Page 49 of Soothsayer

“Among other things.” Apart from not being welcome in any casino on the Strip, I was also wanted by the overtly criminal side of Vegas as well. And the magical community. All of Nevada was basically a no-go zone for me if I wanted to be safe.

“And they’ll break your kneecaps if they catch you in their town again. I understand. Well, what can I do for ya, Cillian?”

“Okay.” I took a deep breath, trying to marshal my thoughts. “I need a piece of land.”

“The wife and I own over a million acres, so I reckon there’s plenty of pieces in that. What kind of land specifically?”

A million acres? I had underestimated Roger’s net worth. “Something that was used for oil or gas development and then tapped out, fairly recently. Something that’s not too remote—it has to have road access, but not be close to many people either. Something with access to water, if you could manage it. The plot doesn’t have to be big” —after all, Sören’s land fit within that warehouse, and while it was big, it wasn’t football field sized— “but it does have to have been used up, so to speak.”

“Huh.” I could hear him tapping his phone, looking something up. “I’m sure I could wrangle something like that. You need a place to build a house or something?”

“More like I need a place to transplant some property. It’s complicated.”

“I figure everything with you gets pretty complicated. Hmm.” He tapped some more. “Let me see what I’ve got and get back to you on it. This time sensitive?”

“Pretty time sensitive, yeah.”

“Any places you’re not willing to consider?” I heard ice clink in a glass as he took a sip of his drink.

“Nothing in Illinois.” Because even if, by some miracle, we came out ahead at the end of this, I didn’t want to tempt Fate by settling Sören in Illinois.

“Not to worry. Not much oil development in Illinois…” I let Roger mutter some more, pinching the spot right between my eyes where a headache was rapidly developing. It was probably dehydration; I hadn’t had much to drink today along with my unintentional fasting, but the pain was building so rapidly that it was more like…more like…

Oh, fuck.

Sometimes—not often, but sometimes—I got premonitions. It was different from seeing someone’s fate, or playing out what was going to happen in the future through someone else’s eyes. A premonition was the sudden, intense knowledge that Ineededto be looking at someone; Fate’s way of throwing me a bone, so to speak. And the only person around right now was Roger. Which meant—

“Can you do me another favor?”

“What d’you need, son?”

“I need to see your eyes. Can we go live?”

Roger chuckled. “You gonna change my luck, Cillian?”

“I think you might be the one to change mine,” I said. “Please.” I wasn’t actually sure if this would work over a phone, but I had to try.

There was some shuffling, and then Roger’s face came up on my screen. He was wearing the same white hat as before and hada glass of what was probably whiskey in one hand. He didn’t look drunk, though, mostly amused.

“Here I am,” he said expansively. “You need me to do anything else?”

“Just hold the phone a little closer to your eyes, and be still for a bit.” He obliged, and I relaxed my mind as best I could, stared into his eyes, and let myself dig down, a little deeper, a little harder. It wasn’t easy—the pixilation blurred some things—but after a few seconds, I found what I was fearing.

“Oh,shit.”

“What? What’s wrong?”

“I…” How had they found us again? How had I given us away? Santa Rosa was a fucking hole in the road, there was nothing here to distinguish it—how had they found us? And we weren’t going anywhere, obviously. We could run into the desert, but the land was angry at us, and the farther we got from civilization, the more of a problem Sören might have. Besides, that wasn’t what the future showed anyway. It was blurry, but it was all I had to go on.

“Roger, I need to ask you another favor. A big one, right now. And I need you to just go with it, okay? Because it’s gonna happen, but the sooner you get started on it, the better the odds are. And I swear to god if I survive what’s coming, I will pick the winning horse at the next Kentucky Derby for you.”

Roger blinked once and then shrugged and threw back the rest of his drink. “Eh, Vegas was getting boring anyway. What can I do for you, Cillian?”

I told him. He laughed and laughed.

It was nice thatoneof us was confident.

Chapter Twenty-Five

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