Grave Intentions (Darkling Mage 3)

“Oh, such trifling matters can be discussed at a later date.” She grinned widely, her teeth like perfect chips of malachite. “If you had asked for something smaller, I would have continued to offer my aid. But this is quite a demand. For now, consider it my last gift. A final favor. But no more. From this point on, anything you ask of me or my brood will involve payment more expensive than, say, a handful of fortune cookies.”

She laughed again, one hand over her mouth, the other waving dismissively, as if she had practiced this very gesture in the past. It looked like she was pantomiming, trying to be human. Technically, Arachne was human once. Still, it felt too measured, too deliberate. She seemed to be trying to put us at ease, but it only made me that much more apprehensive.

Asher was switching his gaze rapidly between the three of us, the fat, huge straw of his tea drink still stuffed in his maw. He wouldn’t have looked out of place with a bag of popcorn in his hand, really. He might have been new to this, but even he could sense the potential severity of Arachne’s payment.

“Dude,” Herald said softly. “She’s given you enough freebies as it is. This is your investment. Whatever she demands from now on, that’s Future Dustin’s problem. Sure as hell beats being attacked by vampires every night. Do it.”

I stared at Arachne resolutely. This wasn’t about burgers. Someone out there had stolen my identity. Someone was wearing my face. And if it was Thea, then we needed some way to find her, so I could put something sharp into her heart and stop her fucking our lives up, once and for all.

I nodded.

Arachne clapped her hands together and squealed. She was far, far too happy about this. “Excellent, sweetling.” She raised her head, then cooed. “And what timing, too. Here comes my offspring to deliver what she’s discovered of your father.”

One of Arachne’s secret-spiders descended from the ceiling, its strand of web so fine that it looked like it was floating towards me. On its back was a bright blue gem. Through some form of magic, these bejeweled spiders were connected to Arachne with bonds even stronger than her regular children, making it so they could flawlessly store and convey information to their many-legged mother. It made her a fantastic resource for intelligence, and possibly a very terrible enemy to have.

I held out my hand as the spider descended, and when it was only feet away I noticed that it had its legs wrapped around something glimmering. A gem? What the – no. It was the plastic wrapper of a fortune cookie, the same brand that we always brought Arachne.

The spider landed gently in my palm, deposited the fortune cookie, then ascended into the ceiling once again, the sapphire on its back turning into a bright blue speck as it disappeared into the darkness.

“A cookie?” I said, hoping that my confused expression wouldn’t offend Arachne.

“With information on your father,” she said, her head raised with confidence and, I thought, what looked like triumph.

I knew these entities were crazy. Who knew why these gods and demons and mythological creatures wanted to be so obtuse about everything, but hey, they came from a different time. There was no sudoku to pass the time and shit, no porn, so it was all about the riddles.

This all grumbled inside of my head as I unwrapped the fortune cookie, then split it in half. I pulled out the tiny scroll of paper, unfurled it, and read the words printed there. I couldn’t help myself. My mouth fell open.

“What is it?” Asher asked, his mouth a perfect, dumbstruck mirror of my own.

“An address. It’s my dad’s address.”

Chapter 4

Herald’s face scrunched with every passing second, driven slowly to annoyance and insanity by every tiny slurping sound.

“Asher. Seriously. Aren’t you done with that stupid thing?”

Asher stopped chewing, swallowed thickly, then gave him a wide-eyed look. “I wouldn’t want to waste it. Come on, dude. Lemme finish my drink.”

Herald bared his teeth. It was kind of amusing seeing him get so worked up over something so dumb, but that was part of being friends with Igarashi. He was so chill, and calm, and level-headed, until he wasn’t.

“They’re tapioca balls, for God’s sake. Just throw the damn thing out. Surely that lich boss of yours pays you enough that you don’t have to scrimp and save on every little thing.”

I chuckled. “Let him be, Herald. You try being locked up in a room for years. Everything’s new to him, so it’s a fun experience. Right, Asher?”

Grateful, I suppose, for the little defense, Asher gave me a small smile. I was the one who suggested we try out some boba – which he clearly loved, quite unlike kombucha, which he spat out on first contact. We were on a park bench not far from the alley where Arachne’s sigil was tethered. She’d let us go after handing me my father’s actual, physical new home address inside of a fortune cookie.

We were in Heinsite Park, specifically. It was the same place I’d been abducted for my ritual murder, the same place I first met Sterling and Gil the night they tried to kidnap me, and the same place I discovered that I could finally cast a spell by lighting a vampire on fire. Good times, good memories.

Asher had been sucking on his boba tea the entire time, astoundingly unbothered as he was by both Arachne’s appearance and that of her offspring, something which was clearly driving Herald to the brink of madness. With a last, exaggerated slurp, Asher hoovered up the rest of the tapioca balls, crumpled up his empty cup, then tossed it in the garbage.

“There. I’m done. No need to be so pissy about it.”

Herald gritted his teeth. Asher reached his hand out towards me, palm open, and I handed him the little slip of paper with the address on it. He clearly didn’t know enough of the outside world to do anything with that information, but his specific portfolio of arcane power meant that he had a way of sniffing out life energy.

It was extremely limited in range, a severely watered-down version of what the Lorica’s Eyes could do with their scrying, but the extent of his ability was really all I needed. I just wanted him to reach out and sense if my dad was okay.

Asher closed his fingers around the fortune, his eyes shutting gently. A faint mantle of green energy began to pulse around his closed fist. The fact that he needed to actually handle the slip of paper told me that he had, in addition to the strange range of abilities necromancers possessed, access to a kind of psychometry. He required an object attached to the person in question, and the rest, pardon the expression, was magic.