Summoning Courage

Chapter 2

Chapter Two

Lucas Delgado’s funeral service was held on a Monday.

I was still sleeping on Lilly’s couch. She shook me awake. "Wake up, Mack, we’re gonna be late."

I pried my eyelids apart and sucked in a deep breath. "I’m awake," I lied.

Lilly grabbed the bottle and the glass she found on the coffee table beside me. "I thought you were laying off the booze?"

I rolled. Kicked off the sheet. Sat up. "Gimme a break. I hadn’t slept in three nights. I just had a couple to help me drift off. Didn’t get plastered or anything."

"Well, you left some in the bottle, anyway. I guess that’s progress. The bathroom’s free now."

I took the hint. Got showered. Pulled my new suit out of Lilly’s closet. I hadn’t owned a suit in years. Had to borrow some money from Lilly to buy one. Everything I owned was black, but even I wouldn’t show up to a funeral in a t-shirt.

Lilly hadn’t been sleeping much either. For three days, the two of us had been crawling through the Tapestry of Destiny, in every direction we could think of, trying to locate the stolen key to the Piero Gate, or the renegade fortune teller who stole it, or Recca. The harder we looked, the less we found.

The sky was a mottled gray curtain of steel separating the people below from the sun’s life-giving rays. A drizzly rain fell on the city, not the heavy rain of a summer thunderstorm that wore itself out in an hour, but a slow sprinkle that could go on all day. Any rain at all turns Atlanta roads into a demolition derby. Accidents everywhere. Traffic sucked. We arrived late.

I parked Recca’s 4Runner a block from the cemetery. Lilly produced an umbrella from somewhere in the back. Recca was prepared for most anything.

I held the umbrella over us both. Lilly’s heels clacked on the wet concrete of the sidewalk. Droplets of water splashed on the metal and glass of the cars lining the street to our left and slithered down, dripping onto the pavement beneath. Unable to sink into the ground as it wanted, the water trickled into the concrete gutter and flowed down the barely perceptible incline.

On our right, dogwood trees caught the tiny raindrops on their leaves, gathered them into larger drops, then released them into the grass at their feet. Distant voices drifted between the quiet patter and thump of the rain. Behind the trees, across the lawn, a group of mourners gathered. Black suits and black dresses huddled under black umbrellas.

A path branched off from the sidewalk, leading into the cemetery. At the head of the path, Marina and her husband Richard were on greeting duty. Marina smiled sadly as we approached. d**k did not smile. He stepped forward and put a hand on my chest, stopping me cold.

"No," he said. His eyes were cold as stone, and he didn’t blink. "Not you."

"I’m just here to pay my respects, Di—Richard."

"No," d**k repeated. "Lilly is welcome to stay. I don’t want you here. My brother would still be alive if you hadn’t been rubbing elbows with the Seers Guild. He doesn’t need your respects."

"That’s not fair!" Lilly objected, but she knew better than to step between us.

His hand was still wedged against my chest. He pushed. I resisted. I turned my eyes to Marina, looking for her to rein in her husband.

Marina shook her head. "Thank you for coming, Mack, but you’re not welcome here. Please, just go. Don’t make a scene, not today."

I held Marina’s eyes for a moment. They were not angry, but adamant. I turned to Lilly and said, "I’ll just wait in the car."

I handed Lilly the umbrella. Turned and walked back the way we had come. Guy at the store said the suit was wash and wear. Probably he didn’t mean at the same time, but I figured a little rain wouldn’t hurt it. I shoved my hands in my pockets and watched the water splash off my shoes as I walked.

Dick was wrong, of course. We had all been trying to protect the Piero Codex that night, to keep the key out of the wrong hands. Lucas had given his life for that cause.

We had failed.

But that failure had nothing to do with Recca or my relationship with her. She may have been a captain of the Seers Guild, but she was on our side. She fought to protect the Codex as much as we did. She ended up imprisoned by the Guild because of it.

Didn’t matter to d**k. He was grieving. He was angry. He needed someone to blame. May as well be me.

I felt for the key in my pocket and pressed the button. Headlights flashed on the 4Runner. I slid into the seat and shut the door. Put the key in the ignition.

The key. The key to the Piero Gate had been lost. Not to the Seers Guild, but to a persistent and annoying freelance fortune teller named Beryl Nussbaum. Stole it from under our noses while we were fighting with the Guild. And that was the only good news in this whole f****d-up affair. The fortune teller may have stolen the key, but there wasn’t a damn thing she could do with it unless she knew where the gate was. She didn’t know. The Guild didn’t know either. The only people on the planet who knew the location of the Piero Gates were nine Protectors of the Relic, Order of the Florentine Cross. The Gatekeepers.

I placed my hand on the steering wheel and squeezed. The tattoo of the Florentine Cross on the back of my hand flexed and stretched as my grip tightened.

I was one of the nine Gatekeepers.

The identities of the Gatekeepers were supposed to be secret. But then again, so was the keymaster protocol. Somehow, the protocol had been leaked, and we lost a key. I had to assume that the Gatekeeper’s names had been leaked as well. They would be coming for me next.

The dark-clad mourners arrayed around the casket, their figures distorted by the rain on the windshield. Crooked, bent shapes in a crooked, bent world. It was the Purge all over again. Twelve years ago, it was my parents I put in the ground. Today it was a brave kid who hadn’t even earned his stripes yet. Tomorrow, it could be Marina, or Lilly. Or me. How many people had to die over this goddamned book? Staring through the lens of the rain at Lucas’s funeral, if I could have laid hands on the Codex at that moment, I would have burned it to ash. No matter what magic that book held, it wasn’t worth this.

The windows were starting to fog up, so I cranked the engine to activate the air conditioning. The wipers came on automatically, sweeping away the distortion created by the rain. For a brief moment, my view was clear again.

Lilly wore a scarf of black silk over her neon pink hair. She stood beside Marina, in a simple black dress and pearls. The other side of Marina was d**k and his parents. Some of the Elders of the Order had come: Maggie Krenshaw, dabbing a handkerchief under her hawk nose, and Sir Charles Emerson, ever English and proper in black tie and morning suit, white pocket square perfectly poised on the breast.

The clear windshield revealed another figure, distant from the funeral, observing but not participating. I opened my inner eye onto the astral plane. The figure had the smooth and fully resolved aura of a seer with an open inner eye. The aura reflected sadness and anxiety. More importantly, it was an aura I recognized.

I shut the engine down again and stepped back into the rain. I stepped over the low wall of gray stone. Crossed under the dogwoods and through the wet grass. I came abreast of the lone figure, stopping about a foot away, watching the funeral.

Brianne Costas turned to look at me. She stood about five foot three. Her close-cropped blond hair was covered by a translucent scarf of black lace, and her black dress was covered by a fashionable yet conservative rain coat. She had put on a little weight in the hips since the last time I had seen her, but she was still wisp-thin.

"Hello, Mack."

"Bree. Long time, no see."

"I thought you were dead."

"Didn’t take. I thought you were in San Francisco."

Bree turned back to the funeral, hands in the pockets of her coat. Through her scarf, I could just discern the tattoo of the Florentine Cross behind her left ear. "I am. As far as anyone knows. So, the rumor is true? The Seers Guild is restarting the Purge and captured a key?"

I wiped some rain out of my eye and tilted my head a little to alter the run-off. "The Guild is definitely trying to acquire the Codex again. And we did lose a key, but not directly to the Guild. It was snatched by a freelance mercenary. A fortune teller by the name of Beryl Nussbaum."

"Fortune teller? A mind-bender?"

I nodded.

Bree shook her head, causing little silvery droplets to scatter off her scarf. "Why are mind-benders so damned obsessed with the Piero Codex? It only contains Fate-bender spells, it’s useless to them."

I shrugged. "It represents power. Even if it’s power they can’t access. The Guild wants to own all the relics of power. But they don’t have the key. Not yet, anyway. I’ve had the fortune teller’s Fate under a magnifying glass since the night the key was taken. As far as I can tell, she hasn’t sold it. Yet. As to whether the Purge is returning…" I shrugged again.

Bree shoved her hands deep into the pockets of her raincoat. "If today is any indication, we’d better be prepared for war."

We stood quietly in the rain for a few minutes, trying to listen to the funeral service. The minister’s voice was audible over the rain, but it was hard to make out the words from this distance.

Without moving or turning her head, Bree broke the silence. "Mack. I had a tracer team targeting me in Oakland the other day. They weren’t just scanning for seers. They were targeting me, specifically. There’s only one reason that would happen."

I took a deep breath. Exhaled it slowly. "It’s not just you, Bree. I think all the Gatekeepers have been compromised."

Bree shook her head again. "How?"

"We have a traitor inside the Order," I said.

Bree turned to me. Her blue eyes transmitted apprehension, fear. "Are you sure?"

I pulled my hands from my pockets and brushed some rain out of my hair. "First the keymaster protocol ends up in the hands of the Guild. Now Gatekeepers are suddenly being targeted. The two most private secrets the Order holds, both compromised. I don’t see any other explanation."

Bree frowned. "The Elders are the only people in the Order with access to both the keymaster protocol and the Gatekeeper identities."

I held her eyes and gave her a sad nod. "I know."

"Mack, we’ve known and trusted these people all our lives. Now you think one of them is a traitor?"

"I don’t want to believe it, but it’s the simplest explanation. Still, it could have been anyone high enough in the Order to gain access to the archives. Right now, there are only about eighteen people I know we can trust."

Bree nodded sadly. "The nine Gatekeepers, because the Guild would not be targeting us if one of us had already turned."

"And the nine keymasters, because the Guild would not have gone to such elaborate lengths to capture a key if a keymaster could have just handed it to them. As far as I’m concerned, everyone else is suspect. Including the Elders. I assume you’re suspicious too. Isn’t that why you’re hanging back here instead of with them?"

"I figured with tracers on my trail, the less contact I have, the better. I didn’t really know Lucas. We met at Marina’s wedding. I danced with him once. He seemed nice."

"He was a good kid," I said. "He died fighting for what he believed in."

We gave the young man a moment of silence.

Soon the service was wrapping up. There were hugs and kisses and tears, solemn looks and comforting hands on shoulders. And there was that nagging thought in the back of my mind that I was going to see a lot more of this in the near future, unless I could somehow stop the Seers Guild.

I turned to Bree. "Listen, if you can spare the time, I’d like to introduce you to some friends of mine. And, if you’re up for it, I could use a summoner’s assistance with something."

Bree gave me a half smile. "The only thing on my agenda today is not getting caught by a Guild tracer team. I think I can squeeze you in."

"Do you have a car?"

Bree shook her head. "Took a cab here."

"Good. Ride with me."

"Lead the way."