He asked me, “You making another attempt at dinner?”
Earlier, I’d bolted from the table to vomit up good food. Thanks, kid. Jack had once called Matthew a resource-suck; I was currently saddled with one. “Maybe I should.”
Finn held up his triple-decker sandwich. “Here. Take mine.” A dollop of mayonnaise oozed to his plate. Plop.
Ugh. “No thanks. I’ll just grab some toast.”
“Suit yourself, chica.” Balancing his plate, Finn maneuvered his crutch to hobble over to the kitchen table. Without a hint of bitterness, he said, “When you have a crutch, you’re always one hand short.” And a Magician would need both of his. Finn’s Arcana call was Don’t look at this hand, look at that one.
I popped a frozen piece of bread into the toaster, then poured a glass of milk. Now that Lark had taken over cooking duties, I helped her as much as possible. Mainly, I cut up things while trying not to puke.
She’d prepared meals for her dad before the Flash, so she could put together a decent spread. But she couldn’t recreate Paul’s staples—like hot-out-of-the-oven pastries and succulent, freshly butchered game; our frozen supplies continued to dwindle.
When Finn dropped down into a seat, he banged his bad leg, gritting his teeth. He lived with that pain every day, had only one hope of ever getting it fixed.
Yet I was standing in the way, which hadn’t improved my relationship with Lark.
Her single-minded pursuit had fixated on one goal. We’d had another clash earlier:
“Just admit you’re wrong about Paul,” she demanded. “He’ll forgive you. And then he can help Finn.”
“I’m not wrong.”
She studied my face. “Then are you right?”
Right in the head? Right in the definitive without-a-doubt sense? I had no good answer to that, so I asked, “Have you been talking to Paul when you bring him meals?”
She peered down at her claws. “Boss said not to.”
In other words, yes. “Lark, I believe that my grandmother was warning me against him—so he murdered her.”
She slapped her palm against her forehead. “That’s really freaking stupid, unclean one. Who the hell would kill the dying?”
Sometimes I wanted to strangle Lark. She was like an annoying little sister. And like siblings, we fought and made up.
“Got a joke for you,” Finn said between bites. “What do you call sixty-nining between two cannibals?”
I took my milk and dry toast to the table. “An exercise in trust?”
“No.” His lips curved. “The first course. But I like where your head’s at, blondie.”
“That’s really awful, Finn,” I said, though I had to fight a grin.
Looking pleased, he said, “The world might be different, but we’ve still got to find the humor. I’ve been working on Death. Talked to him today.”
“Did you?” Though Aric didn’t consider Finn a friend and likely never would, he’d gone so far as to say that the Magician’s heart was in the right place. “What’d you talk about?” I nibbled the toast, trying to decide if it’d stay down. Fifty-fifty chance.
“Guy stuff. I can’t betray the code. But the more I get to know the Reaper, the more I like him. You’ve got stout taste in dudes.” At my expression, he said, “Sorry. Boneheaded thing to say.”
“Don’t worry about it.” I considered asking Finn his opinion about Matthew’s message. No, he’d tell Lark, and she’d tell Aric.
“So, are you amped about becoming a mom?” Everyone seemed excited but me. Even Lark had said, “Maybe this could end the game. Finn and I might actually have a shot at a normal existence together!”
I gave him the look his question deserved. “I’m seventeen.”
“Maybe in this life. Lark said you’ve clocked more than a century between your incarnations. We all have, right?”
Technically, I was well over a hundred. I guessed I couldn’t view Aric as two thousand years old unless I copped to being a centenarian.
Taking another bite, Finn said, “Even though you’re hella old, I think you’ll make a great mom. Mothering is what Empresses are supposed to do, right?”
As a little girl, I’d played with baby farm animals—not baby dolls. I’d never even liked kids. “As the Empress, I think I’m supposed to kill.”
“But you’re the Arcana who pushed hardest to end the killing. I thought about you a lot when I was on the road with Selena. If you could ally with her after she tricked you, I figured I could forgive her for targeting us for elimination and all.” In a softer tone, he said, “I think that’s the most important thing to do as a parent—forgive.”
Finn’s parents hadn’t forgiven him for his involuntary pranks. They’d shipped him across the country, booting him from his beloved California.
“Speaking of forgiveness,” he continued, “Joules and Gabe are out there, starving. Lark’s falcon spotted them, and they’re looking rough.”
If Jack lived, was he starving?
And yet here I was again, holed up in this castle, not helping, not doing anything but biding my time.
Finn laid aside the remains of his sandwich. “Death hasn’t changed his mind about throwing them a bone?”
“It’s still a solid no-go.” When I’d broached it a while back, Aric had said, “If we feed the strays, they will never move on, and a larger convergence of cards could lead Richter here sooner. Plus, I make it a rule not to extend a hand to those plotting against me.”
I told Finn, “Maybe if Joules wasn’t so bent on electrocuting Aric.”
“True. I had to give it a try.”
“I’ll keep working on him,” I said, even though my influence on Death was negligible these days. I couldn’t even get him to jettison my grandmother’s killer until the weather turned. “What was it like being on the road with Joules and Gabriel?” The three of them had teamed up after the catastrophe at Fort Arcana and targeted Richter. To no avail.
“Besides feeling like a third wheel to their epic bromance? It was cool. Sometimes they’d open up about their pre-Flash lives. Get this: Patrick Joules, the great and powerful Tower, was a choirboy.”
“Brash, foulmouthed Joules?” Every other word out of his mouth was feck. “You lie.”
“I swear! Self-described goody-goody. At least, before he met Calanthe.” The Temperance Card had been the love of Joules’s life. Unfortunately, Death had killed her in self-defense.
While I struggled to picture Joules as a choirboy, I asked, “Wasn’t Gabriel born into a cult?”
“Kidnapped by one when he was a baby.”
“Jesus, how awful.”
“They worshipped him as an angel.” In the history of the games, Gabriel had been a righteous guardian, a protector of good. “Funny thing: Gabe wasn’t born with wings. On Day Zero, he had to leap off a mountain into nothing and hope those wings shot out of his back on the way down.”