Page 39 of Midnight in the Garden of Okay and Meh
“Entrance,” Aisling, Ysolde, and I answered at the same time.
“To this Thirteenth Hour?” Allie asked, looking incredulous. “Why would an entrance be put in a public place where there are mortals all over?”
“The actual entrance is bound to be warded so that mortals can’t see it. Or rather, they can, but their brains refuse to process it, so they ignore its presence.” Aisling glanced down at a ping. “And Drake’s on his way back to London. I hope we can get this done before his plane gets here.”
“Why?” I couldn’t help but ask.
She made a face. “He gets so difficult when it comes to me dealing with any being who poses the slightest risk. Not that I’m going into the Hour, but if you need emergency Guardian services, I’m happy to leap into the fray.”
“We’ll see everyone off,” I said after a brief confab with Gabriel. “Not that we can help with the Hour, but just in case there’s something we can do outside of it, we’ll be ready.”
“I’ll be there, of course, because I have to bring Jim and Parisi,” Aisling said with a nod toward us.
“So will we. Since, as Christian has pointed out numerous times, it is our problem that you’re all kindly helping with. We’ll see you all in twenty-four minutes,” Allie said, glancing at her watch. “There’s just enough time to threaten the kids with the direst of repercussions if they even think of interrupting us again.”
Everyone logged off and headed out. Gabriel went off to inform Maata and Tipene that we were going to Hyde Park. I sat for a moment thinking about putting all our eggs into the Sally basket.
It made me nervous.
It made me very nervous.
ELEVEN
Parisi
Midsummer
“My Sovereign, there is a—what is the matter?” Mags stopped and stared at where I was on my knees before the privy. “Are you unwell? Was it clam soup? You didn’t eat any of the mushrooms that Old Grig picked, did you? I swear that man is trying to poison the Court. I tell the apprentices time and time again to never eat anything Old Grig gives them, but do they listen? No, they do not. They must needs eat the mushroom soup, and mushroom pottage, and mushrooms with eggs, and mushrooms sat gently upon a bit of salmon, over which melted butter and herbs are poured, and then they spend the next day on their knees just as you are right now. Well. You’ll feel better for a bit of a purge, I reckon.”
I looked up, wiping my mouth on a cloth. “I need you to take a message for me, Mags.”
“I’ll get you some goat’s milk. ... A message?” She spun around to give me a look of dismay. “No. No, no, no. Not again. I will not go there again.”
“I wouldn’t ask you if it wasn’t important that I speak to Desi.”
“Pfft,” she said, waving away my statement. “You just want to end your relationship with him. Again. For the fiftieth time.”
“It hasn’t been fifty times,” I said wearily, pulling myself up onto the bed. “Forty at the most.”
“It’s been five hundred and some years that you insist you’re done with him, and then a quarter year later, there you are traipsing off to see him with a song on your lips and flowers in your hair.” Mags’s lips closed so tight they were almost invisible. “You’re just tormenting yourself with that one. He will never change.”
“He has already changed,” I said, eyeing the privy, unsure if my stomach was done ridding itself of the bread and porridge I’d eaten in the morn. “And that’s made things harder for us both. He’s struggling with the princes of Abaddon since they’ve added even more of them. The only way Desi retains control against their combined strength is via his relic.”
“He’s still evil, and stands against everything we work for,” Mags insisted as she tsked when I lurched to the privy again.
“He’s not,” I mumbled after retching up nothing. “He’s been working hard to shift the focus of Abaddon from all the heinous acts the princes perform to something less harmful. The princes are furious, because they can’t stop him, but they keep trying. Oh lord. This is horrible. How am I going to survive this for the next six months?”
“Six ...” Mags gasped in a huge quantity of air. “You’re with child? His child?”
I sank onto the floor, leaning against the bed, too tired and ill to do more than say, “Yes, we will be having a child. It is a blessing, I know, but right now ...” The words trailed off. I couldn’t rally the energy needed to finish the thought.
“You don’t know what you have done,” Mags said, shaking her head even as she helped me back onto my bed before tucking me in. “I fear you are going to regret many things in the future, my Sovereign.”
“I already have,” I murmured, and willed myself to sleep.
* * *
Desi
