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Mouse liked going places in the car. That the place had happened to be a clandestine meeting in a freaking graveyard didn’t seem to spoil anything for him. It was all about the journey, not the destination. A very Zen soul, was Mouse.
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“Screw up my life?” He stared at me for a second and then said, deadpan, “I’m a five-foot-three, thirty-seven-year-old, single, Jewish medical examiner who needs to pick up his lederhosen from the dry cleaners so that he can play in a one-man polka band at Oktoberfest tomorrow.” He pushed up his glasses with his forefinger, folded his arms, and said, “Do your worst.”
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Knowledge counters fear. It always has.”
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You have to believe in the magic for it to work—not just that it will happen, but that it should happen.
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Though now that I thought about it, Ebenezar hadn’t handed me a copy of the book when he’d been teaching me. He hadn’t even lectured me more than a couple of times. He told me what he expected, and then he lived it in front of me. Damned effective teaching method, to my way of thinking.
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Like I said, magic comes from life, and especially from emotions. They’re a source of the same intangible energy that everyone can feel when an autumn moon rises and fills you with a sudden sense of bone-deep excitement, or when the first warm breeze of spring rushes past your face, full of the scents of life, and drowns you in a sudden flood of unreasoning joy. The passion of mighty music that brings tears to your eyes, and the raw, bubbling, infectious laughter of small children at play, the bellowing power of a stadium full of football fans shouting “Hey!” in time to that damned
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“I don’t understand it,” I said. “Why am I so afraid?” “Because you’ve got more to lose than you ever have before,” he said. “Your brother. Your friends. You’ve opened yourself up to them. Loved them. You can’t bear the thought of someone taking them away from you.” “It’s getting to be too much,” I said.
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“My boy. There’s so much still ahead of you.” “So much?” I whispered. “Pain. Joy. Love. Death. Heartache. Terrible waters. Despair. Hope. I wish I could have been with you longer. I wish I could have helped you prepare for it.” “For what?” I asked him. “Shhhhh,” he said. “Sleep. I’ll keep the fire lit until morning.”
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“The door is ajar,” the dashboard said. “It won’t shut up,” I explained to him. “It gets sort of Zen after a while,” Butters said brightly. “Life is a journey. Time is a river. The door is a jar.”
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“Fear can’t hurt you,” I said. “It can’t kill you.” “Well, technically—” “Butters,” I said. “Don’t give me statistics on heart failure. Fear is a part of life. It’s a warning mechanism. That’s all. It tells you when there’s danger around. Its job is to help you survive. Not cripple you into being unable to do it.”
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suddenly felt very tired and rubbed at my forehead. I reminded myself that Lasciel was a fallen angel. That she was one of the thirty demons of the Order of the Blackened Denarius. That she was known as the Temptress and the Webweaver, and that she was ancient, powerful, and deadly dangerous at the art of manipulation. She could not be trusted; nor could her little carbon copy that had taken up residence in my head.
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“Don’t you want to survive?” my double asked. I rose from the chair and started walking into the darkness outside the light. “Of course I do. But some things are more important than survival.”
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Lasciel inclined her head to him respectfully. Then she walked over to me, gorgeous and warm in the harsh light, her eyes lowered. Without a trace of self-consciousness, she sank down to her knees, bowed her head, and said, “How may I serve you, my host?”
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