The better to get away from you, my dear.
“This part of Illinois has more hills than the rest.” He gestured toward the water. “The rivers.”
I nodded. The area around the Mississippi in Wisconsin was downright craggy.
Since we’d popped out of the Otherworld without benefit of a car, we had little choice but to hoof it in the direction of Cairo. I could see houses in the distance and beyond them another body of water, the Ohio River, I assumed.
“Who thought it would be a good idea to build a town between two major rivers?” I asked.
“Probably the same guy who thought New Orleans was a fabulous concept.”
“New Orleans is a fabulous concept,” I argued. I’d been there once, for a bartenders seminar—code for tax-deductible drunk fest—and I’d been charmed.
“Except when it’s getting hit by a category five and caskets start floating down the street.” I cast him a quick glance, and he shrugged. “When you bury people above ground, which is actually below sea level, shit happens.”
“And Cairo?”
“Gets flooded a lot. The highest ground around here is the levees.” He pointed to a bridge with the word “CAIRO” painted across the front. “There’s a gate they shut when it gets really bad. Cuts the town off and sends the floodwaters into the fields.”
“Why settle here?”
“In the eighteen hundreds, this place was hopping. Major port on both rivers.”
“And now?”
“The ships don’t need a port between Minneapolis and New Orleans. No passengers, no need to fuel up.” He shrugged. “I hear the place is pretty ghostly.”
The sun had nearly set, casting everything in sepia. Shadows loomed. I hated shadows.
“What did you see when you stared into the pot?” Jimmy asked. “At the end, I mean.”
“My mother looks oddly like me.”
“How oddly?”
I slid my gaze in his direction, then back to the road. “Just don’t kill me by accident.”
“I’ll try,” he said dryly. “I don’t suppose you know how to kill a phoenix.”
“I was hoping you did.”
“Never met one. Considering the legend, there might be a reason for that.” At my curious glance, he continued. “A phoenix lives for a thousand years and is reborn for another thousand from the ashes of its funeral pyre.”
“Still not catching a clue.”
“Maybe there’s only one.”
“Seems like a waste of a good legend,” I said. “There could be a thousand of them. None of which ever truly die, but are instead reborn again and again.”
“An army of virtually indestructible birds,” Jimmy mused. “I hate it when that happens.”
“Ha-ha,” I said, but I didn’t feel like laughing. “You think that’s why she’s been raised? To lead the army of indestructible birds?”
“Why stop there? Why not lead the whole damn indestructible army of the Apocalypse?”
I’d been thinking the same thing; I just hadn’t wanted to say it.
“Nice to meet you,” I muttered. “They call me the daughter of the Antichrist.”
“She hasn’t taken over yet.”
“She has the key; it’s only a matter of time.”
“I think if the Antichrist had taken form—whatever form—we’d know, don’t you?”
“Why? Is there a sign? Big red letters in the sky? A rain of fire? Perhaps a mass e-mail?”
Jimmy stared at me for several seconds before answering my original question. “The end of the world is predated by wars and rumors of wars, famine, disease, lawlessness, earthquakes.”
“Check and mate.” I frowned. “Except that’s been going on since forever.”
“Because there’s been the possibility of the end over and over and over again, but we’ve always stopped it.”
“We’ll stop it this time too.”
“It’s never gotten this far before. We’re one step away from Armageddon.”
“The final battle is now,” I whispered, paraphrasing the last words a living Ruthie had ever spoken to me.
“Ruthie!” Jimmy exclaimed. “She’d tell us if we were fighting a losing battle.”
“Would she?” I asked. “What good would that do?”
At his confused expression I continued. “If she told us the Antichrist had taken form, that all of our efforts weren’t enough to stem the demon tide, people would give up, crawl in a hole or surrender. Hell, maybe they’d even join the other side.”
“Would you?”
I gave him an evil glare. As if.
“The end is just the beginning,” I said. “Ruthie knows that. We’ve got prophecy coming out of our ears and none of it is exactly crystal. There’s always a way out if you just keep searching.”
“It ain’t over until . . .” Jimmy stopped, tilted his head and glanced back at me. “When’s it over?”
“When I say it’s over.”