Dammit! I went into freefall, plummeting to a watery landing. Could I have been cool about it? Sure. Was I? No. I flailed frantically as the water rushed up to meet me.
Fortunately, I hadn’t just spent the past year traipsing around completing Erebus’s whims and fancies. Oh no. I’d also spent it sprucing up my newfound Elemental abilities, which had been in full force since Erebus had snapped my Dempsey Suppressor to smithereens. So I guess he had some uses.
Sending out a wave of Air with my hands, I created a cushion beneath me. It caught me like a pillowy cloud when I was just shy of hitting the water. Ah, this is what it must feel like to be an angel. I recovered quickly, forging another pillow of Air that I could jump to in order to get myself back to the edge of the promontory.
There, I ducked behind the fortification. I was crouched on the roof of what had once been part of the fort—a little house-like building that had now been reduced to a toilet for seagulls. And almost for me, after that little shocker. As my pulse returned to normal, I peered over the lip of the wall. The guards were standing right in front of the lighthouse door, chattering to each other in Spanish. I rolled my eyes. Couldn’t they have picked a better place?
I sat down on the roof and tried to unstick my shirt from my skin as I waited for the guards to move. After all, I couldn’t mess this up again. There was a pesky proviso in the deal I had with Erebus: no failures. I could die attempting a mission, sure—Erebus didn’t give a hoot about that. But failure? Nope, not acceptable.
Still, I’d been using my time wisely. Since my end of the bargain showed no signs of arriving, I’d realized about six months in that I needed to start looking into ways of freeing myself. Loopholes, spells, hexes, even the viability of faking my own death. I hadn’t found anything useful yet, though I’d read a lot of good stuff about the scammers of this world. Devious wives, spiteful husbands, psychotic parents—all the juicy, true-crime before-bedtime sort of stuff. I’d thought I’d known everything there was to know about psychotic mothers, but the Internet had proven me wrong.
Anyway, nothing useful had turned up. I wasn’t trying to get away with murder or an insurance payout. I just wanted to be free of these shackles. I’d thought about asking Lux if she could help me, but I was still working up the courage. She and Erebus came as a pair. A bad pair, like two sour grapes on a vine. They made Antony and Cleopatra look like pussycats, and the War of the Roses look like a petty squabble. Love and hate times a million.
The frustrating thing was, you never knew which one was going to come out when they were together. I’d lost count of the times I’d had to duck as one chucked half a mountain at the other. I’d also lost count of the times I’d had to cough in an oh-so-over-the-top way to stop them from tonguing each other’s faces off while I was standing right there! This was all the more impressive considering they didn’t have real tongues. At first, it’d been a hell of a shock to see that side of things, since I’d presumed they were siblings. But, apparently, it wasn’t literal. They were Chaos’s kiddos, yes, but not actually related.
Pushing away the horrible memory, I looked back over the wall. Yes! The guards had moved on, giving me a direct line to the door of the lighthouse. I vaulted myself over the wall, checked to make sure nobody was watching, and sidled up to the wooden door. I smirked at a man standing in front of a nearby cannon while his girlfriend snapped a photo. Attaboy.
Pressing my hand to the lock, I fed a blast of Air through it. My new quartet of Elemental abilities definitely had some benefits. Well, my powers weren’t so new anymore, but I was still getting used to them. It was hard to break the habits I’d learned over a lifetime.
The door lock mechanism clicked as Air pushed the teeth upward. Slipping into the lighthouse, I ran up the winding staircase.
Halfway up, I paused to drag in a breath. I might’ve been running around the world for a year, but I really needed to hit the treadmill. Using the spare moment, I took out the amulet I’d brought with me. The cops had given me a thorough pat-down during my last attempt at this, and even they hadn’t found it. Though nobody needs to know why. Fortunately, I was back to using a conventional pocket to stow this thing away.
The amulet was a legitimate Eye of Horus, stolen about a month ago from Luxor by a tomb raider. That tomb raider had been me, minus the leg straps, pistols, tiny shorts, and curve-hugging tank top of the video game version. I only went after this amulet because Erebus had told me I’d have to actually speak to the Ponce. Naturally, that was all he’d given me. I’d asked for a little help in learning to use it, and he’d shrugged and told me to figure it out. Sweet of him to be so caring.
An amber bead lay where the Eye’s pupil should’ve been. It was supposed to glow yellow in the presence of a spirit. I’d tested the theory in a couple of cemeteries with the help of Tatyana—the San Diego Coven’s resident spirit whisperer—but whether Ponce de León would bite or not was yet to be seen.
I needed the amulet to speak with his spirit about the location of the Fountain of Youth. No idea what Erebus wanted that for, since the dude was already immortal.
Also, apparently this meant the Fountain of Youth was a real thing. Who knew, right? I was still wrapping my head around it. Next, he’d be sending me on a wild goose chase to the Isle of Avalon to have a chat with King Arthur, then sending me swimming in some lake to bring back Excalibur. Just to really bring that Merlin dynasty home.
I froze as I heard voices drifting down from a platform above my head. They didn’t sound like spirits. No, it sounded like two jackasses egging each other on.
“Go on, I dare you,” one guard said. My Spanish was muddy at best, but Santana had given me a crash course prior to this little jaunt.
“You go, if you’re that worried,” the second replied.
“No way, man! Everyone knows there’s a spirit up there.”
“So? It’s daylight. Spirits don’t come out in daylight.”
“Who says? My mother saw one once, at, like, two o’clock in the afternoon.”
“You sure she wasn’t drunk?”
“Hey, you watch your mouth!”
“You brought it up. And I’m not going up there, so stuff it.”
I glanced back down at the amulet. It was flashing yellow.
Two
Finch
The amulet’s glow intensified as I moved up the stairs. I paused on the platform where the guards were still egging each other on. It was too narrow for me to just slip past them. I watched for a moment, and then an idea popped into my head.
Edging forward, I held my breath and reached up. My fingertips tickled the back of the first guard’s neck. He whirled around, and I ducked out of the way.
“Stop messing around,” he muttered to his colleague.
“What are you talking about?” the other answered, looking annoyed.
“You’re trying to freak me out, just because I said you weren’t brave enough to go up there.” He pointed to the top of the lighthouse.
My end goal.
“I didn’t do anything,” the other guard protested. I crept forward again and poked the nearest guy in the spine. He spun around again.