Last Rites (Darkling Mage 6)

I gripped so hard around my cellphone that I knew I was going to crush it. “Ragnarok. You’re saying that you don’t believe an apocalypse is coming, unless you explicitly see the signs of the Ragnarok.”

“That is precisely what I am saying,” Odin boomed, indignant. “There is no cause for concern. Let the Eldest come if they must. This is not the end of the universe.”

I could have thrown my phone against the wall just then. “And if they come, what? Am I just supposed to kill them again, one by one? You’re the All-Father, the greatest warrior the Norsemen have ever known. Ever. Are you truly leaving this all to humans to settle? This could be the end of us all. Please. I’m begging you. All I need is the ritual.”

Odin cleared his throat again. I could see his great mustachios and snowy beard quiver in my mind’s eye. I wanted to set it all on fire.

“No,” he pronounced. “This is not the end that was prophesied, mortal. These are not the signs. Let me know when you have a real crisis. Until then: do not call me again.”

There was a click, and the line went dead. I very carefully placed my phone down on the little table by the side of my bed. Then I picked up my pillow, pushed my face into it, and screamed as loud as I could.

That carried on for a minute or so, until my throat was burning and it was too painful to continue. I hurled my pillow against the bed, my eyes stinging with tears of fury. Fuck the entities, fuck their fickleness. I couldn’t believe it. This was another dead end.

“It’s not the end,” Vanitas said, his voice echoing in a distant corner of my mind.

“You heard what he said,” I answered. “You hear what I hear. That’s not exactly the phrasing I was expecting from you, V.”

“Granted,” he said. “But that’s not what I meant. I’m only trying to say, this isn’t the end of our fight. Maybe you don’t need the All-Father after all.”

He scraped against the stone shelf that we called his living quarters, and instinctively, I knew that he was nodding, trying to indicate something to me. The tip of his blade was pointing towards my end table, so I looked.

Something sparkling and blue glimmered from just beside my phone, and I was suddenly so glad that I hadn’t slammed it down, or I might have killed our little visitor. The sparkle came from the sapphire embedded in the back of a little spider, one of Arachne’s most special children.

Secret-spiders, we called them. As good as arachnids were at hiding in the corners of the world and listening for rumors and whispers, the secret-spiders were directly linked to Arachne’s mind, feeding her information, carrying messages for her.

And, true to Arachne’s brand, said information generally came in the form of a fortune cookie. The secret-spider tapped one of its spiky legs against the wrapped little cookie it had brought into my room, pointing it out to me. Then it lifted off the table, ascending on a near-invisible line of web up into the darkness of the Boneyard’s ceiling, to blur between worlds and domiciles and return to its mother.

I picked up the cookie and smiled to myself. As fickle as the entities could be – as Arachne herself could be – at least I knew she still cared about me enough to help.

“Well?” Vanitas said. “Crack it open. See what’s inside.”

The name of a god, I prayed to myself. A destination. Maybe even an entire spell, inscribed on a tiny scroll of paper. I tore the wrapper apart, breaking the cookie open in two hands, and retrieved the fortune. My hands shook as I fished out the slip of paper, eager not to tear it. I unrolled the little scroll, then frowned.

“What does it say?” Vanitas said, someho

w more excited than I was.

“The Leather Glovebox,” I read out loud, frowning. “Is this a joke?” I looked at Vanitas pointedly, as if he might know something I didn’t. “What the hell is the Leather Glovebox?”

I hadn’t noticed until then that Sterling was lingering in the threshold to my bedroom. He chuckled, then answered softly.

“Wouldn’t you like to know.”

Chapter 11

The Leather Glovebox, as it turned out, was a very special kind of club located several blocks away from Silk Road, Valero’s commercial district. And I mean very, very special. It was to me, at least. I’d never been to a BDSM club before.

Sterling and I headed there the very same day I got the visit from the secret-spider. Weirdly generous as always, or maybe just making a show of it, Sterling peeled some bills out of his pocket as Gil and I followed him into the warm, wood-scented interiors of the Glovebox. Asher had tried to finagle his way into coming along, but it didn’t take much to convince him that it was entirely inappropriate considering his very obvious age.

“A glamour,” he begged. “I’ll put on a glamour and they’ll let me through. No problem.”

Sterling mussed Asher’s hair, patting him on the head with an odd mix of mockery and fondness. “It’s not about that, little buddy. You might be a bit young for this. Even I think so.”

Asher relented soon after that, which was surprising, considering how he loved to tackle Sterling head-on in any sort of fight.

“That should cover it,” Sterling said to the doorman, handing over a wad of bills. The money was for the cover charge, naturally, which I felt was especially morally important to fork over since we weren’t there to play. Color me strange but it almost felt a little rude to intrude on something I’d always considered so private, and so intimate.

The Leather Glovebox, or at least its lobby, wasn’t what I expected at all, if I’m honest. But then again, I was the kind of person who used to think that vampires only listened to lots of metal and angry electronic music, so what did I know? It was quiet out there, the walls paneled in polished wood, the air smelling of mild incense.