I did my best not to think too hard on the way back to Gran’s. It’s all too easy to find yourself in a doom spiral when you know something dangerous is ahead of you. You start second-guessing everything. You see every worst-case scenario coming true. That kind of thinking becomes positively lethal when the odds are running against you. After all, winning in any kind of fight is largely a mental game. Football coaches know it. Generals know it. So did the ancient Japanese. I only know that because Bill was a fan of obscure teaching tools. For that particular lesson, he pulled the story of the samurai warrior and the tea master out of his back pocket. God only knows where he ran across it.
The way the story goes, there is a tea master who does his job so well, with such utter grace and perfection, that his samurai lord elevates him to the rank of samurai. Well, one day the tea master stumbles across another samurai warrior who objects to the lowly tea master wearing the honorable garb of a samurai. The angry samurai demands a duel to the death with the terrified tea master. The tea master, although not a warrior, is determined to face his death with honor. He goes to a master of the blade and asks the master to show him how to die as an honorable warrior.
The blade master, an old and wise soul, assents to this request. He will help the man prepare but asks that the tea master first prepare tea. The tea master naturally agrees and makes them tea. The tea master is utterly consumed by his task. When he finishes, the blade master declares that he has nothing to teach the tea master. The blade master instructs the tea master to go to the duel with the same frame of mind that he uses when preparing tea. The tea master takes this advice and meets the samurai warrior at dawn the next day. The samurai is so shaken by the tea master’s serenity that he calls off the duel.
While I didn’t expect that Pierce Carter would care much about my state of mind, I did. Battle isn’t just about your state of mind. Magic is about your state of mind as well. It’s not all driven by ego, but you do have to believe. If your head isn’t in the game, if you’re distracted, if you’re planning on things going wrong, there’s a good chance that the magic will fail. So, I was doing everything in my power to keep my head screwed on straight. Soon enough, there would be details to keep my mind occupied and work to do. Jessie had a good start at her house, but we’d need to build on the groundwork that she had laid to turn her home into a goddamn death trap for anyone stupid enough to follow us in. I had a few ideas about how to make that happen. I hadn’t been completely distracted by Gabriella’s situation. In the end, though, it would probably be Bill and Jessie who would come up with the really dirty tricks that would keep us alive.
Unfortunately, that also meant that there was a good chance that I’d get to find out whether I was ready to end a life. That uncertainty gave me a lot of pause. Like I said, victory is about mindset. I couldn’t go into that situation hoping that I’d have the nerve to pull the trigger. I had to go into the situation committed to pulling the trigger. There was no way that Carter or anyone else he brought was going to give us a free pass if we hesitated. They weren’t going to hesitate if they got the chance to put us down. I clamped down hard on my empathy. There was no room for it in the fight to come. Plus, it was a fight that I picked. Sure, I’d done it in a whole lot of ignorance, but I’d picked it all the same. People were relying on me to do my part.
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It's strange how incredibly important moments in your life don’t register in the moment. At least, they don’t for me. Maybe it’s because there’s so much else going on that you don’t or can’t take the time to reflect on it. Yet, you make the decisions, you commit to choices, and you set yourself on a path without even realizing that you blew past fifty exit ramps that could have taken you anywhere else. When I made that commitment in my head, I set myself on a path that there was no backing away from. I’d allowed the possibility into my heart that I’d do terrible things if I thought it meant averting something worse. It’s not the kind of decision you can unmake. Once that possibility is in you, it’s in you forever. Of course, I didn’t understand what it meant then. I just knew that there were people I cared about who would suffer, maybe die, if I didn’t man the hell up. As far as I was concerned, there were no other options.
So, walked back into Gran’s house a different person than I’d been when I left that morning. I was still angry with her and Bill. Nothing could change that. But I was seeing the situation with new, harder eyes. If it was in my power to make it happen, Pierce Carter would die. If I had to cut his head off with a pocket knife to get it done, so be it. I’m not sure that Annie recognized the difference in me. She gave me a strange look when I came in. She knew something had changed. I just gave her a quick wave and made my way out to the kitchen to see what Bill and Jessie had figured out. It was a different story with those two. They took one look at me and understood exactly what had changed. Bill just closed his eyes for a moment, then gave me a short, sharp nod. Jessie was a little more expressive.
“Welcome to team killer,” she said with a complicated expression.
“If that’s what it takes.”
“It will,” said Bill with absolute conviction.
“Then let’s figure out how to get it done.”
Jessie looked like she wanted to add something, maybe to steer me in another direction, but I think she saw it was a lost cause. She shook her head and leaned back in her chair.
“We’ve got a good start. It turns out that the infamous William Brace really does know everyone in the whole damn magical community. I mean, I thought I knew a lot of people, but he has actual phone numbers for people that I thought were freaking legends.”
Bill waved that off like it was meaningless. “I’ve been around a long time. Most of those people were a little less mythical when I first ran into them. Give it another fifteen years, and you two will have numbers for people that everyone else thinks are just ghost stories.”
“I think not,” said Jessie. “If I survive this fiasco, I think I really am going to retire and go to Majorca. It’s not like I really work for the money anymore. Maybe I’ll open up a little shop and sell useless crap to tourists.”
Bill gave her a considering look. “You wouldn’t last a year.”
“What the hell makes you say that?” Jessie demanded.
“People who are really done, they have a look in their eye. You don’t have it. You don’t love what’s happening right now, but you still like the danger. You’d miss the thrill of it. Once it stops being exciting. Once it’s all just grim and bloody work, then you’ll be ready.”
“Well, get a load of Captain Sunshine over here. Jericho, you’re welcome to come hang out in Majorca with me. You can run the cash register and help me bilk tourists.”
I snorted. “I just might take you up on that.”
Bill looked from Jessie to me and then shook his head in that really annoying way older people do when they know they’re right.