Death, and the Girl He Loves - Darynda Jones Page 0,53
taken art when I had the chance.
“Wait a minute,” Mac said as we all sat in our church dining hall, eating pizza and subs. “How do we know the guy who is destined to open the gates again is the same one who opened them ten years ago?”
Glitch shrugged. “We don’t, really. It’s just a guess based on secondhand information.”
“Yeah,” I said after washing my pizza down with sweet tea. “That was the impression we got from the nephilim who came after me. They said he’d opened the gate once before, he’d do it again.”
Mac nodded. “Okay, then my next question is, why hasn’t he tried it again before now?”
“We wondered about that, too,” Glitch said. “And we came to one conclusion.”
“Which is?”
“We have no idea.”
Brooklyn nodded, agreeing with Glitch’s assessment.
“Well, okay, let’s think about this.”
“Got it,” Glitch said, taking another bite of his favorite pizza: pepperoni with extra pepperoni. “Thinking now.”
That boy cracked me up.
“There has to be a reason he hasn’t tried again,” Mac said, his gaze lowered in thought.
“Oh, I know!” Brooke said. “Maybe when Lor stabbed him with that stick, it got all infected and he almost died and has been in a coma for the last ten years.”
“That’s one theory,” Granddad said. “You have another, Mac?”
Mac lifted one shoulder in a halfhearted shrug. “Maybe. I mean, unless he was out of the country … but even then, why couldn’t he just open the gates somewhere else?”
“In that case,” Grandma said, “if he were out of the country for some reason, then maybe location is important. Maybe he’s limited. Can open the gates only in certain places.”
Grandpa nodded. “Or it could even be a time issue. Maybe he can open the gates only during certain events.”
“Like the planets aligning or something?” Glitch asked.
“Something exactly like that.”
“There are so many possibilities,” Mac said. “Perhaps whatever he used to open them, a grimoire of some kind—”
“A grimoire?” Kenya asked. She was eating a vegetable sub. Which seemed kind of pointless to me, but to each her own.
“It’s like a textbook of magic. He may have gotten his hands on one, used it to open the gates, and when that went south, planned on trying again later, but something happened.”
“What?”
“That’s what I’d like to know. Sheriff?”
Sheriff Villanueva sat deep in thought as well.
“Is there any way to check hospital records on the day that the man was stabbed?”
“Not sure,” he mumbled. “It’s unlikely I could get anything concrete with the amount of time we have, but I could try. A stab wound isn’t all that common.”
“What about arrest records?” Mac asked.
“You think he’s been in prison?”
Mac nodded. “Why else would it take him this long to organize a second attempt? He wanted what’s inside Lorelei. He didn’t get it. Why would it take him this long to try again?”
“He did want it,” I said. “He summoned Malak-Tuke specifically. Only one demon came through the portal he’d opened. Hundreds of spirits, but only one demon.” I held up an index finger to emphasize my point.
“He had to have thought he could control it somehow,” Mac said. “I mean, demon possessions don’t typically end well.”
Cameron licked his fingers loudly, then said, “Lorelei is the only one we’ve ever heard of like this. Most don’t live longer than a month or two.”
“Exactly, but that’s because of who Lorelei is. He chose to be inside her. If Malak-Tuke had possessed Dyson, Dyson would surely have had a way to control him without it killing him first.”
“If he did have a grimoire,” Jared said, “maybe he had a means of controlling it once it got inside him.”
A wave of unrest rippled within me. I wrapped an arm around my stomach even though it wasn’t centrally located. It was everywhere. In all my cells at once.
Jared leaned over and whispered to me. “Are you okay?” He smelled clean, like rain in the forest.
“Yeah, I think Malak knows we’re talking about him. And I don’t think he likes the idea of being controlled.”
“Who does?”
“Pix,” Mac said, seeming hesitant about what he was about to say. “Can you communicate with it?”
I lowered my head. “I’m sorry. I can’t. I mean, right after he entered me I felt him. It was like we thought the same thoughts, the same feelings. We were one. But I lost that a long time ago. He just kind of disappeared. Became a part of me.”
“Are you sure you can’t talk to it?”
I let a hapless smile through. “No. I’m not sure about