“That’s enough, Tess. I’ve listen to your concern, but my mind is made up. I’m going to try and talk to Rowle. That’s all there is to it.”
“Even if you get us both killed?” Tess asked.
“That’s not going to happen.”
Tess pursed her lips as though biting back another comment, but then she nodded. “You’re the Boss.”
“Thank you. Cris?”
She rolled her eyes and shook her head. “I don’t want to see you get yourself killed, but I’ll come along. If a fight starts, I’m not totally helpless.”
I grinned and leaned down to kiss her.
She stepped back out of my reach. “Just because I’m consigned to your course of action doesn’t mean I’m okay with it. You want to kiss me? Then get us out of this alive and I’ll consider it.”
I nodded, a little surprised by her coldness. She’d come around, assuming I didn’t get all of us killed. “All right, Cris. That’s understandable.”
Chapter 39
therese
I didn’t get it. Rafe was often cocky, but I’d never seen him suicidal. I watched as Cris spurned his kiss and wondered if that night magic spell had done more to him than remove his tats, interfere with ability to use magic, and make him insanely pissed off at Verðandi. If someone had told me a week ago that he’d be trying to make peace with Rowle, I’d have thought them stupid for even suggesting such a thing. It just wasn’t possible that a sane Raphael would consider mending fences with someone who had nearly killed both of us and almost brought about Ragnarök.
Should I try to summon Verðandi and see if she could talk him out of this? She might be able to convince him of his folly, but going over Rafe’s head would leave him pissed at me and I didn’t need or want that. We still had years and years of living together before I was a fully trained Wanderer ready to go off on my own adventures. I did not want to spend that time with a man who was upset with me. No, going outside the chain of command to contact Verðandi would be the last thing I’d try. Hell, I’d rather ask Loki for help rather than stepping on Rafe’s toes.
Wait a minute. Loki had given Rafe a talisman that would summon him back before the Garden of the Gods’ battle. Rafe had been skeptical of using anything that would put him in Loki’s debt, but I knew Rafe still had the talisman. I saw it a couple of weeks ago when I fetched his grimoire for him. If I could get my fingers on it, I could use it to summon Loki if things with Rowle went sour. I just needed an excuse to get into Rafe’s saddlebags.
“So, how are we going to contact Rowle?” I asked.
“What? Oh, well, we could just continue to track Alex with another locator spell. I could do it without the map and it’d lead us to him since we know he’s in the area. Or,” he hesitated.
“Or what?” I asked.
Rafe reached into a pocket of his leathers and removed his billfold. It was old cowhide, stained from years of use, and was as much a money clip as a billfold. I knew it contained a couple of credit cards (he’d given me one to use, but had since had another one issued in my name and had even made his accounts joint with me), a driver’s license, and a couple hundred dollars in cash. He fished in behind his driver’s license and extracted a piece of paper. It looked like a business card.
“What’s that?” I asked.
He held it up and I could see it was old, stained, and dog-eared. There were only five letters on it and they spelled Rowle.
“Rowle gave this to Walt one day when he was still trying to get Walt and me to join up with him. He told Walt to burn it to summon him.”
“You think it’ll still work?” Cris asked.
Rafe shrugged. “Beats me. I don’t even know why I kept it all these years. It’s not like I ever had any intention of using it.”
I gritted my teeth at the absurdity of him doing so now.
“And after all this time you’ve decided that you have to use it?” Cris asked.
“No, I’m not certain I should use it. It will bring him to us, I assume, but since we’ve already come so close to him he would know we used a locator spell to track him. Maybe we should go back to the Springs and use it there.”
Beast growled deep in his throat. “We’ve come this far, why go back just to get him to come to you?”
“Well–” Rafe began.
Beast interrupted him. “It couldn’t be that you’re having second thoughts about the sensibility of trying to reason with Rowle?”
“Not you too,” Rafe said.
“I’ve been with you nearly as long as you’ve been a Wanderer. I think I’ve earned the right to tell you when you’re doing something more stupid than normal,” Beast growled.
“Everyone has an opinion,” Rafe said.
“The fact that everyone is against this course of action should tell you something. It’s crazy stupid.”
“That’s enough, Beast,” Rafe snapped. “I understand your feelings, all of yours,” he added while looking from Beast to both Cris and I. He looked toward Maia, but she was looking off into the distance and staying out of our argument. I couldn’t blame her. “I appreciate your wise council, but my mind is made up, or didn’t you hear me say that?”
“I heard you, but that doesn’t make it any less crazy,” Beast added.
Rafe frowned, and then he returned the card to his wallet and the wallet to his pocket. “We’ll use the locator spell and save this for the future.”
“If there is a future,”
