I slept a ridiculous amount that week. That would have been great if not for all the nightmares. I did my best to shrug them off, but marrow-freezing terror has a way of keeping you awake at night. They might not have bothered me so much, but I suspected that those were going to be a fixture in my life for the foreseeable future. If I hadn’t been so hurt and utterly exhausted by pain, I wonder if I’d have gotten any sleep. On the bright side, I did a monumental amount of eating. Sven seemed to make it his personal mission to organize lavish meals, which worked out for me. Lots of calories, Annie said. Mission accomplished. Some days Jessie was there, others she wasn’t. I didn’t ask what she was doing because she probably wouldn’t tell me, or, worse still, she might tell me things I didn’t want to hear. I embraced blissful ignorance. I touched base with Gran. She let me know how glad she was that I was still alive, while also making it clear how stupid she thought it was for me to seek out the Corrupted Oracle.

“Why are you doing this, lad?” She asked. “This some kind of leftover rebellion from your teen years?”

“Of course not,” I said. “Someone has to do it, though, and no one else seems to be volunteering.”

She was quiet for a stretch, and I almost heard the gears turning in her head. “What if I told you to come home? Would you?”

I was my turn to think hard. When it came to the magical, I never defied Gran. The closest I’d ever come was going to the Raven’s Council and, even then, she hadn’t explicitly told me not to go. I didn’t want to defy her. I didn’t even know if I was capable, should she flat out tell me to stand down. It was uncharted territory. Still, I remembered how the Raven’s Council had panicked at the mere mention of the bird and the hunter. That wasn’t feigned fear or some kind of show for my benefit. They were straight-up terrified at the prospect of the bird’s return. Anything bad enough to set that pack of jackals into a panic was something that needed to be stopped. It might even be bad enough that it had to be stopped at all costs.

“This isn’t some wayward demon that any competent priest could exorcise,” I said. “The entire Court of Unkindness lost their damned minds when I brought the subject up. It was naked dread, Gran. That tells me that, whatever the bird is, it’s not something anyone wants running around free. Are you ready to let fate decide whether she makes a comeback?”

Gran said nothing.

“That isn’t something I think we should let run its course,” I said. “If you tell me to back off and come home, I will.”

Gran was silent for so long that I actually looked at my phone’s screen to make sure the call hadn’t disconnected. I waited her out. When she did speak, it was in a tone of such absolute ice that I couldn’t believe it was coming from Gran’s mouth.

“The Corrupted Oracle isn’t a person. He’s a rabid dog. If you can get him to talk, good enough. If you even think he’s trying to worm into your head, end him.”

“Gran?”

“You heard me, lad. No hesitation. No second chances. If he does anything you don’t like, anything at all, you burn him to ash. Do you understand me?”

This was familiar ground. “Yes ma’am. I understand.”

Like a switch had been flipped, Gran was Gran again. “Be careful, Jericho.”

“I will. I promise.”

“Idle curiosity. What do you think of the Wormwood Witch?”

I grunted. “She’s different. Smart. Scary powerful. I think, and I stress think, she’s got a moral compass, but I’ll be damned if I know which way it points.”

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“Could she be an ally?”

That was a loaded question. I thought it over and did the smart thing. I hedged. “Maybe for the right price. I don’t think she volunteers for much.”

Gran sighed. “That’s what Bill said, too. Waste of talent. You call when you know something.”

The line went dead. I felt a little better having Gran’s consent, if not precisely her approval, to move forward. Her advice about dealing with the Corrupted Oracle had left me chilled. She’d instructed me on a few occasions to kill certain things that she deemed too dangerous for more basic banishments or exorcisms, but she’d never ordered me to kill a human being before. It gave me pause. Granted, Uncle Bill had apparently been killing his way through the Court of Unkindness, but that was personal. He was sending a message. Just how evil was the Corrupted Oracle for killing him to be considered as the first and best response to even the slightest provocation? I pocketed my phone and turned toward the door. I jumped and almost released a lot of violent magic on reflex when I saw Jessie standing there. She had a weird, almost blank expression on her face.

“Jesus, you scared the hell out of me,” I complained.

“Benefits of ownership,” she said with a shrug. “I get to do that in my house.”

She took a couple of steps into the room and looked around. There was no evidence that I’d ever been there. I’d come in wearing nothing but pants and boots. Jessie had gotten me a few things that mostly fit. She’d also dug up a backpack that sat by the door, half full with a change of clothes. The Raven’s Council had vanished any evidence that I’d been in town, including the overnight bag I’d left in an inexpensive hotel. Jessie was wearing her combat boots, of course, but her jeans looked almost new. She was wearing a black t-shirt with a weird, almost Celtic logo on it that seemed familiar. It was some band that had been the “it” thing for a while. I tried to recall their name. It was Breaking Badminton or something like that, I thought. I felt like I should say something.

“I appreciate you helping me. Listen, if there’s anything I owe you,” I started to say.

She waved it off. “Don’t stress it. Just paying off a debt to Brace. He’s not the kind of man you want to owe.”

I frowned. “Why do you say that?”

“Because he’s fucking dangerous! It’s hilarious when he’s turning it on the Raven’s Council because God knows those assholes deserve it. I’ll still sleep better knowing I’m not on his mental rolodex anymore.”

“He’s dangerous? Bit of the pot and kettle there, don’t you think?”

“He’s like you, an idealist. Idealists are always more dangerous than mercenaries. Scarier too.”

I laughed. “Give me a break. I’m not that dangerous or that scary, except to some demons, maybe.”

She gave me another of those blank expressions. “Give it time. You’ve been at this, what? A few years? Give it ten years or twenty. You’ll be just as dangerous and scary as Brace. You threw down with the Raven’s Council and lived to tell the tale.”

“Only because you showed up,” I objected.

“It doesn’t matter,” she said, her voice sharp. “You lived. That’s the part people are going to remember. That and the unholy vengeance that came crashing down on the Court of Unkindness for gross stupidity of messing with you.”

I wasn’t sure how to respond. “I don’t know, maybe that’s true.”

“I saw what was left of that contraption you were in. I’ve seen things like that before. I know how they work. There aren’t very many ways it could have ended up like that. You overtaxed it, didn’t you? Just pushed so much magic through that it ripped itself apart?”

I shuddered as memories threatened to overwhelm me, but I nodded. Then I got angry. “So what? You could have done that too.”

She nodded. “Yeah, I could have, at the beginning. You did it after they’d beaten you within a couple inches of your life. That, Jericho Lott, is scary.”

“Is there a point to this?” I asked, running out of patience.

“The point is that maybe you should be asking yourself some hard questions about who you want to be in ten years, or twenty, or thirty. Or maybe some questions about what kind of life you want to be living. Do you want to be a guy who’s so frightening that your name sends people scrambling for cover? Do you want to spend your whole life fighting? Killing? That’s what’s in store for you.”

“Says the mercenary.”

She smirked at that. “I got into this with my eyes wide open. I know the risks. I figure it’s even odds that I’ll die young. Do you want to die young?”

“Why are you saying all of this to me?”

Her face tightened. “Maybe because it’s obvious no one has. Maybe it’s because our world is a bad place for an idealist. You have choices. You should know that. You should make your own choices because, if you don’t, someone else will make them for you.”

I knew there was probably something to what she was saying, but I wasn’t in a mood to hear it. “I’ll bear it in mind.”

She shook her head. “No, you won’t. Just remember, down the road, that someone told you.”