Marek’s fingers stilled on his laptop, hazel eyes meeting Jono’s. “If I had, you and Patrick would be the first to know. Right now, everything is just black. Empty.”
“Empty?”
Marek set his laptop on the coffee table and slouched on the sofa, rubbing his eyes. Being a seer might be financially lucrative and come with federal security support when needed, but the cost was brutal. Jono still felt guilty for Marek’s loss of color when it came to everything surrounding Patrick.
“Ever since Patrick came to New York, it’s been difficult to see anything, but I could always feel the Norns looking at the future when I searched for a vision. Lately it’s as if nothing is there, not even a wall. It’s a void.”
Jono thought about Ginnungagap and the beginning it represented, and the end Fenrir had embodied once before, laid down in a story become myth, lost to history. He didn’t know which way they were careening toward, but he hoped it was where they were all alive when it was all over.
“Don’t look,” Jono said.
Marek dropped his hands to his lap, giving Jono a wan smile. “I already promised Sage I wouldn’t.”
“Good.”
“How did the meeting go with the outside packs?”
“As expected. I don’t know if they’ll be enough in the end, or even if we had them come to the right city, but they’re here.”
“More is always better when fighting the hells.”
Jono could only agree.
They sat in silence for a couple of minutes before Marek got to his feet with a heavy sigh, heading to the kitchen. When he came back, he had two beers in hand, one of which he offered to Jono. Despite the amount of alcohol he’d had at the bar, Jono didn’t turn it down.
“You’re worried,” Marek said, retaking his seat on the sofa.
“I’d be a bloody fool not to be.” Jono picked at the label stuck to the bottle, staring blankly at the opaque glass. “Patrick thinks whoever killed Setsuna was aiming for him.”
“Are you surprised?”
Jono grimaced, taking a swallow of beer. “No. They’ve been after him since before I met him. This was different.”
“How so?”
“If they weren’t aiming for him and were aiming for Setsuna, then Ethan’s going after the people close to him.”
Marek frowned, the spike of worry in his scent making Jono’s nose itch. “Do you think your pack is in danger?”
“That’s our general status right now.”
“You know what I mean.”
Jono slouched in the armchair and stretched out his legs. “Ethan was after Patrick’s blood for that fertility rite Cernunnos most likely did. If he got what he wanted, then he has no need to keep Patrick around.”
“So youdothink the shooter was targeting him.”
Jono closed his eyes and dredged up the old, violent memory of when he was Ethan’s prisoner last year, how the mage had reveled in torture. How pleased he’d looked in the face of Jono’s agony.
“I think Ethan wants to hurt Patrick before killing him. Patrick doesn’t care about his own skin, but he’s proven he cares about us,” Jono said slowly.
“That makes you a target.”
“Us. I’m sure Ethan knows the lot of you are allies, and he’s the sort of bloke to salt and burn.”
Marek brought his beer to his mouth and chugged it. When he finished, he let out a burp. “Well, we have a week until we’re either all dead or all alive. I’ll tell Emma to have our pack double up how we did when the hunters were in town and implement some check-in requirements.”
“That’s what I was going to suggest to Pat and Sage for all the packs to do. We’re a week out until Samhain. Hunters are probably already in town.”
