“Will you guys go find Gideon?” I ask them. “I want you to—will you do something for me?”
The looks on their faces say they hope I’ll still change my mind, but they nod.
“I want you to be there, for the ritual. I want you to be part of it.” As someone in my corner. Maybe just as witnesses.
They turn back down the hall, and Carmel tells me one more time to think about it; that I have a choice. But it’s not a real choice. So they go, and I turn around to pace the halls of this fireplace-infested druid brainwashing summer camp. As I turn a corner to a long, red hall, Jestine’s voice rings out.
“Oi, Cas, wait up.” She jogs to me. Her face is slack and serious. Without the confident smirk, she’s changed entirely. “They told me what you said,” she says, slightly flushed. “What you decided.”
“What they decided,” I correct her. She looks at me evenly, waiting, but I don’t know what for. Tomorrow night she and I are going completely off the map, to the other side, and only one of us is supposed to come back. “You know what it means, don’t you?”
“I don’t think it means what you think it means,” she replies.
“Jesus,” I snap, turning away. “I don’t have time for riddles. And neither do you.”
“You can’t be angry with me,” she says. The old smirk returns as she keeps pace. “Not four hours ago I saved your best mate’s life. If it hadn’t been for me, that corpse would have chewed through his carotid faster than you could blink.”
“Thomas told me I shouldn’t trust you. But I didn’t think you were anything to worry about. Still don’t.” She bristles at that, like I knew she would. Even if she knows it’s a lie.
“None of this was my choice, right? You of all people should know what that’s like.”
She’s fidgeting while she walks. For all her tough talk, she must be terrified. Her hair hangs down her shoulders in damp, wavy strings. She must’ve had a shower. When it’s wet it all looks dark gold. The red blends in, hidden.
“Stop looking at me like that,” she snaps. “Like I’m going to try to kill you tomorrow.”
“You’re not?” I ask. “I sort of thought that was the point.”
Her eyes narrow. “Does it make you nervous? Wondering who would win?” There’s steel in her jaw and for a second I think I’m looking at a genuine crazy person. But then she shakes her head, and her frustrated expression looks a whole lot like Carmel’s. “Have you ever considered that I might have a plan?”
“I never considered that you didn’t,” I reply. But what she calls a plan I call an agenda. “Have you ever considered that it might be just a tiny bit unfair? What with me bleeding all my guts out.”
“Ha,” she scoffs. “You think you’re the only one? Blood is a one-passenger ticket.”
I stop walking.
“Jesus, Jestine. Say no.”
She smiles and shrugs, like being stuck like a pig happens to her every other Thursday. “If you go, I go.”
We stand in silence. They mean for one of us to make it back with the athame. But what if neither of us brings it back? Part of me wonders if I could just lose the athame there forever, and they’d be without it; without a way to open the gate and without a purpose. Maybe then they would just disappear and get their hooks out of Jestine. But even as I wonder, the other part of me hisses that the athame is mine, that stupid blood-tie singing in my ears, and if the Order has its hooks into Jestine, the athame itself has its hooks into me.
Without a word, we start to walk together down the long hall. I’m so pent up and irritated with this place; I want to kick down the closed doors and break up a prayer circle, maybe juggle the athame with a couple of candles just to see the horrified looks on their faces and hear their screams of “Sacrilege!”
“This is going to sound weird,” Jestine says. “But can I hang out with you guys tonight? I’m not going to get much sleep, and”—she glances around guiltily—“this place is giving me the creeps right now.”
* * *
When I walk in with Jestine, Thomas and Carmel are surprised, but they don’t seem hostile. They’re probably both pretty thankful that Thomas still has his whole carotid. Gideon is in the common area with them, sitting in a wingback chair. He’d been staring into the fire before we came in and doesn’t really look focused now that we’re here. The light from the fire digs into all of the creases of his face. For the first time since I’ve been here, he looks his age.