The Book of Destiny Read online

  Confused, I said, “I’m fine—what news? Has something happened?”

  Harry and Harriet looked at each other. “You haven’t heard,” Harriet said. “Doesn’t anyone listen to the news anymore? It was on every channel.”

  “There was an incident,” Harry said, overriding my reply. “In Berryton, Georgia. They’re calling it an unexplained phenomenon right now, but that won’t last.”

  All around me, exclamations went up as people stared at their phones, reading about the incident. “So what happened?” I asked.

  “Everyone in the town is dead. Illness, the government’s saying, but they’ve got the CDC involved, so I doubt they believe it’s as innocuous as simple illness,” Harriet said. “Not that they’ll figure out the true cause.”

  “Invaders,” I said. “But how could they possibly destroy an entire town?”

  “That’s a good question, but it’s the wrong one,” Harry said. “The real question is, how could they take out a named Neutrality?”

  Now I was even more confused. “What are you talking about?”

  Harry and Harriet again exchanged glances. “We thought you knew,” Harriet said. “Don’t all the named Neutralities talk to each other?”

  “Of course.” There were five named Neutralities, of which Abernathy’s was one, and I was in touch with all their custodians via text or email. Claude in Switzerland, Diane in Georgia—

  I put a hand on the counter to steady myself. “Diane,” I said. “She never said what town the Fountain of Youth is in. It’s not—”

  “Berryton,” Harry said. “It is. Was.”

  “What happened to Diane?”

  Harriet took my hand again. “There are no survivors in Berryton,” she said. “Diane Lakin is dead. And the Fountain of Youth has been destroyed.”

  2

  “Destroyed?” I said. It was impossible. Diane had texted me just the other day with her recipe for buttermilk fried chicken. Nobody that down-home could be…

  I realized Harriet was saying my name, sounding very far away even though she was standing right next to me. “I’m all right,” I said, though I wasn’t sure that was true. “It’s just…I can’t believe it. Even the invaders can’t destroy a Neutrality. Something else must have happened. How do you know it was invaders? That wouldn’t be on the news.”

  “We have friends in the Southeast who told us,” Harry said. “Somebody went to Berryton early this morning to use the Fountain. They found bodies in the streets, crashed cars, looked like something out of The Andromeda Strain. And the trailer park where the Fountain is was wrecked like a hurricane had struck. The Fountain itself was drained and the basin was cracked. The woman got out of there immediately and contacted the Hampton Node—that’s the center of the Southeast area. They verified that the Fountain’s node was sucked dry.”

  “But won’t it…regenerate, or something? Like the nodes the Mercy drained in South America?”

  Harry rested his hand on my shoulder. “The invaders didn’t leave anything for the node to regenerate to. The Fountain is lost.”

  I turned away from him, feeling as if I’d been punched in the stomach. “How?” I whispered. “And why now? They’ve never been that powerful before. If they could do something like that, why not years or even centuries ago?”

  “We don’t know, Helena,” Harriet said. “But Lucia will. You don’t have to be afraid.”

  “Why—” I shut my mouth. In my grief and confusion I’d missed a key point in this disaster. “You mean they might come here next.”

  A murmur went up from the listening crowd. “If they do, Lucia will be ready for them,” one of my customers said. “They won’t catch us by surprise again.”

  My phone rang. I knew who it was before I looked at the display. “Hi, Lucia.”

  “You heard the news?” Lucia said, as abrupt as ever.

  “The Kellers told me. How did it happen?”

  “No idea yet. I’m in touch with Suzuhara at the Hampton Node. They’ll figure it out, and she’ll tell me. I’m sending someone over to strengthen the wards on the store. The alarm is still active?”

  “I guess so. Campbell Security didn’t install anything to show whether it’s on or off.” That struck me as an oversight now. The alarm prevented an invader wearing a human suit from coming through the front door, and the wards blocked everything else. But if something went wrong with the door alarm, I wouldn’t know until it was too late. “I’ll call Malcolm and get someone to check it.”

  “Do that. I’ll let you know if there’s anything else you need to do.” She hung up without saying goodbye, as usual.

  I let out a deep breath and stuffed my phone into my pocket. I’d finally found a skirt with pockets deep enough to hold a phone. “Someone’s coming to check the wards,” I said. “Would you all wait while I make a quick call?”

  I retreated to the office, where I found Judy mesmerized by the computer screen. “This is unbelievable,” she said. “The whole town of Berryton is dead. A whole town.”

  “It was invaders,” I said, pulling out my phone again. “The Fountain of Youth has been destroyed, and Diane is dead.”

  Judy swiveled around to stare at me, her eyes wide. “What?”

  “I have to call Malcolm. Harry and Harriet told me. You can get the story from them.” I could have told her myself, but the idea of repeating it to Judy and then possibly to Malcolm, if he hadn’t heard yet, made me feel exhausted and sick. I was having trouble processing the tragedy myself. A whole named Neutrality destroyed by invaders.

  I called Malcolm and got his voice mail. The universe was conspiring against me. I left him a message—call me immediately—and put my phone away. Then I leaned on the desk and tried to calm my whirling thoughts, which made a mad cycle from invaders to Diane’s death to the town’s destruction to the possibility that Abernathy’s might be next and around again. I felt dizzy and ill and I wished I could cry, relieve my worries that way, but my eyes ached too much for tears.

  Finally I pushed away from the desk and went back to the front of the store. If invaders intended to destroy the oracle, there wasn’t anything I could do about it. I had to carry on with my job and hope some of these auguries were part of the solution.

  Harry and Harriet were still there, talking to Judy, when I returned. They looked at me with such concern I had to wonder whether my tumultuous emotions finally showed on my face. “Well, line up,” I said, at the last minute deciding against trying to sound cheerful. “Until we know more, there’s no sense speculating or being afraid.”

  “That’s the spirit,” Harry said with a smile. “No sense letting them get to you.”

  Harriet didn’t look nearly so cheerful, but she squeezed my hand and said, “Come for dinner sometime this week, you and Malcolm.”

  When they were gone, I accepted the first augury slip and said, “I’ll try to make this quick.”

  The bluish light of the oracle comforted me. I hadn’t realized I’d been subconsciously expecting the oracle to be gone, which was stupid of me. “Do you know what happened?” I said, feeling my reluctance to speak to the oracle evaporate in the face of this tragedy. “Do you have a connection to the others?”

  My skin tightened, and I thought, Two are gone. Four remain.

  I stopped just around the corner from the blue glow of the augury. “You mean…you were talking about the named Neutralities? But there’s only five of them. Four, now. How can two be gone?”

  Four remain. We remain. Seal the cracks.

  “I don’t understand.”

  The pressure on me intensified. One path. The guardians remain.

  I backed into one of the tall bookcases to support myself, because the oracle’s attention had started to bear down on me, crushing me the way it did just before I became the oracle. “I’m sorry, but I don’t get it,” I cried out. “Two Neutralities—two guardians?—are gone, and four remain to seal something? Block the cracks?”

  Abruptly, the press
ure vanished, and the oracle’s attention went elsewhere. I calmed my breathing and smoothed out the augury slip, which I had crushed. The augury still glowed placidly on a shelf around the corner. I collected it and returned to the store’s front to hand it over. Judy gave me a narrow-eyed look when I said she’d take payment, but since taking payment for auguries was one of her jobs, I had to conclude there was something about my appearance deserving of her scrutiny. I took the next augury slip and headed back into the oracle.

  By 11:33, there were only three Nicolliens waiting for auguries. I was about to take the next augury slip when the bells over the door jangled. “Welcome to…oh,” I said, my voice trailing off as I registered who’d just entered the store. She wore an elegant salmon-colored linen pantsuit with a triple string of pearls, and a matching hat straight out of the ‘50s perched over her left ear. More pearls in fat clusters hung from both earlobes.

  “Helena,” Madeleine Campbell said. Her neutral tone put me on edge. As usual.

  “Madeleine,” I said. “What brings you to Abernathy’s? You know this is Nicollien time.”

  My mother-in-law regarded the three Nicolliens like they were a trio of roaches she expected to see scuttle off into the darkness. “This is beyond the factions,” she said, her French accent heavier than usual. “I am here to see to Abernathy’s’ wards. Lucia Pontarelli insisted.”

  “She sent you?” My surprise was maybe a little too pointed, because Madeleine’s smile went wooden. I felt unexpectedly guilty. My relationship with Madeleine was tense at best and actively hostile at worst, given that she’d done everything she could to break me and Malcolm up, but most of the time we managed a superficial politeness. “I mean…this is Nicollien time, and I sort of expected her to send one of her own people.”

  “I am the best,” Madeleine said without a trace of modesty.

  I didn’t know if that were true or not, but I figured Lucia wouldn’t have asked Madeleine to come out of some weird desire to force the two of us to overcome our differences.

  “Um…okay,” I said. “What do you need?”

  “Access to your basement, and privacy.” Madeleine’s attention turned from me to the store. Her casual appraisal of the shelves, as if they didn’t meet her standards, irritated me. I caught Judy glancing at me with an expression that said Madeleine had irritated her, too.

  I concealed my emotions and gestured to her, nodding at my customers in silent apology. Madeleine followed me through the stacks to the short hallway at the end of which was the staircase leading to the basement. I pulled the string to turn on the bulb lighting the stairs. “Is this good enough?”

  “I will return shortly,” Madeleine said. She descended the stairs without touching the rail, like she thought it might soil her pantsuit. I wasn’t sure why she hadn’t dressed down for what I was sure was dirty work, but I’d never seen her less than perfectly turned out, so maybe it was just who she was. I didn’t really care. Sometimes, when I was in a generous mood, I felt sorry for her—how she’d let her grief over her husband’s untimely death warp her into a bitter, controlling woman. But that didn’t happen often.

  The final three auguries went off smoothly. When we were alone in the store again, Judy said, “I guess I shouldn’t be surprised Lucia asked Madeleine to come. She was a powerful stone magus before she retired—still is, I guess. I heard she raised a sunken ship, a big one, all by herself off the bottom of the Columbia.”

  “If she can strengthen the store’s wards, I can put up with her rudeness. At least she’s stopped hinting that Malcolm and I should have kids already.”

  Judy whistled. “That’s a major attitude shift.”

  “Yeah, well, I might have hinted back that nagging me on the subject might delay the blessed event indefinitely. I don’t know. She might have moved on to nagging Ewan and Cathy about it.” Malcolm’s brother and his wife were on better terms with Madeleine than I was, mainly because Ewan had married the woman his mother had picked out for him. That they were genuinely in love was a nice bonus.

  My phone rang. It was Malcolm. “I’m sorry I couldn’t return your call sooner, love,” he said. “Are you all right? We’ve been deluged with calls all morning, from people wanting their wards checked or strengthened.”

  “I’m fine. Just shaken. Have you heard any more about what happened? How it happened?”

  “Nothing more than what everyone now knows—that the invaders were able to overcome the wards on the Fountain of Youth. We still don’t know how they managed that, but I suspect, purely for your ears, that the intelligent invaders were behind it.”

  “That makes sense.” It was also terrifying. Most of the invaders attacking our world from their own reality were mindless, but a few had human intelligence—maybe better than human intelligence—and correspondingly greater power. “Except it doesn’t explain why now.”

  “Unless it does. We don’t know how many of them made it through the node in Montana before it was shut down. The invaders might now have the strongest presence they’ve ever had in our world. And that might mean they have the power—” He stopped speaking, then went on, “All of this is speculation. Lucia will learn more, and she will pass on what information she thinks we need. But I suggest you talk to the other custodians. If the Fountain was targeted because it was a named Neutrality, you may all be in danger.”

  “That’s what I was thinking.”

  “Don’t be afraid. We will protect Abernathy’s, and you, with our lives.”

  “I hope it doesn’t come to that.” I still hadn’t forgotten how Malcolm had looked when he was nearly killed by the Mercy. Sometimes it featured in my nightmares, when I wasn’t dreaming about…the other thing. “I’ll see if the others are available. Samudra might be asleep, though I don’t know how anyone could sleep after this. And I’d like you—Campbell Security, I mean—to do something about the alarm on the front door, so it’s obvious it’s been turned on.”

  “Of course. I love you. We will solve this problem, I promise.”

  I smiled. “I love you, too.”

  Judy had waited patiently during that conversation, and after I hung up, she said, “I think you need to talk to someone.”

  My jaw clenched. “I’m fine.”

  “You’re not fine. You’ve been through a lot of trauma and it’s a miracle you don’t have PTSD or something. Or maybe you do, and you’re just good at hiding it.”

  “All right,” I said irritably, “let’s say I need therapy. Who do you suggest I talk to? Any psychologist I go to will think I’m insane if I start talking about monsters and magical bookstores.”

  Judy rolled her eyes. “There are therapists at the Gunther Node,” she said. “Why are you so resistant to the idea? Plenty of people see therapists these days. It’s no different from going to a doctor because you have back pain, or whatever.”

  “I don’t think there’s anything wrong with therapy. I just don’t think I need it. I talk to you and Viv about my troubles, and I tell Malcolm everything.”

  “That’s not the same as having it out with someone who knows how to help you overcome your problems.” Judy hopped off the stool and stretched. “Keep it in mind, okay? It can’t be healthy for you to be wound so tight all the time.”

  So she’d noticed something, despite all my care. “I’ll think about it,” I promised. “Now, let’s have lunch.”

  But before we could enter the break room, Madeleine emerged from the basement. She looked as tidy and clean as before, annoying me. “The wards are secure,” she said. “I have increased their power as much as can be without making the store physically impregnable.”

  “Thanks,” I said. “I guess we still need to be able to get into Abernathy’s.”

  “Exactly.” She regarded me with that same neutral expression I hated. I knew it concealed a different emotion, and it bugged me that I didn’t know which one.

  “Well…thanks,” I said again, and stood aside to let her pass.

  She did
n’t move. “You knew the custodian of the Fountain of Youth?”

  “I did. She was a good friend.”

  “Then I am sorry for your loss.”

  She didn’t exactly look sorry, but I decided to take her at her word. “Thanks. It hasn’t really sunk in yet.”

  “That is how it feels to lose someone,” Madeleine said, and just for a second, her composure cracked. “There is the…disbelief, saying ‘What?’ and going on saying it for many days.”

  Since I’d lost another friend just four months before, I almost replied with something sarcastic. But this was the most vulnerable Madeleine had ever been with me, and it was unexpectedly touching. “That’s how it feels, yes,” I said. “Like…why haven’t I heard from her today?”

  “Yes. That.” Madeleine’s expression softened. “It is a tragedy on many levels. Two named Neutralities gone.”

  “Yes, I—what did you say?”

  Madeleine’s eyes narrowed at my sharp tone. “I say it is tragic for more—”

  “No, I mean—what about two Neutralities? Only one was lost.”

  “Only one today,” Madeleine said. “The Well was lost long ago. You do not know this?”

  I glanced at Judy, who seemed not at all surprised by this news. “I didn’t. What’s the Well?”

  “The Wishing Well,” Judy said. “It was destroyed before I was born. I didn’t realize you hadn’t heard that story.”

  “I thought a Neutrality couldn’t be destroyed. Isn’t that why everyone’s so worried about losing the Fountain?”

  “It was not the same,” Madeleine said. “The Well was not destroyed as the Fountain was. It was corrupted, put beyond use. But it is still there.”

  “I want to hear about this,” I said.

  Madeleine shrugged. She walked into the break room and took a seat. I hadn’t actually meant for her to tell me about it, but I wasn’t going to be rude. I sat opposite her at the folding table, and Judy leaned against the door frame.

  “The Wishing Well is the oldest of the named Neutralities,” Madeleine said. “It is in what is now Iraq. Baghdad. People would toss in a thing of value and make their wish, and the Well would grant it according to how valuable the thing was. The custodian gathered the offerings…it was as all the named Neutralities are, that they collect money and so forth. But the Well was different. Not all the offerings were retrieved, as if the Well kept some for itself. But that does not matter.”