“Understood.”
I furtively kicked Selena’s boot; she straightened and said, “Oh. Thanks, Gabe. I won’t forget this.”
“It will be my pleasure, Selena. I look forward to it.” His eyes widened. “I mean, not that I am pleased about the occasion.”
Selena let him off the hook. “I look forward to kicking serial killer ass.”
He grinned. “Precisely.”
We started back toward Selena and Finn’s tent. Halfway there, she murmured, “I can’t believe he’s going against Joules! I would’ve bet my bow he’d refuse. My God, we might free J.D. tonight. Evie, if this works . . .” Though Selena was 100 percent, grade-A badass, her eyes glinted, a hairline fracture in her prickly façade. “If we get him back, you and I’ll be solid again.”
“Were we ever solid?” I was so different from her, and we’d hated each other at first. But we’d muddled along until we’d begun to rely on one another. And now she was lowering her guard a degree.
As soon as the thought occurred to me, her expression hardened. “In every game, the Archer has an arrow for the Empress.”
I exhaled. “Yeah, yeah, I remember.”
“In this game, I might have misplaced it.” Shoulders squared, she turned from me.
As she strode away, I realized two things:
That’s the closest she’ll ever come to telling me we’re friends.
I’ll take it.
6
“Battle comes for the Empress.”
Near midnight, Matthew and I had holed up in the top floor of the watchtower. We sat facing each other, the toes of our boots touching. We spoke with hushed voices, as we had in the back of that van with Jack and Selena.
A gas lantern flickered light. Outside, a storm raged. Cyclops stood watch below.
“I’m ready.” To take on psychotic mass murderers. To head into the skies with a winged boy. A gust rocked the watchtower, making it shudder. Not exactly the greatest conditions to fly in. . . .
After Selena and I had secured Gabriel’s help, I’d checked on the mare (doing much better; still pissed at me), then headed to the tent Jack shared with Matthew.
I’d tried to rest, but as soon as I lay down on Jack’s cot, his familiar, pulse-quickening scent had surrounded me. I’d alternated between bouts of missing him and jolts of panic about his imprisonment.
There’d been little sleep.
“Do you want to go tonight?” I asked Matthew.
He shrugged, like I’d asked him to go grab a slice. “Got stuff to do.”
“Like what?”
“Stuff,” he answered, sounding like such a teenage boy.
“Will you tell me about the Lovers? Anything at all?”
“Duke and Duchess Most Perverse.” He lowered his voice even more. “Their card’s upside down. Reverse. Perverse.”
“But what does that mean?”
He rocked forward and back. “Animus, animal passions, disharmony, conflict, jealousy. When they say love, they mean destroy. They want retribution because they chronicle and remember.”
“What are their powers?”
His rocking slowed. “They don’t use them as they have.”
“What did you mean about smite, fall, mad, and struck?”
He nodded. “Sometimes the world spins in reverse. Sometimes battles do too. The word carousel means little battle.”
I nodded back as if that made sense. “Matthew, what will they do to Jack if I fail? Will they mesmerize him? Control his mind?”
“They are vain. They practice their craft. With sharp tools, they remove things, discard them, transform people. You begin as one thing and die as another.” A gust punctuated his low words.
Chills skittered over me. Here we sat in a tree-house type structure, telling scary stories by lantern light. As kids used to.
Post-apocalypse, all the stories were real.
“You don’t want to know more about their craft.” Matthew shivered. “I didn’t. Power is your burden; knowledge is mine.”
“What power?”
“You have more abilities now.”
Though I grew weaker overall from lack of sunlight, I had learned a new skill.
When I’d been in the gardens beneath Death’s home, preparing for the Devil’s attack, I’d unwittingly taken the knowledge of those plants into me—along with all their relatives.
Before, I’d revived and controlled plants and trees, but I’d never known them. Now I could recreate them without seed; I could generate differing spores to make one sleep for a time—or forever. The same with the toxin on my lips.
“Phytogenesis,” I said.
“Phytogenesis,” he echoed solemnly.
“Did you plan for me to fight Ogen? So I’d be among all that green as blood was spilling?” Trusting him is a free fall.
“Claimed your crown yet?”
My hundredth frown of the night. “Like on my card?” The Empress tableau and Tarot card depicted her/me with a crown of twelve brilliant stars. “Is that what you meant?”
He stared at his hand. Subject closed.
Okay . . . “Even when I fought Ogen, I spared Death and Lark. I controlled the red witch.” Matthew should give me props.
“You can muzzle her, but can you invoke?” Or none at all.
Invoke the witch? “She comes out when I’m under attack.” Pain drew her in a hurry. Fury as well. “It’s kind of automatic. Why would I invoke her?”