Dominion: Zoë Martinique Investigation, Book 6 (36 page)

Chapter Thirty-Eight

I somehow did that teleporting thing.
One minute I was hovering above a very upset crowd of people with
guns, and the next I hovered over my mother's house. I landed on
the roof and then sieved down through the structure to the tea shop
below.

I wasn't sure what was going to happen
to it now. I didn't know if the Society would come after me for
killing their ops leader. I didn't care. I looked around at the
mess. This place had been Mom's dream, and she'd worked so very
hard to make it come true.

As Wraith, I could see the box
floating just above the rubble, right where I'd left it. I knelt
down in front of it, reached in, and started pulling things
out.

"Why did you come back
here?"

I didn't jump at TC's voice. I knew he
would follow me. He was behind me, and then he moved to kneel in
front of me, the invisible box between us. "Because I want to get
Joe's things from here—and I remembered there was something I
shoved into this space that might be what I need."

"The Eidolons?"

"No, something else." I pulled the
inane things out along with a box that looked a lot like the one my
mom had had in her Veil. But hers had had her wedding rings in it.
This box felt heavier and so I opened it.

Two familiar stones stared back at me.
Command and Possession.

The Eidolons of choice.

So, Mom had had them all along, and
she'd conveniently hidden them in Joe's Veil. Which made sense,
since no one knew he had one. It was the perfect hiding place,
until the wielder was unconscious and then everything fell
out.

"Well, I'll be. Zacharel said he'd
felt them nearby."

I nodded. "He wasn't lying. They were
in a place he couldn't see."

"You knew these were here?"

After closing the lid, I pursed my
lips. "No, I didn't. They weren't what I was hoping for." I plunged
my hand back inside and pulled out several more things, until my
fingers touched on something slick and plastic.

I'd remembered the piece of
paper in the bag from before. I didn't know if it was maybe a
precious love letter Joe wanted to preserve in plastic, or some
police report he hadn't finished. When I pulled it from the box, I
knew the moment I got a good look at it—this was a page from
the
Grimoire
.

"Is that—"

"Yes." I opened the plastic and pulled
the page from the bag. It was blank, just like all of them were
until they were placed inside of the book. There was also a
tear-like hole in the bottom right corner. "This is what Gabriel
wants."

"Why does she want it?"

"TC." I held it up. "This
is an active page from the
Grimoire
. Somehow Mom got a page out
of it, and Gabriel knew that."

TC looked dumbfounded.
"So?"

I felt Inanna's push and insistence to
come forward, so I stepped back. But she didn't take control of my
body—she slipped out and created a form of her own. It was Eshe
again.

Her brother arched an eyebrow at her.
"I think I remember that Revenant."

"You should. You tried to kill her."
Eshe pointed to the paper. "Every page that's actually resided in
the book has a resonance to it. Like the ones you took inside the
Throne, remember? Even you had to resonate with the Throne in order
to fully become the Phantasm."

"Yeeeah." He still looked dubious.
"And this is one of those pages? What about that tear? Is that a
problem?"

"I don't know," she said. "But having
created most of the book, I know a spell that will reset the book
to a previous version. All we have to do is write the spell in and
give a specific date, and the book will revert. Everything Rhonda
did to it will be erased. Also, any spells that were added after
that date will disappear." She paused.

I frowned at her. TC noticed her
hesitation "Inanna? What're you not telling us?"

She held the sheet in both
hands. "I have no way of knowing what spells if any are already
written on this page. It's a built in defense for the book—if a
page is released the spell becomes invisible. The only way to see
what's here is to have it near the
Grimoire
."

"So you don't know what it
is you'll be writing over." I felt a bit apprehensive now. What if
that page was kicked out
because
it had memories of me on it?

Eshe nodded. "The
Grimoire
will honor the
spell and if placed in the beginning of the book, the page will
take precedence over the other pages and their spells.
But—whatever's already written here could still exist. Rolling the
book time back won't affect this page."

"So what if what's on that page is
bad?"

She looked at TC. "We have to take
that chance if we want to reverse what Rhonda did."

"Wait—are you two saying you can
return Dags' memories?" TC looked even more dubious. "With this
page?"

"It's not really returning them, but
rolling them back. Daniel was the one who found the memory in one
of my old ones—the memory of this spell."

"Why didn't you say this before?" TC
asked.

"Because we didn't have a page from
the book," I interjected. "And you can bet Rhonda wasn't going to
just give us one. But now that we have a page, it's possible to
try."

"But if you use this page to do
that—then you won't have a page to give to Gabriel." Understanding
dawned on him, and he rubbed at his face. "Oh, damn, Zoë. Damn
those fucking Cherubim. That's not fair. You can't choose between
your foot and Dags's memories."

"Yes, I can. I can live without a
foot, TC. It'll be hard, but I want him back. I need him back. I
need—" and how do I say this? "—I need to know I'm
loved."

"Oh, girl, you're so loved, there's no
room for anything else. Your mom loves you, the Revenants love
you—though they're not all that happy right now, and that's
worrying me—Daniel loved you, Joe loves you, and I love
you."

I gave him a warm smile. "I know you
do. And I love you in ways I don't think I'll ever understand."
Given our history, it was a rather long and sordid tale. And this
wasn't an outcome I'd ever expected.

"And don't forget," TC went on,
pointing to the page, "you'll get Maureen and Alice, too. It's like
getting a threesome for the price of one."

Crap. Why did he have to say that? I
felt a little bummed, but he was right. It was the same reason I
couldn't bring myself to get involved with Daniel again, because I
knew there was someone else in there looking out at me.

I reached inside the box and pulled
out a couple of pens Joe'd had in his Veil. "Inanna, write the
spell, and write the date before I was released from the
Throne."

Eshe nodded and vanished. I stepped
back so Inanna could take control of my physical body, and watched
as she wrote the spell in a language I didn't think I'd ever
understand. And then she wrote the date out in exact accuracy but I
knew she wasn't finished. "You realize he won't remember any of
this? Any of what's happened since."

That's
fine
, I told her.

"Question." TC held up a finger. "I
understand you wanting the page to do this—to do this spell. But
why does Gabriel want it? What can she or the Seraphim do with
it?"

That was a seriously good question.
Not one I had an answer to, so I let the siblings
discuss.

"Azrael, everyone assumes
the Seraphim wants the
Grimoire
to do what?"

"That's easy. He wants to use it to
close the borders to the Abysmal Plane."

"How?"

TC frowned. "How what?"

"How does he plan on using
the
Grimoire
like
that? I never wrote spells that could control an entire inner
plane. And as far as I know, there hasn't been an owner of that
book—witch or wizard—who could create such a thing, either. The
best the
Grimoire
can do is manipulate things in the Physical Plane."

The Phantasm scratched his
chin. "I thought this
Grimoire
was the most dangerous weapon in
existence."

"Well, it is—but only in
the context you're viewing it in. The thing was never meant to
adhere to a soul, and yet a witch was able to do that by
manipulating and rewriting a spell she'd read in the book. Darren
McConnell was never meant to be anything except a guy who could
sometimes see ghosts. But again, a wizard—a term I use loosely when
referring to Allard Bonville—was able to transform tattoos into
portals in the palms of four poor victims, Mr. McConnell being one
of them, then misread a spell from the
Grimoire
and managed to turn him into
a Guardian—
with
a
set of Familiars, I might add. Do you realize how rare that
is?"

I looked at TC, my own thoughts
spinning a million miles a minute. So Dags was never meant to be a
Guardian or anything really magical. It'd all been done with the
book.

"I'm not sure what point you're trying
to make," TC said.

Inanna sighed as she finished writing
on the page in odd symbols. "Changing the fabric of the Physical
Plane with the book is what makes it dangerous. Yes, I'm sure a
spell in the book can be manipulated to close the border between
the Physical and the Abysmal Planes—which would achieve the
Seraphim's goal.

"But," she went on, looking up from
the page at TC, "the spell can then be reverse engineered to do the
opposite. It's only a temporary patch. And as long as there's a
Wraith—and a Guardian—then anything the Seraphim tries will
fail."

I don't get it,
I thought to both of them. I knew they could hear
me.
You make it sound like the only way to
close the borders was to do what my dad had planned, or get rid of
me and Dags.

TC leaned in close to Inanna. "You're
going to have to use baby talk for me and the princess, sis. We're
not getting your point."

Princess?

Oh please.

"The only use for a page of
the
Grimoire
the
Seraphim would have is to manipulate the
Grimoire
in the same way we want to.
But if you change something, you change the Guardian. What you put
in and take out effects him."

You think the Seraphim has
the same spell you're writing down? That maybe their idea of power
is to wipe the book?

"Yes, I do. The spell Daniel found
isn't mine. It was written by an eighteenth-century magician as a
way of wiping the memory of a lover who spurned him. The story was,
this magician was in love with the son of a noble in Paris. But the
son loved the daughter of a painter and spurned the magician's
love. So the magician wrote a spell to wipe the girl's memory so
she would forget the noble's son."

That's effed up.

"I took the spell and tweaked it. It's
possible they plan to do the same, and if they wipe everything, two
things could happen." She slipped the paper back into the plastic.
"One is that the Guardian will be left as little more than an empty
shell—an adult with the mind of a newborn."

When she didn't say the
second thing that could happen, I prodded her.
Inanna
?

"Zoë," TC said in a low voice,
"another option would be to use it to wipe out everything. Not just
reboot the book—but either take Darren back to a state before the
book was put inside of him, or completely erase his
existence."

Silence occupied the space between us
for several seconds before Inanna slipped back to give me control
of my body again. I picked up the plastic-covered page. "How…is it
possible the Seraphim would do that? Just—wipe him out of
existence?"

"Anything's possible. The
Seraphim's side goal is to get rid of anything that will prevent
him from achieving his main goal, his purpose. He sees you and Dags
as part of what's been stopping him. With Dags out of the way, he
feels you'll be easier to get to. No more
Grimoire
, no more magic to protect
you."

I sighed and looked at TC. "Why me?
Why does this have to revolve around me?"

"Luv, everything revolves around you.
Everything that's happened since the Bulwark has led up to your
existence—no matter how many of the players tried to prevent
it."

"But why?" I leaned forward on the
table, feeling defeated. "I just don't understand, and reading
those damned notes Domas wrote didn't answer anything. I mean,
there's no mention in there at all about Eidolons."

"They were made in secret." TC stood
and dusted off his pants, then his hands.

"Why were they made in
secret?"

"I'm not sure I'm the right person to
answer that. You should ask their creator."