I don’t love that revelation.
It’s a relief when I hear a vehicle coming up the drive.
When I throw open my door I see that Savi is in the yard, standing with her back against the driver’s door of her pristine SUV. A vehicle I thought gave her away from the get-go. Only a sorcerer could drive around this valley, through wildfires, mud, and snow, and still have a car that looks that shiny.
“There you are,” she says as if I’m late for an appointment. “Get in.”
“If I want to live?” I reply dryly.
“If I thought you didn’t want to live, I wouldn’t bother with you.” She frowns at me as I walk toward her through the gray light. “Life iscomplicated enough when you’re not flattened by a death wish, don’t you think?”
“I wouldn’t know. I’ve never found death all that appealing.”
“My understanding is that it’s a great void if you’re lucky and torture if you’re not,” Savi tells me coolly. “I’ve never felt the need to experiment, myself.”
I climb into her passenger seat and sit there, feeling raggedy on her pristine white leather.
She doesn’t seem to notice. “This has always been my issue with Vinca. I don’t understand the lure of a death goddess. First of all, obviously, a god doesn’t care about anyone or anything but itself. How many times must history teach us this lesson? At best, a godhead is a capricious narcissist who can be appeased by a few rituals and a little self-abasement. Like a man, in other words.”
“Preach,” I murmur.
Savi drives at what I consider a reckless speed out of Winter’s yard and onto the bumpy, bottomed-out dirt road that leads down into town, but naturally her enchanted vehicle does not seem to encounter anything but smoothness. Everything she touches is always smooth.
But not her. Not today. She isvibratingwith tension. Her hair looks like she hasn’t brushed it, or said the right spell for it to brush itself. If I didn’t feel so feral myself, I’d probably mention it.
“Adeathgoddess makes even less sense.” Savi makes a derisive noise. “Especiallythisdeath goddess. They’re all the same, of course. They just want destruction for destruction’s sake. They think it’sartto rip things apart and never build anything, never create anything. It’s all misery and pain, forever and ever, amen.”
The hills are slick with snow, but she takes them as if they’re dry. I’ve ridden on the back of many a Harley and have always felt perfectly safe, but I find myself grabbing for the bitch handle in her passenger seat.
She’s still ranting. “It’s all so boring. Every minion seems to think that if she rises, they will too. The sad truth is that if she bothers with them at all, it will only be to destroy them. As painfully as possible. Inall her rituals and dark little ceremonies, it says as much.She is come to destroy, she is the end of all things, she is the mouth that will suck on the bones of the world and chew through the gristle.” Savi heaves a sigh. “Shesaysshe will kill everyone and everything, and still her acolytes dance for her. Your wolf last night died for her when she would never do the same for him. I cannot understand it.”
Your wolf.I repress a shudder at that.
“I agree with everything you’re saying. But I doubt one of her cult members will. I think they believe that death is part of the fun.”
“I hate cults,” Savi mutters darkly. “If I was a god I would be much more interested in clear-eyed followers, not this blank, mindless thing that hers have going on.”
“Are you considering elevating yourself?” I ask brightly. “A little ascension in between death goddess risings?”
“You joke.” Savi drives a little bit too fast through Jacksonville, seeming not to notice when a set of humans dive out of her way as she plows through an intersection. No hint of brakes. Or any apparent awareness when they shout after her. “But in certain periods of history, sorcerers were worshipped as gods.”
“Who wasn’t?” I reply airily. “According to my grandmother before she died, there was a time when the world cowered in an appropriate fear of werewolves. The glory days, she called it, though she could never pinpointwhen, exactly, this was. She was not a fan of wolves having to diminish themselves in the world.”
“Sometimes,” Savi tells me as she takes the hill out of town, her voice dark and arid at once, “diminishment is survival.”
I don’t ask about that. Something about her forbidding tone keeps me from it. I lounge in the passenger seat as she drives down to Winter’s coffee stand and pulls into the line. We inch up toward the front, watching truckloads of various creatures get themselves coffee and a little card reading. Some shout at her. A few throw their coffees.
Some cry, and I see Winter reach out and hold their hand the way a doctor might.
I wonder if she knows how completely she’s become the oracle by now.
When Savi pulls up, she stares up at Winter and frowns when the cards are offered. “Your shift must be over,” she says.
“It was over two hours ago.” Winter cracks her neck on one side, then the other. “But I figure as long as I still have stamina and no headache, why not keep going?”
“Because you’re exhausted and the cards are getting cranky,” says her coworker, a girl I remember from school. She laughs at Winter, then looks my way and, oddly, turns red. “Go on. Get out of here.”
Winter walks out the back of the coffee stand, nods at the vampires who lurk menacingly and glower at every car that pulls up. With them around, she doesn’t have to carry her guns or dive into her car like an action hero.
