Page 45 of Soothsayer

“Love you too.” Marisol hung up, and I put the phone down, frowning. There was nothing I could do from here, I knew that, but the way she sounded…

I fell asleep thinking about Marisol, and dreamed of her pancakes. It was my best rest in days.

Chapter Twenty-Three

It took us two days to get through Missouri, Oklahoma, a sliver of Texas, and finally end up in Santa Rosa, New Mexico. Two days for what should have been an eighteen-hour drive, because ha-fucking-ha, there was no way I should have expected Sören to sit in the passenger seat and play with the Nintendo. No. He preferred to look up bad roadside attractions with his phone and then try to compel me to go there by bitching nonstop, or occasionally just staring at me with cloudy purple eyes until I gave in. Not that I could give in, because—hello—no distinguishing locations for the sorceress to track, which led to several arguments before he gave up.

“Next time,” I promised him. “After we’re not being hunted down by your dad’s soothsayer, I’ll let you plan a road trip, and we’ll waste time all over the country, but for now, we just can’t. Not if we don’t want your brothers crashing the party.” I let him read to me about the exhibits as a poor substitute for seeing them in person.

Springfield, Missouri yielded pictures of a giant Solo cup and a three-story fork, because enormous dinnerware—sure, why not?

Sören actually looked a little wistful as he stared at them. “There are no giants in this land, are there?”

“Not that I know of.”

“It is a pity. One lived next to me back home. She was an excellent neighbor.”

I honestly didn’t know if I could take him seriously or not. “You lived next to a giant?”

“Ajötunn. Ice giant. When Ragnarök comes, she will rise up and fight against the gods.”

“Do you really believe in Ragnarök?”

Sören turned and stared at me. “You don’t? How do you think the world will end?”

I tried not to think about that, actually. “I don’t know. Nuclear war? Global warming? Pandemics or famine?”

Sören shook his head. “I suppose it makes sense, you seeing things from such a limited perspective. Those are very human concerns to have. But you see beyond human concerns as well. This world will end in battle, in ice and flame and wrath and the blood of many gods.” He sighed. “I only hope I’m around to see it.”

Well…damn. There wasn’t much I could say to that, so I didn’t say anything, just kept driving. I stayed parallel to I-44 but not on it very much, another effort at staying under the radar, so our slower speed was my fault as well. We spent the first night in Oklahoma City, where in addition to the bombing memorial there was also a bevy of bronze Miss Americas on a college campus and a bone museum that Sören pined over for a little bit. We didn’t try camping again, sticking with a cheap chain motel and double beds, although Sören didn’t bother using his own. He didn’t bring out the Sören I loved, but he was quiet at night,almost gentle, and I let him soak up some of my heat as long as he didn’t get pushy.

The next day we avoided a huge pair of legs—just legs—and the Cadillac Ranch in Amarillo, Texas on our way through to New Mexico. “This country is huge,” Sören commented more than once. “Surely there has to be some place for my land.”

“I’m sure we’ll find something,” I said, although really I had no idea what Sören required in terms of relocating, and he didn’t seem to either. The process of transference was magic that he’d left in the hands of Egilsson. Bobby would know, though. We just had to find Bobby and this part would get worked out, one more obstacle overcome. Before the next obstacle and then the final one. The sacrifice. I needed to find a sacrifice. A person.

I wasn’t any closer to a solution on that one.

We got to Santa Rosa a little after noon. The sky was clear and blue, which meant it was brutally hot out. The ground was the reddish-brown you saw a lot of in the southwest, dotted with boulders and scrubby bushes. I wasn’t a huge fan of the landscape, but Sören found a particular sort of beauty to it.

“It isn’t the land I come from,” he mused as we passed a sign for the Blue Hole. “But they both contain a comforting sense of desolation.”

“Comforting?”

“Oh yes.” He looked at me and tilted his head. “Do you think I was the one to seek out this bargain? I would rather have been left alone completely, but I could not alter my planned destruction, so I had to go where I was taken in order to survive. I want to live, just as you do. Just as Sören and all of his family do.”

“Someone has to die, though.”

“Someone will now that you’ve gotten involved, yes. But it will not be me.”

Way to make me feel awesome. “We’re almost there.” I followed Marisol’s instructions and turned when I saw the stone tortoise, heading down a rough dirt road with washboards so bad that the car shook and bounced like a Mexican jumping bean. I felt the bottom of the Electra scrape the ground over one particularly nasty pothole and winced. Not good. I’d be lucky if I didn’t puncture something out here.

Bobby Garcia’s cabin was at the end of the road, a little adobe hut that couldn’t have more than three rooms in it. It was on the grid, if barely, but there were no lights on, no music coming from the house, and the front door was shut. Made sense—he was supposed to be wandering the desert, right? I didn’t bother to try the door, just got out of the car and started looking for a gong.

I didn’t have to look for long. It was set up about ten meters behind Bobby’s house, suspended between two rough-hewn logs that were sunk deep in the rocky ground. It wasn’t the kind of gong I’d been expecting, something brassy and polished. This was a round slab of iron covered with a film of rust, and probably weighed close to a thousand pounds. There was no pretty hammer or padded mallet to strike it with, just a crowbar leaned against the side of one of the logs.

Sören took one look at it and balked. “Oh, no. I amnottouching that.”

Not that I’d really expected him to, but… “Why not?”

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