“You kissed?” Her eyes were huge. Before I could answer, the air charged with Rose’s particularly boisterous energy, and her black boho skirt and sunglasses amplified her presence. Like the lightning ball of awesomeness that was Rose, she headed to our table.
Me kissing Ranth was not going to get the Rose stamp of approval because her standards for me were always in my best interest. Kissing the cursed wizard who had to disappear from this world was not in my best interest. “Tell you later,” I whispered to Ori.
“What’s going on?” Rose asked, taking the third seat and raising her sunglasses. The burgundy lipstick and peacock blue eyeshadow made her gorgeous eyes pop.
I took a breath, the nightmare of my situation sucking away positivity and the need to explain the kiss. “Disasters of the ninth demons and beyond. Ranth has been acquired by his ‘order.’ Butthe Marahk aren’t the same people as the Ahknim. At least, they aren’t who Ranth described.”
Ori covered my hand. Her fingers were warm after holding her favorite cinnamon latte. I hadn’t realized I was cold.
“How are you doing—really?” she asked quietly.
I did a self-check. “Annoyed and worried? Sound about right?” I didn’t add the lurking weakness was part of the annoyance. I’d failed to protect my home from intruders and Ranth from being taken. I’d been knocked out by a non-magical drug, and now I had to scramble for a plan. But even if my life weren’t literally on the line, defeat was never an option.
Rose laughed. “Sounds very Sorrel.” Her lightness helped. “This mine?” She reached for the white mug Ori slid toward her with white-dotted nails. “I did some asking around about the Marahk because I thought I’d heard that name before. Turns out, they take jobs I wouldn’t let my worst enemies touch—like making people disappear and ruining things for money. You know me. I’m okay with all colors of magic, but these people don’t have boundaries.” She unzipped her jacket, baring the black silk tank underneath. She took an exploratory sip of her drink. “Lavender mocha? Perfection. Thank you.” She grinned.
“My pleasure,” Ori replied. “According to the email you sent, Ranth is what he says he was, a member of the wizards of a high order. They called him a Collector. But if these people existed, it was before recorded history except for one. The Ahknim have some connection to Melichior.” Ori picked up her cup.
“Like the three kings?” I asked.
“I think so. The spelling is slightly off, but I expect it’s the same. He was a learned king, and that would make sense in context. But there was nothing about the Trees or the Serpent. The big letters at the bottom of the document were to bring him in unharmed and then contact someone in Alexandria.” She set the cup down, then turned the screen around. “The other emailsconcern me more. Apparently, this trio of people, Ranth and the other two, make a lock on something with power, a lot of power. Enough that the boss in Alexandria said to deliver the goods, using whatever was necessary. They think Ranth has a sky key, and they’ve been looking for him for a thousand years. They want him badly.”
And now they had him. The cup handle was a lifeline to reality. I could do this. “What they don’t know is that he doesn’thavea sky key. Heisthe sky key. The sky won’t open without Ranth, but he’s the only one that can return to the Garden. While they are confused, it’ll buy us some time to rescue him. He doesn’t have a passport, so they can’t put him on plane if they are thinking that.”
Rose rubbed her earlobe, like she did when she was thinking around a problem. “What’s a sky key, do I know? Is it the gold stuff we needed to find?”
“The Garden Ranth needs to return to is on another plane. Like I use maca to get to the other plane, this one is locked and requires a key. They call it a ‘sky key,’ but it’s really a ritual to get back into the Garden. That’s what all the stuff we’re gathering is for. Well, sort of. Without Ranth, any ritual won’t work. The Keepers of the Trees are, themselves, the keys to open the sky.”
“Ah, I got the part about the pieces for the ritual, but now I really get it. He’s synced with whatever place he has to get back to, so he can get there, but no one else could—but they don’t know that.”
“Exactly,” I replied, sitting back in the chair.
“We’d better hurry then. If they know the right people, they could get a passport within a day,” Rose said.
“Wow, really? That’s fast,” Ori replied.
She was not wrong, but I needed to remain positive. “They’ll have a tough time keeping him locked up. I’m sort of concerned, though, because depending on where he is, he’s a long way fromme, and we don’t know if the proximity thing is still an issue. He thought it was, so there’s that. It’s good news they need to have him in one piece. They used a smoking-drug bomb to take me out. I dunno why Ranth didn’t fight back. I mean he could have used magic, but maybe the smoke took him out too?”
“They’ll definitely drug him if they know he has power they don’t understand,” Rose said.
That sent another shiver through me. They had drugged me, and they could do it again. I’d have to be careful. “We need to find him. I have these to help.” I laid the hairs on the table.
Rose peered at the raven-black strands. “From?”
“Fabra, the woman the Marahk sent to get him. She didn’t do a good job. I bound her to the house. But after they took Ranth…” I palmed my forehead. “I should have bound Ranth to the house. That would have been way smarter!Argh.I took her hair and figured we could charm-track her if the email header didn’t help.”
“Don’t beat yourself up, honey, you did great.” Rose rubbed my shoulder.
Ori picked up her phone. “Ha, you have a good memory. I already have Juke working on the email. She said it should be pretty fast—wait, Juke already found it… Bayview near Hunter’s Point.”
“Fabra said the clubhouse was there.”
“But you don’t know for sure if that’s where Ranth is,” Rose replied.
“Even if it isn’t, it should take us closer to him or at least find people who know where he is. We’re going to need a plan, a good plan. If these people have weapons, then magic only goes so far.”
“Unless you go in planar…”
“Yeah, I could do that to scope. But to get to Ranth, we will still have to do it in the real world—I think… Though, maybe you’re right!”
