“You won’t,” Marci said confidently. “Refusing would mean you’ve given up on becoming a Merlin entirely, and I don’t believe that for a second. You might have lost your shot at being the first, but this is still something you’ve wanted all your life. There’s no way you’re giving it up now. Not when you’re so close.”
That, at last, seemed to get through. “I’llnevergive up,” he said firmly. “I deserve to be a Merlin.”
“Great,” Marci said. “If you can dump that sense of entitlement, you might just make it. In the meanwhile, how about translating this seal? Because I have no idea where to start.”
Myron heaved a long-suffering sigh. Then, slowly, he leaned down over the seal. “For the record,” he said. “I’m only doing this because I’m terrified of what you’d do in ignorance without me. The moment the crack is stabilized, though, you’re taking me back to the physical world. I need to get my body back so I can find another spirit and come back here as a Merlin to do what you could not.”
“Fair enough,” she said. “But before you get your hopes up too high, you’re not getting another spirit. First, the DFZ is the only Mortal Spirit in the world aside from Ghost right now, and second, did you miss the part where you two were bound for life?”
Myron shook his head. “I can’t use her. She hates me.”
“Tough,” Marci said. “She’s your responsibility. You raised her. You pissed her off. Now you have to clean up your mess. Or do you not believe a Merlin should be responsible for his mistakes?”
When Myron flinched, Marci knew she had him. “Just give it a chance. The DFZ is famous for being a place where people start over. Talk to her. Apologize for being a jerk. Treat her like a city instead of a monster, and I bet you’ll be surprised.”
He rubbed his hands over his face. “If she sees me again, she’s going to kill me.”
“Then you’d better make sure she has a good reason not to,” Marci said, joining him by the seal. “Either way, you’ve already said yes, so let’s get to work. I want to get this thing stable pronto so I can get back to the real world, too. I left a lot of irons in the fire when I died. The faster I get back to deal with those, the happier I’ll be. And speaking of…”
She glanced at Shiro. “HowdoI travel back and forth from here to the real world? Do I click my heels together or spin widdershins or what?”
“What are you talking about?” the shikigami asked, genuinely confused. “Thisisthe real world.”
“I meant I want to go back to being alive,” Marci clarified. “Since I was bound to a death spirit, I had to die to get over here. Now that I’m officially a Merlin, though, I’d like to remedy that. You know, get a new body, return to the physical world, all that good stuff. History’s full of famous Merlins, so I know it has to be possible. How do I do it?”
“That depends,” Shiro said. “Does your spirit have an aspect of rebirth?”
Marci looked at Ghost, who shook his head.
The shikigami shrugged. “Then I’m afraid there is no way back.”
She froze. For a long heartbeat, Marci just stood there like a statue. Then she exploded into motion, grabbing the shikigami’s shoulders with both hands as she shrieked, “What?”
Chapter 11
Finding Chelsie was never an easy task. Even when you thought you knew where she was, she had a bad habit of vanishing whenever your back was turned. This was why, even though he’d just left her in Bob’s room, the first thing Julius did when he reached the mountain was pull out his phone to message Fredrick.
And was immediately rewarded. He’d barely hit send before Fredrick messaged back that he and Chelsie had retreated down the mountain to her room in the basement. Thanking him profusely for saving him a long and pointless climb, Julius started down the stairs, using his years of experience in hiding from his family to avoid all the emperor’s dragons and servants as he made his way down to Chelsie’s lair in the mountain’s roots.
Fredrick was waiting when he got there, camped out on the narrow couch in Chelsie’s cramped library where Marci had slept the one night she’d spent here. He rose to his feet when Julius walked in, his false-green eyes worried. “What’s wrong?”
Julius didn’t have time to explain Ian’s ultimatum, so he got right to the point. “Where’s Chelsie?”
“Asleep,” the F replied, tilting his head toward the closed bedroom door. “And before you ask, I wouldn’t suggest waking her.”
“But this is anemergency.”
“So is this,” he said, crossing his arms over his chest. “Chelsie’s a bad sleeper on her good days. Exhausted as she is right now, she’ll take your head off before she realizes what’s going on.”
Julius scowled. Fredrick was always so dry, it was impossible to tell if he was being serious or not. Given that Chelsie herself had warned Julius multiple times never to wake her up, though, he was leaning towardnot. He was trying to come up with a plan that would let him get to Chelsie while still keeping his head on his shoulders when Fredrick threw something at him.
Julius caught it by instinct. “What’s this?” he asked, examining the object in his hand, which looked and felt like a small brick that had been shrink-wrapped in white plastic.
“Emergency rations,” the F replied apologetically. “I know it’s not ideal, but the Golden Emperor’s servants have taken over all the kitchens. After what happened with the Empress Mother, I don’t trust them not to try and poison us, so I dug into Chelsie’s stash.”
He wasn’t surprised at all to hear Chelsie had a stash of emergency rations. She probably had ten years’ worth of everything a dragon could need squirreled away down here. Given the dust in the plastic’s wrinkles, the ration in his hands was probably older than him. Unappetizing as that was, though, now that the subject of food had been broached, his stomach was pointedly reminding him that he hadn’t eaten since breakfast, and freeze-dried food was a lot better than nothing.
“Thank you,” he said, ripping the plastic open.
