“One ting I know about destiny,” he said, running his fingers through his long moustache. “S’not linear. It can be changed.”
“How? I’m just one person, and I’ll shoot it straight, Nemuik: I’m a fuck up.” I held out my hand, counting my faults with my fingers. “I haven’t technically graduated high school, and I’m about to fail my final course that would get me my diploma, again. I lost my job and most of my friends. I have no idea how to use my Source…” I tucked in my lips, swallowing the rest of the words, already overwhelmed by it all.
The dwarf’s wiry brows dipped. “Ye got to believe in yerself first, Nephilim.”
As if it were that easy. I kicked a stray rock, and it tumbled into the sea.
“C’mon,” he said, sheathing his weapon. “Let’s head out. Maybe te Wizard can help us decipher yer vision. What it means, where ye were, all that.”
“I was near a lighthouse—” I said it out loud, and my stomach dropped, as if I were free-falling from one of the surrounding bluffs.
My eyes went wide and for a moment, I was inputting the coordinates I’d found scribbled on the back of my dad’s lighthouse article into my phone’s search bar all over again.
I stopped breathing; my heart was beating too fast…
Then I was pitching the idea to Ryder at a magical pub, that there were structures housing portals for the Watchers to access Earth, convinced of it even if he’d shut me down.
I glanced at my knuckles, at the raw, raised scabs…
And then I was pounding on the stubborn door at the Santa Cruz Lighthouse, the Pacific Ocean wild and unruly at my back, my Source buzzing in my veins as if to say this is home, this is home. But I was unable to get in, no matter how many times I tried…
The memories rose and fell like the tide.
The structure I’d seen in the Pearl of Truth wasn’t a lighthouse. It was a façade, retrofitted over time to look like an average coastal landmark, but it was really a bridge between worlds.
Just like the simple brick structure at the end of the grassy bluff, casting its beacon over the city of Santa Cruz. Unbreakable stone, unhackable locks… No amount of sweat or Source or will could get that thing open. It was impenetrable, really.
But it was only one of four.
Imagine our shock when the western watchtower did not fall, Finis had told me when she and her Night Stalkers had intercepted me while I was on my way to that very spot. That a child took the place of the Angel of Water.
“To your watchtowers,” I muttered Akosua’s infamous words under my breath.
“What ye say?” Nemuik’s pointy ears twitched. “Ye were near a what?”
“A—” Source fluttered next to my heart. “You know what? You head to the compound without me. I have something to do.”
He narrowed his eyes. “Ye need to close this out. Tere’s paperwork.”
“Forge my signature,” I said, before whisking past him.
“Ye can’t jus’—”
“Oh!” I tossed over my shoulder. “Can you give the Wizard a message for me? I quit.”
Chapter 10
“Iceland?” Mau blinked, her long lashes fluttering. “Really?”
“Yep.” I held up my phone. The pale lighthouse on the screen was an exact replica of the one that had been revealed in the swirling mist of the Pearl. “This is where I was in the vision—where the war took place. Where I need to go.”
The wrinkled scrap of paper I’d found in my dad’s files earlier that summer, covered with the scribbled coordinates for the other watchtowers—well, fragments of the numbers, at least—slipped out of my grasp, drifting to the floor. Mau bent from the edge of my bed to pick it up.
Shanley ran a hand through her ashy blonde hair, pinning the strands. “I don’t know, Riv. Why not try the lighthouse on West Cliff? We can head there right now.”
“Because we’ve already tried that one.” Literally all summer. Snatching my duffel from the closet, I groaned at the thought of attempting—and failing—to unlock the tower on the point again. “It won’t open.”
“And what makes you think this one will?” Mau handed me the torn paper. “River, I love you, but this feels?—”
