Awakenings

“Marin, wait.”

I glanced back toward Matt, though I didn’t stop walking. “Walk and talk, Matty.”

“What the hell’s gotten into you?” My brother jogged a few steps to catch up, clearly trying to keep his voice low. “You didn’t need to put it like that, y’know.”

“Do you think Pippa wanted something other than the truth?” I asked him.

“Damned if I know, but either way, you didn’t have to say it the way you did.” His eyes narrowed. “And this—this!”

“What?”

“You, charging headlong, pregnant, toward some unknown danger,” he snapped. “Do you have any idea what Thom will do to me if something happens to you while he’s gone?”

“Nothing is going to happen to me,” I growled.

“Famous last words,” Matt fired back.

“What happened to waiting for me?” Phelan called from behind us. I stopped dead in my tracks.

Dammit anyway. Where the hell is my head? I turned toward Phelan, who met my gaze with a level one of his own.

“What is it?” he asked, his voice soft, more gentle than I probably deserved.

“Not the Greys,” I said. “But maybe the Greys. There’s a fog out there, but it doesn’t feel right.”

He frowned. “Do we know where Leinth is? Neve?”

“Not sure where Neve is. Leinth was by the fire—surprised you didn’t see her there. She said it’s not the Hecate. I’m on my way to the wall to prove that to myself.”

“She’s not there now,” Phelan murmured, glancing back over his shoulder.

“She might have gone with Jack to keep an eye on the ravine,” I said. I turned to start walking again. Matt stopped me, his hand on my arm.

“Let us go first,” he said, glancing between Phelan and I. “Or at least let me go first. I’ll have a look.”

“Matt—”

“Let him,” Phelan said. “Let him go first, leánnan.”

“He won’t—”

“Won’t know what I’m seeing?” Matt gave me a wry smile. “Weren’t you insinuating the other day that I remember more of what Cíar’s life was like than I let on?”

That stung. Gnawing savagely on my lower lip, I glanced at my feet.

“I’m going first,” Matt said. He dropped a kiss on my temple and slipped past me, headed for the wall.

“I hope he knows what he’s doing,” I whispered to Phelan without looking up, fingers tightening painfully around the haft of my bow.

“Have faith, Marin,” the Taliesin said softly. “He does. He absolutely does.”

I headed straight for the fire, my heart thundering against my ribs, bile pooling in my gut.

Just once, I’d like to catch a goddamned break.

How many times had that thought run through my head since last August?

Davon and Rory were by the fire when I got there, both looking grim as Pippa gave them a rapid-fire assessment of whatever had caused the whistling.

She must have been on watch. I spotted Matt coming from the other direction and took a deep breath.

“What do we have?” I asked.

“There’s a fog rising out there,” Pippa said, looking stricken as her gaze bounced between Matt and I. “That means the Greys, doesn’t it?”

“More than that,” I said, shivers creeping down my spine. “If the Greys are coming back, it means the Hecate is making another move against us.”

“Already?” Matt shifted uncomfortably. He was wearing the battle axe he’d forged, the one Thordin had been working so hard to teach him to wield. “That bitch doesn’t quit, does she?”

“No,” I said quietly, swallowing against the sudden tightness in my throat. At least Seamus and Cameron aren’t here. Then again, that means she’s going to focus solely on Phelan and that’s not a good thing, either. “No, I don’t think she’s going to quit until someone makes her quit.” I glanced toward Pippa. “When did it start?”

“Ten minutes ago, maybe?” She swallowed hard. “Where is Phelan?”

“He’s coming,” I said. “He had to get his staff.”

Rory touched my shoulder. “It feels wrong, y’know? Doesn’t feel like this is the Greys.”

I looked askance at him, taking in his grim but certain expression. “What does it feel like?” I asked.

“Remember that time we drove down to Cahokia with Tala and stayed at that campsite?”

I shivered. “That place was haunted.”

Rory just stared at me and my stomach dropped.

What the hell is out there?

“Where’s Leinth?” I asked, my voice suddenly hoarse.

“Here,” her voice said behind me. I twisted toward the sound and saw her coming toward the fire, a pair of daggers hanging from her belt. I blinked, realizing that I’d never seen her armed before. “It’s not the angry dead, Marin, if that’s what you’re concerned about, nor is it the Hecate.”

“Then what is it?” I asked, feeling sicker by the second. “Something worse?”

“It’s always something worse,” she whispered, then smiled weakly. “That’s the way of it all, isn’t it?”

“Yeah,” I said. Sometimes I wonder what I wouldn’t give to change that.

“Don’t think that way,” she said, as if I’d somehow broadcast the thought. “The price is always too high, regardless of how it may seem at the time.”

Matt looked at her, then at me. “What do you think, sis?”

“I think we get people on the wall,” I told him. “Has the Hunt moved to guard positions?”

Pippa hesitated for a moment, then nodded. “Looked like they were heading in that direction when I came in.”

“Who’s in the tower?”

“Jack.”

I nodded and exhaled. “Take six people and watch the ravines,” I told her, then pointed to the whistle around her neck. “Blow that loud and long if there’s something coming up the sides.”

She nodded, biting her lip. “Why does this always happen?”

“Because we were lucky enough to survive the end of the world,” I told her.

I turned and walked toward the wall.

I took a deep breath and exhaled it slowly, picking up the deck again, my hands tingling as I handled the cards. I fanned the deck, then started to shuffle them, taking slow, deep breaths as I did.

“Got your questions ready?” I asked Phelan softly.

He shifted, letting go of me and watching my hands, the tarot deck. “Déithe agus arrachtaigh, Marin. I never quite realized how strong your affinity for that deck is.”

I managed a thin, faint smile. “I’ve been seeing things since I was a little kid, Phelan,” I said softly. “Figuring out how to read a tarot deck was pretty much par for the course.”

“It’s not that.” He squeezed my shoulder gently. “It’s not that at all. Not everyone develops quite the connection that you clearly have with that deck—regardless of where their talents lie.”

A shiver crept down my spine, my hands going still. I stared at him, taking in his creased brow, the slight downturn to his lips.

“You’re worried.”

He nodded. “About a lot of things, leánnan. This is maybe a little less concerning than some other things since it doesn’t seem to do you any harm, so to speak.”

The laugh that escaped me was bitter and I shook my head. “No. Not really, anyway.” I took a slow, deep breath. “All right. I think I’m ready for you to ask the questions.”

The shrill of one of the lookout’s whistles echoed through the halls. Phelan shot to his feet and I dumped the cards to the side, wrapped in the cloth that usually shrouded the box.

“What now?” Phelan muttered a curse under his breath in his native tongue, heading for the door.

“Think it might have anything to do with the questions you wanted answered?” I asked him as I shoved my feet into my boots and grabbed my bow.

“I hope not,” he said with a shudder. “Déithe agus arrachtaigh, I sure as hell hope not. Don’t wait for me. I need to get my staff.”

“Four minutes by the fire.”

He nodded and we parted ways.

Phelan came back with a cup of steaming, fragrant tea and stopped in the doorway, staring at me, at the look on my face. His brows knit and he came to six next to me on the bed.

“I’m sorry,” he said as he pressed the mug into my hand. “I know you don’t want to do this.”

“It’s not that,” I whispered, taking the mug and cradling it between my palms, letting my deck rest in my lap, out of hand but not forgotten. I exhaled a weak sigh. “It’s not that I don’t want to answer whatever questions you have, Phelan, whatever you need me to answer—it’s not that at all. I’m afraid of what they’ll tell me and that I’ll have to give you terrible, awful news. That’s why I’m reluctant about this.”

“Maybe it won’t be bad,” he said, a hint of faint hope to his voice. I laughed weakly.

“When has that ever been the case?”

“Well, there’s a first time for everything, leánnan.”

I smiled at him and kissed his cheek. “That’s true. Maybe I should be more optimistic.”

“It’d be a start.” He wrapped his arm around my shoulders and squeezed me against him for a second. I sighed, slumping slightly. He smelled of herbs and pine needles and woodsmoke and in that moment, I missed Thom terribly.

“They can’t come home soon enough,” I said.

Phelan looked down at me, eyes crinkling at the corners. “You’re missing Thom?”

“A lot all of a sudden,” I said. “They haven’t been gone that long.” What am I going to do when the day comes when he’s gone for weeks or months at a time? This is just a short trip, a scouting run.

If I’m feeling this way, what about the others? Neve and Leinth must be feeling as badly—or worse. And then Carolyn…

I shook my head and mustered up a smile. “I’ll be fine,” I assured him. “Don’t worry about that.”

Phelan gave me a crooked smile and nodded. “I know it’s not easy, leánnan. It wouldn’t be love if it was.”

I laughed. “How would you know?”

“Because I’m finally in it.” He squeezed me again and let go. “Do you need a few minutes?”

“No,” I said. “Just a few sips of tea. Get your questions ready.”

My fingers brushed against the cards and a strange tremor went through me.

They were ready to be read, whether I liked it or not.

Phelan gave me a tight smile and a slight nod before he turned and slipped out. I sat on the edge of my bed for a long, aching moment, hands limp in my lap, fingers tingling.

Steady, I told myself. Steady. Don’t be afraid. You can’t be afraid—this is part of your gift and it always has been. You don’t have to be afraid of it.

The problem was that I wasn’t exactly afraid of my ability to read that old deck of Tarot cards. I was afraid of what they would tell us when Phelan asked his questions, of what they would say and terrible news I would have to give him.

Try to be optimistic, Marin. It might not be awful news.

I closed my eyes and sighed. It was hard to be optimistic when things so often went in the direction we didn’t want them to go in.

With a sigh, I reached for my deck, tucked inside a box of dark wood. My hands tingled as I unwrapped the box from the old, soft sarong I used as a cloth to do my readings on and I took a slow, deep breath.

For better or worse, you agreed to do it. No choice now.

The cards stared up at me as I opened the box, the white and green and black of the knotwork pattern on the back of the cards gleaming faintly in the lamplight. I ran my fingers over them, a familiar shiver working its way up through my fingertips to my shoulder. They’d seemed almost alive since the end of everything—but when everything else in the world had changed, why not my tarot deck, too?

I shuffled the deck, slowly at first, willing myself to relax. Settle down. Relax.

Everything’s going to be fine. It’s just the cards. Just another reading.

Nothing to worry about.

“Gods and monsters,” I whispered. “At least I hope not.”

“I haven’t touched them in months,” I lied.

Phelan sighed, rubbing at his temple. “It’s not a talent you forget or lose because you’ve let it lay fallow for a few months, leánnan.”

“So you say.” I crossed my arms. “Why now? What’s changed?” I don’t want to do it—mostly because I’m afraid of what they’ll tell me. That’s par for the course these days, I guess. That’s why I left off reading them the last time, too. Something’s just screaming at me if I spread those cards, none of us are going to like what I see there.

He winced. “Just…Jac and I were out taking a walk and we ran into Cariocecus. He—he said some things—”

I sighed. “Like what?”

He’d managed to corner me in my cot, and now I watched him in the lamplight. My cards, tucked carefully into a niche between the bed and the wall, were easily within my reach as I slowly sat down on the edge of the bed, watching him. He looked away, lips thinning.

“Things that make me decidedly uncomfortable,” Phelan murmured. “Like the Hecate being on the move again. Like we made a mistake in letting Thesan live.”

I grimaced. There was a pretty big part of me that thought we really had made a big mistake in letting Thesan live. “That’s enough to make you want me spread the cards?”

“You don’t have to,” he said, “but I really hope you’ll say yes.”

I sighed, knuckling my eyes, trying to fight down the queasiness that suddenly sank its claws into my belly. “I don’t know, Phelan. It…it just doesn’t feel right.”

“Does anything feel right anymore?” he asked softly. “Like I said. You don’t have to say yes.”

“But it’ll hurt you if I say no.”

“I’d be lying if I said it wouldn’t worry me.”

I stared at him for a long moment, then nodded. “All right. Go get me a cup of something hot, then I’ll spread the cards for you and we’ll see what the fates have to say.”

“Well, I look forward to figuring it out, at the very least.” Lara set down her mug. “So. What did you bring to trade?”

“Tools,” Thom said. “Some blankets, clothes, nails, things like that.”

“Didn’t look like you were carrying all that much,” she said, lips pursing. “Though I suppose that since this was mostly just an exploratory expedition, the caution and the small amount of trade goods makes more sense.” She exhaled a sigh, leaning back. “How far are you planning to go?”

Thom glanced at Cameron, arching a brow. Cameron gave Lara a tight smile. “Probably only about another week or so on the road. We don’t want to stay away for too long—lots of stuff going on back home.”

“I can only imagine.” Her smile was a little more real this time, gentler. “Well, finish that and I’ll give you the tour and you can show me what you’ve got to trade. Maybe we’ve got something that you could use in kind.”

She didn’t give them the chance to protest or stop her before she was up and out the door. It clicked quietly closed behind her and the four men were abruptly alone.

“What do you think?” Cameron asked after a long moment of silence. “Can we trust her? Trust them?”

“Well, so far as we know they didn’t put the Hecate on Phelan’s scent,” Thom said quietly, setting down his mug. “And she seemed genuine when she talked about what happened here.” He rubbed at his temple, turning the brief vision he’d had over in his mind. “I think she’s okay. Just…really, really paranoid.”

“Can you blame her, if she’s telling the truth about what happened here?” J.T. shook his head. “I know I can’t.”

Thom glanced toward Seamus. “Anything to add?”

“No,” Seamus said quietly. “I think you’re right. We can trust her—at least for the moment. I don’t think she’s out to harm us or betray us.”

“We can only hope,” Cameron murmured, looking at the door. “But at the end of the day, right now, I don’t think we’ve got anything to lose.”

Lara shook her head at them, her expression shifting to one of vague amusement. She glanced toward Celeste and motioned to the door with a slight tilt of her head. “Go on, Celeste. Get out of here and stop worrying your brother. Check the snares, huh?”

“Right,” the girl said quietly, casting another quick glance toward the four men, still strangers to her, before she ducked out the door. Thom watched the door click closed behind her.

“How many children?” Cameron asked quietly, giving voice to the question that echoed in Thom’s head.

“Celeste is hardly a child.”

“Just barely not,” Seamus observed. “Will answering his question hurt?”

“I suppose not,” she said, finally seating herself. She sighed, shoulders slumping a little. “There’s Celeste, three other teenagers, and an eight year old boy. Most of us are in our twenties or thirties. It’s strange who survived and who didn’t. Maybe elsewhere it’s different. I don’t know. All I know is the way it is here.”

The lucky and the unlucky survivors, I guess. Thom closed his eyes and exhaled. “Our situation is similar, but it’s explained by where we are. Seems strange, the demographic here.”

She shrugged. “I’ve got no explanation for it. I wish I did.”

“Fate knows what it’s doing,” Seamus murmured, gulping down half his mug of tea in one go. He set his mug down, resting the piece of bread Celeste had handed him on top of it, then wandered to the window, staring out at the sunshine and the snow. “Even if we have no understanding of why it works the way it does, fate knows what it’s doing.”

“Seamus,” Thom began.

The older man waved him off. “Something started that day, Thomas,” he said. “Or continued, depending on how you look at it. She has a plan—the universe has a plan—and always has.”

“Some things are meant to be,” Cameron growled. “But not everything is written in stone.”

Seamus turned to him, a strange light in his eyes. He smiled a small, tight smile and nodded. “Yes,” he said softly. “That’s true. Part of this is ours to write. The greater part, I dearly hope.”

“That one’s strange,” Lara said, almost as an aside to Thom. He choked on a laugh.

“You have no idea, Thom told her. “Trust me, you’ve got no idea.”

“Something tells me I’ll enjoy the show,” Lara said, crossing her arms. “At least, I’ll hope to. So what do you call your little settlement up there?”

“I don’t think we’ve exactly named it beyond calling it home,” Thom admitted. “I gave it a really terrible name once, when we were facing down some raiders, but it was just something to call it in the heat of that moment.”

She smirked. “What was it?”

Thom smiled sheepishly. “It was really bad.”

“New Hope,” J.T. said, shaking his head. “Could’ve been much worse than that, Thom.”

“Could’ve,” Thom agreed, grinning at J.T. before he looked back at Lara. “What about here? Still calling it Holland?”

“Actually, we were thinking about calling it Hope,” Lara said. “Of course, that was before most of us got wiped out.” She shook her head and sighed. “I begin to wonder if naming places is still important.”

“It is,” Cameron said quietly. “It has to be. It’s not enough that we keep a sense of self, but we need to have a sense of place—of where we come from, where our home is.”

Lara arched a brow. “It needs a name for that?”

“I feel like it does,” Cameron said quietly. “A place can only be nameless for so long. I mean…eventually, people begin to ask where you come from. You could say “Oh, I live in the ruins of the old university north of here.” Or you could give a name. A name feels more permanent.”

“More real?” Seamus suggested.

Cameron looked at him, then nodded slightly. “Yeah. More real.”

Thom smiled wryly. “That’s something we’ll have to talk about when we get home, then.”

“You assume someone back home hasn’t already come up with something, Thom.”

He glanced toward J.T. and grinned. “If someone has, then it makes our job easier. I just wish they’d shared it with the class.”

“Noble,” Lara said softly. “If seemingly misguided. So he told you we were here, hm?”

“In his defense, it was a safe assumption that there would be,” Thom said, taking a quick sip from his mug. The liquid was as hot as it was fragrant and he nearly burned his tongue. “Nearest sizable city and all that.”

“I assume that Grand Rapids is rubble, then,” Lara said, her expression growing dark for a moment. “Or are you not sure?”

“No, we’re sure it’s mostly rubble,” J.T. said, finally finding his voice again. “Some of our people saw it firsthand.”

Thom swallowed hard, thinking about his wife, about how pale and ragged she’d looked when he’d woken up to see her staring down at him. He’d been more worried about her than he’d been about himself, then.

It felt like forever ago.

Lara seemed to notice his discomfort, her eyes falling on him for a moment before she turned her attention more fully to his companions. “Well, that’s more than we knew for certain, at least. Thank you for that.” Her lips thinned. “The man—your Phelan?—he said that Chicago was in ruins.”

“More than just Chicago,” Seamus said quietly. “The Hunt didn’t pass an intact city anywhere we’ve been since the meteorfall. It’s all rubble, dust and ashes.” His eyes fluttered closed. “Ghosts and memories of what once was and is now lost.”

Lara sighed. “Bloody fantastic, then.”

“We’re on our own except for the alliances we can forge,” Thom said quietly. “Again, that’s why we’re here. To trade, to make friends—you’ll have a place to fall back to if something else happens here.”

“And something does? Would you come to our aid?”

Words stuck in Thom’s throat as he caught the barest flicker, of an older and wiser Lara, a stave in her hands, grim-faced as she calmly dispatched a foe. He could see Davon at her back, Paul beyond him, both older, more rugged.

He sat there, frozen for a moment, unable to give voice to the reassurance he’d planned.

It was Cameron who answered for him, as if the other man knew he suddenly couldn’t. “All you’d have to do is call. We’ll answer. We don’t abandon our friends.”

At that, Lara smiled. “Bold words. Can you back them up?”

Cameron managed a small smile. “Watch us.”