Heartland

'These last few weeks have been hard. Knowing that the spring renewal was coming, wondering what my father was thinking after what happened in Portland. Wondering what the rest of the organization was going to do,' she said. 'And when he disappeared two days ago, I knew the time had come. I knew that whatever weight we had been carrying-by virtue of being family and friends-was going to get heavier. . '

— that this whole affair wouldn't end badly for all of us.

'. . and I fear the weight will be harder to bear still.'

She moved her hands around mine, and gave my fingers a squeeze. 'You make such a mess of things, my wolf. You always do.'

I flinched, but her grip was stronger than I expected, and I couldn't pull away.

'You throw yourself headlong into everything. You don't know any other way. You don't know what it is to act without passion. Do you remember that night we rode the Ferris wheel at the Tuileries?'

'Of course.' My voice cracked.

'We got stuck at the top and it started to rain. You tried to turn it into something else. What was it?'

'Flowers,' I said.

'Flowers?' A smile lit her face. 'But what did you make instead? What was that?'

I had tried some spell of my own devising. One I had made up on the spot, trying to throw my Will against the elements. I had failed. Badly. 'Something else,' I said. A smile pulled at my mouth. 'Something shit out of the Abyss, probably.' It had smelled very foul, and had been sticky, coating us and the wheel and the carriage. There had been no way to gracefully recover. We had sat in the ecto-shit for a half-hour and then calmly walked away from the wheel when it brought us to the ground again as if nothing had happened. I recalled throwing some manner of misdirection glamour on us as we left. Something that had made the experience truly ridiculous enough-more than it was already-that we ended up laughing about the whole thing.

It had always been easy to make her laugh. Back then. I seemed to have lost the knack in the interim.

'My father would have approved,' she said, switching gears. She turned my wrist and brushed my fingers open.

'Approved of what?' I asked.

One of her father's tarot cards rested on my palm. I had no idea how it got there. I thought they were all still in my coat pocket. Even after my envenomed vision on the boat where I had spilled them all on the floor. They hadn't left my pocket.

She picked up the card before I could close my hand. 'I know you did not kill him because you wanted to.'

I started to interrupt her, but she quieted me with a shake of her head. A glance that said, If you don't let me say this, it will never be said.

'I know you did it because he asked you to. I know you did it because it was the only way to heal that which had been broken, to repair the damage done.'

What is done is done.

The card was Strength. A woman holds open the mouth of a lion, and as I glanced at the card, the faces changed. Me, holding open Philippe's mouth, his soul streaming out of his body and fusing into an infinity halo over my head.

'I believe you cannot turn away, Michael,' she whispered. 'I believe in my father's trust in you.'

Strength. Philippe's soul flowing into my body, merging with my spirit. His fight becoming mine. His wounds becoming mine. His legacy, becoming mine.

'Okay?' she asked. 'No lies between us.'

Strength.

'Okay.'

I wanted to kiss her then. To pretend it was five years ago and we were still innocent and unaware of the future. That we were still in that other bedroom, flush with the fantasy of New Year's Eve and living on the cusp of something new. It hadn't happened yet, and as long as we didn't move, as long as we didn't leave that bed, nothing would happen. We would stay safe, and the future would never come. Or that we were still on the dance floor, caught in the lock groove, circling one another as if we were the only two bodies in the entire galaxy. Exerting an inexorable pull on one another.

But there was a fire in my head. Furious sparks that weren't mine. I couldn't put them out, as much as I wanted to. They were the present and the future, and the past was getting more distant and more muddled with every hour. I couldn't go back, not without losing my mind. I had to go forward. I had to accept what I had become.

Strength.

I told Marielle how her father died and what happened to him afterward. To her credit, she took it really well.

But, then, I was pretty sure she already knew.

THE THIRD WORK

'As a first step towards the successful prosecution of an investigation into the true nature and character of the mysterious object we know as the Grail it will be well to ask ourselves whether any light may be thrown upon the subject by examining more closely the details of the Quest in its varying forms; i.e., what was the precise character of the task undertaken by, or imposed upon, the Grail hero, whether that hero were Gawain, Perceval, or Galahad, and what the results were to be expected from a successful achievement of the task.'

— Jessie L. Weston, From Ritual to Romance

XVI

Light reflected off a mirror, a flash like a flare of flame from a newly woken fire. The Chorus exploded out of me, a flock of startled birds, and they rose overhead into a swarming mass. Near the gangway, a man stepped onto the walkway-leaving the boat-and the light off his glasses was lessened by the fact that he was turning away from us, but the flare was still there.

I was off the bench before Marielle could say anything, and by the time I reached the railing, the gangway was empty. The Chorus fell back into a defensive perimeter, their astral wings collapsing about me, but there was no threat. Just the queasy uneasiness of having been spotted.

Down on the dock, a figure separated himself from the crowd and approached a black car idling nearby. He looked back once more before he got in, and I saw the sunglasses again. He wasn't wearing the centurion uniform, but the glasses were the same.

'There.' I pointed him out to Marielle, but by the time she looked, he was already in the car.

'Who was it?' she asked as the car drove away.

'I don't know.' He seemed familiar, beyond being the man from before, but not so familiar that I could place him. What with the poison-inspired visions, the wealth of knowledge hidden within me by the Architects, and my own history with the Watchers, it was difficult to pinpoint why he had been familiar. Or, even, could he have been the man at the airport? 'He was wearing sunglasses.'

'At night?' She drew me away from the edge of the boat. 'Were they polished? The kind that are like mirrors?'

'Yeah. They were.'

'A scryer.' Seeing my expression, she explained. 'They see the future in reflective surfaces. They don't need water anymore. Mirrors work well too.'