Carl mutters some curses, but doesn’t protest. If he were a less law-abiding guy, I’d expect him to lose us on a back road and carry out his own justice where no one could stop him.
But, no, as we follow, Carl heads for Town Hall.
“You okay?” I ask Clem, noting the way her foot taps and how she’s tangled her fingers in Shrimp’s shaggy coat.
“Not yet, but I’m going to be.”
30
CLEMENTINE
Like in Griffith’shouse when we first arrived, there’s an impromptu Mythic Council meeting taking place in the police station as we try to figure out how a hunter made it all the way to Local Brew without being detected and what exactly should be done with him now that he’s here.
Having Luke behind bars should bring me a sense of ease, especially since they took the handful of weapons he had hidden on his person. But I still see flashes of his hunter friend lunging toward me with that blade whistling through the air. The wound in my side aches all the more fiercely from the memory.
“Where’s your buddy?” I keep a few feet back from the cell, not wanting to be in grabbing distance. I underestimated this man once; I’m not going to do it again.
“Who?” He sounds genuinely confused.
“The guy who stabbed me.” I gesture toward the wound that still refuses to heal. “He your backup? Lurking in the woods on the edge of town?”
Luke frowns. “He’s dead.”
I stutter on my next inhale as hope, relief, and distrust war within my chest.
“How? The rain I shot at him wasn’t lethal. Unless you killed him?”
Luke sits on the bench in his cell, elbows braced on his knees, eyes on me. For the life of me, I can’t see the charming man who first caught my eye. How did I think of this guy as anything other than a threat?
“I would have,” he says. “But it was the blade that did it. He didn’t have enough power to balance out the cost.”
I frown, trying to work out what he means. A cost for using the blade?
“It’s a god object, isn’t it?” Carl is the one to ask, and I wonder what he might have found in all the spare time he’s spent at Mor Shelly’s library.
The council members, who were having a whispered conversation in the far corner, all approach now until there’s a semicircle in front of the cell.
Luke tilts his head, eyes flicking around the gathering, finally landing on my brother. “Hunters call them divine artifacts,” he answers the question. “Boris—the one who attacked Clementine—was cocky. He didn’t think the toll was real, or he thought he could handle it if it was. Minutes after he cut you”—his gaze resettles on me—“he was dead. Used up. If you hadn’t left so fast, you would’ve seen.”
“Oh, so I was supposed to hang around?” My voice is harsh with dark humor. “Grab a beer with some murderers?” There’s a comforting weight on my shoulders, and I can tell without looking that Griffith has placed his hands there. Not pulling me back. Simply lending me his strength. “How did you even find me? How did you know what I was?”
That, more than anything, has scared me. I thought I’d lost myself in the crowd of humanity. What was the use of never taking on my mythic form if I was so easily found out?
Luke doesn’t respond right away, seeming to think his answer over. I want to grab the bars and shake them. I want to transform my hands into my mermaid talons and rip them across his stomach so he’ll know an ounce of the pain he’s caused in me.
Finally, he moves, slipping a ring off his finger and placing it on the ground between us. He was stripped of all his weapons, but not his jewelry.
“This is a divine artifact. Passed down through my family.” He stares at the ring, speaking low and steady, as if telling a story. “The wearer can identify a mythic. Your kind glow. Boris only assumed, rashly, that someone I was alone with would be prey. I hadn’t known he was going to be there,” Luke says, shifting on the bench as if he’s finally feeling a touch of discomfort. “And I don’t kill mythics.”
I scoff. “No, you just catch our kind, right? You would’ve caged and sold me to a sorcerer, where my magic could slowly be drained out of my soul for years? Yeah, you’re a saint.”
And I pray to the gods he’s not lying about the ring and it being a god object because if a mythic identifier is something hunters can mass-produce, then we’re all in for a shitstorm.
Luke’s face remains blank, hiding whatever feelings he might have on the subject. If he has any at all.
“My family are hunters,” he admits. “I trained with them. But I never became one.”
“What a convincing story,” I hiss. “Truly, I’m moved.”
