Earth's Requiem(71)

“You have the incantation from the journals.” Aislinn walked over to Fionn and touched the wall, trying to sense the change in the rock that had alerted him. Rune followed. He hadn’t left her side, insisting on being helped down the ladder. The wolf had spent a lot of time muttering to himself about how Marta must have drugged him so he wouldn’t follow her. He hadn’t even known about the kitchen trapdoor.

Fionn looked at her. “Once I set the spell in motion, I have to enter.”

She squared her shoulders. “I’m ready.” Then what he’d just said sank in. “Oh, no,” she sputtered. “You are not going alone.”

“It is best if I do. Our likelihood of discovery doubles if we both go.”

“No.” Even though what he said made sense, she wasn’t budging. “Either both of us go, or neither.”

“What about me?” Rune demanded, pushing between them.

“You can’t go,” Aislinn said. “It’s too dangerous.”

Fionn jabbed her in the side. “There’s an echo in here. Seems like that’s what I just said to you—”

“That is the same thing Marta said.” The wolf bristled, cutting off Fionn’s next words. “I am far from a pup. And I sense things more keenly than either of you.” Rearing up, he placed his paws on Aislinn’s shoulders. She staggered under his weight. “I saved you the last time we were there. You have to take me.”

“Okay. Okay. Could you get down before you drive me into the dirt?”

Fionn blew out an exasperated-sounding breath. “Let’s have another meal,” he suggested. “It’s been hours since breakfast. We’re all getting testy. If we’re all going—and that is far from a foregone conclusion at this point—I suppose it includes Bella.” He shook his shaggy head. “We need a better strategy. I was just going to dip my senses in there to see if the gateway even worked.”



“Hmph.” Aislinn turned and headed for the ladder, afraid if she opened her mouth, they’d get into an argument. Now that he mentioned it, food did sound like a good idea. She mounted the rungs and diverted her ill mood by thinking about what to make. After canvassing bins and canisters in the cupboard, she tossed barley, nuts, dried apricots, and strips of some sort of dried meat into a large pot and deployed magic to cook them.

“Start at the beginning. Tell me again what Marta was trying to accomplish.” She poured half a bag of dried peas to her mélange.

“She was convinced she could find a way to seal Taltos off from Earth.”

“Why focus on the Lemurians? Seems to me we’d be better off if we could send the six dark gods packing.”

Breath hissed through Fionn’s teeth. “If you’d stop asking questions, I might be able to come up with something that didn’t sound quite so disjointed. I had trouble following Marta’s reasoning, too.” Bella, who’d been perched on Fionn’s shoulder, flapped over to the cook pot and hooked her talons over the edge.

“What are you doing?” Aislinn made shooing motions.

“Seeing what’s for dinner.” The raven mock-pecked at her before settling on the back of a chair.

Fionn put out his arm for the bird. She hopped onto his shoulder. Turning a chair around, he crossed his arms over its backrest. “Marta had magic long before the Surge. I peeked in some of her earlier journals. It was why she went to medical school. She already knew when people were going to die, so she figured maybe she should study something that might help her do something about it.

“She stumbled on the gateway out of this house when she was still a teenager.” In response to something in Aislinn’s face, he added, “Yes, this is where she grew up. Of course, in the beginning, she didn’t understand where she went when she called magic to take her through the basement walls. She’d go to her special place to think and get away from things.”

“That’s what she called it in her journals?”

He nodded.

“Must have been hard being her,” Aislinn murmured. “No teen likes to be different, and she sure couldn’t tell anyone about herself.”

Fionn quirked a brow.



Reading his meaning easily, Aislinn nodded. “Okay, I’ll shut up. Go on.” She tasted her stew and added sage and basil.

“She met Dewi on one of her earliest trips, and they struck up an odd sort of friendship. The Lemurians were always there, but in those days, they came and went. Often as not, when Marta went to Taltos, she was the only living thing there. No Dewi, no Old Ones. She spent time in what sounds like a massive library. Most of the books were written in something similar to Greek, so she started to study the language on her own.”