My husband nods. “Only if it’s strawberry. The deal is off if it’s vanilla.”
I pause and look at Charlie laughing with Jaak and my chest feels heavy. I don’t think we’re all going to make it out of this. I don’t expect to. The sense of knowing I had is back. I feel it in every bone. It aches and throbs through my body until it seeps into the ground. Every step I take feels wooden, like I’m walking towards the end of everything. Kinda sucks the big one since I finally felt like I was living, but I guess that’s how these things go. I won’t survive either way, if the planet turns into a snack or not, but they will.
“I made a deal with the World Eater to be its servant, its agent of chaos and strife among all the worlds so long as its heart beat. That is how I saved my home. Such a deal cannot be struck now. There are none to make it.”
Maybe I will survive, maybe I’ll be like Jaak. The thought of striking the same bargain he did won’t leave me. Charlie had the same thought too, which means I’m going to have to get the drop on him. He’s not going down like that.
I am.
My life was never supposed to last this long anyways, which makes this a victory lap if anything, right? Every minute that goes by it becomes more appealing, easier to convince myself that I’m doing the right thing. It also feels so very heavy, so heavy that I have to turn my thoughts back to Mort just to not give my decision away. I don’t know if Mort will be down to helpus, I hope he will. I’ll convince him however I need to, maybe a rousing speech? Something about glory and BLTs? Yeah, maybe I can get Dina to give him free BLTs for life. That ought to move the needle in the right direction.
I look over at Dina. She’s biting her nails and looking like she wants to cry. Maybe I’ll circle back to asking about the BLT thing later.
I give her shoulder a squeeze. “It’ll be okay. I just need a minute and then we’ll be on our way.”
She nods and gives me a tight smile. “Okay.”
I take a deep breath and walk up to the toy store door. It looks nondescript, a sigil etched into it above a single iron circle door pull handle. I raise my hand and knock, then I wait. At the sound of my knocks the hallway goes bright, the writing on the walls pulses before it goes dark again a second later when Mort opens the door.
I blink in surprise at how fast he answered. “Hey,” I say, raising a hand in greeting.
“Hello.” Mort takes his glasses off and rubs his eyes before he puts them back on and looks us all over. He doesn’t look surprised to see us in the slightest. “We’re going on an adventure, aren’t we?”
“A fighting one,” Charlie says, holding up his bow. “I’m Charlie.”
Mort nods at him. “Mort, the ah, resident Oculus and assistant manager.”
“Did you find anything out about who the head mage could be?” I ask Mort.
“Yes and no. I wandered the town late and tried again this morning. I didn’t see much but there was one promising thing that I picked up on.”
“What?”
“I felt something old. Something…hungry. I didn’t get much off it other than the idea that it was planning on eating a lot of souls. Which is concerning on a normal day. I don’t like where any of this is heading.”
“That makes two of us and it’s not just a lot of souls. It’s all the souls. Try the entire world,” I tell him.
“All of them?” Mort pales and has to put a hand out on the doorframe to keep himself up right. “A damn World Eater in my town? Oh, I think not. I chose this place because it was devoid of magic, to start over. Now a World Eater seeks toeat my new home?” He shakes his head and then stands up right. “As an Oculus of the House of Vallayer, I am duty bound to confront a World Eater. I am honor bound to be your ally in this fight, Meadow.”
“I was preparing a whole speech to convince you to help us and everything. Kinda anticlimactic now. I was even going to try and throw in some BLTs.”
Mort looks interested when I say that. “Oooh, I love those. They have the best ones at the diner. I’ve never had such a fine meal.”
“Aw, thanks, that’s kind of you to say,” Dina says and startles Mort. The man shrieks and leaps nearly a foot in the air, hitting his head on the doorframe. Dina covers her mouth with her hands in a gasp. “I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you.”
Mort slides down the doorframe and grabs on to the door to keep himself standing. “It’s easy to do. I’m just a bit near-sighted is all,” he says, pointing at his glasses. He looks back at me and then to the rest of the group before he closes his eyes and the clothing he wears changes to match us. Once he’s in his new medieval attire he nods. “Okay, now I’m ready.”
“You look good. Let’s move. I don’t know how much time we have left. Dina’s leading the way to the Chamber of Commerce. That’s where we think this is all going down,” I tell him beforewe’re moving again. “What can you tell me about what you felt today?
“Only that when I felt the hunger, it was when the Business Association float passed by in the Halloween Parade. There were a dozen business owners on that float.”
“A dozen?” I do the quick math on all the mages that got oopsie-poofied in the clearing by Jaak and I’m impressed by the commercial strength of Bitter Root. “How many businesses are there in this town?”
“Bitter Root is a hub of commerce,” Dina offers. “We were in the top twenty places to start a business the past decade straight. Lots of new folk in town.”
I wince. If this World Eater is filling its ranks with business owners then it might take longer than I thought to put this monster down.
“She’s right. I know Carol isn’t in on it or I would have sensed it. That means not every business owner, but a good deal of them will be. I did try to get closer to it but security didn’t like that one bit. I nearly got tackled trying to get on that float. Your instinct to go to the Chamber of Commerce is correct. The float would have run its route before returning there. Whoever was on it, should be there now.”
