
Ricky wandered into the kitchen and put dishes in the sudsy water. She made a small, interested noise.
I didn’t want to believe Raven, but this wasn’t something we could change. We were a hundred years too late to change any of this.
“I’m the hands,” Lula breathed out, and the world was loud again, real again. “I can touch it. Ihavetouched it. It knocked Brogan out when he tried. It repels everyone out who tries to touch it.”
Raven tapped his nose in agreement. “It chooses who can touch it. That was the protection woven into it. But there are ways around its protections, because there are always ways around things like that. Ghouls, for instance, can slip through certain god-placed loopholes. Ask me how I know, and I’ll tell you a funny story about a car falling out of the sky.”
“I don’t…” I cleared my throat. “There must be others who can handle the book. More than just Lula.”
Lula was looking at me oddly.
Raven was looking at me oddly too. But he shrugged. “Well, like I told you at the diner, there is one more. You,” he said simply. “You’re the voice.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
There was a cool breeze blowing through the kitchen, just a soft breath of a thing whisking over my forehead and face.
“I was dead—that monster killed me, turned me into nothing but a ghost,” I said. “How could I be the voice?”
Raven picked up a cup of coffee and drank, refusing to answer me.
“You weren’t a ghost,” Ricky said. “And no, you weren’t barely a ghost, either. When you were angry, really angry, you moved the world, Brogan. We could hear you. Even through the veil between the living and dead.”
“It makes sense,” Lula said.
“It doesn’t make sense,” I said. “No damn god is going to halfway kill me and you just so she can make us into puppets she can control.”
Raventsked, the softest of sounds. “Gods always get what they want. You know that. Gods will go to any extreme it takes to get something they really want. Something like revenge, and Atë wants revenge on all the gods who wouldn’t let her play with their spellbook.”
I was pacing, couldn’t hold still. “This can’t… Why?” I heard the volume of my words but couldn’t find the dial to turn it down. “Why us? There are millions of people,billions. Why us?”
Silence ticked between the songs of birds warbling outside. A flock had found Crow’s offering and were making their way through the field.
