“Oh? I was thinking I was grateful. I was thinking I should say thank you for talking to Fate on my behalf. I was thinking that I absolutely lose my mind when I know my tree is in danger and would have made terrible decisions left to my own devices. I was thinking I owe you.”

  Every word was sincere, which helped some to ease the awkwardness.

  “I don’t want you owing me.”

  “Why?” He followed me across the old boards toward the door. “You know I’m good about paying up.”

  “Yeah, but that would mean I’d have to see you again.”

  “Ouch.”

  I didn’t slow my pace once I was inside the house, moving down the hall, then taking the staircase toward the notion room on the second floor. My tattoos were good, but I wanted more magical items for this hunt.

  “So,” he said from the bottom step, his hand on the rounded finial. “What’s the plan?”

  “We find the coins.”

  “Good plan. Clean. Executable. Now, is there any ‘how’ in there?”

  “You know how to find things. You have magic. So use your magic to find the coins. You don’t need me for that.”

  He shifted his grip on the finial, his fingers making soft snicking sounds.

  “What?” I asked. “What’s the problem?”

  “I already know where the coins are.” His forest eyes flicked up, held mine. Then he looked away, and his cheeks splashed with red. “Maybe. I didn’t technically lie to Fate, but I do have an idea of where we can find them.”

  Inhale through the nose. Isn’t that what they say helps calm the urge to strangle someone?

  “Card, tell me. If you want me to be a part of this, I need the truth. Talk.”

  “I spent two coins. You already know that. But I think those people might still have them. The other coin, I hid.”

  “Why didn’t you just tell Fate that?”

  “She knew I’d spent two coins. Also, I don’t trust gods. I wanted us to have as much time as possible to return the coins.”

  I rubbed a hand over my eyes. “I need a favor.”

  “Anything.”

  “Tell me the truth from here on out, or I will renegotiate with Fate and wash my hands of your mess. Understand?”

  “Yes.”

  “Where did you spend the coins?”

  “One should be in Louisiana.”

  I mentally tapped the Crossroads. It had already rummaged through all the reference material in the house and come up with the top five most likely places in Louisiana where he would have spent the coin. I was pretty sure it was number one on the list.

  “You went to the swamp. You went to Lilt Keyva, the swamp siren, didn’t you?”

  “You’ve gotten really fast at that,” he said. “If you ever get tired of the Crossroads gig, you could do a mind-reader side hustle.”

  I stomped up the stairs. “Go drink tea and leave me alone.”

  “Come on,” he said. “Put a few signs up along Route 66, lure in the tourists. Fake-read minds, haul in the cash. That is a good idea.”

  “You know how I know it isn’t a good idea?” I asked. “Because you came up with it.”

  He made an offended noise. “I come up with wonderful ideas. Creative. Daring. I come up with ideas that will change the world.”

  “Did you get the buy-one-get-one free on delusions, or did you pay full price for all that crazy?”

  He barked a little laugh, and I tried not to smile.

  “Says the woman who chose to become besties with a house.”

  “Crossroads is more than a house.” I paused with my hand on the door to the notions room.

  I couldn’t see Card at the bottom of two flights of stairs, but his voice carried.

  “More than a house,” he sang out, “but you know...still kind of a house.”

  “I can order it to eat you,” I yelled. “Bury you. I could tie you up in the cellar and the Crossroads would fill it with ants.”

  “You’ve put some thought into this, haven’t you?”

  “There’s always the boiler room! I mean I don’t have one, but I’m sure I could rig something up.”

  “You’ve always been handy with power tools,” he agreed. “Wouldn’t even have to bring in a contractor to assemble my death machine.”

  And dammit, I liked this. I remembered this kind of banter between us. This had been good.

  But having it again just reminded me of how long he had been gone.

  “Dammit, Card,” I said quietly to myself. “Why do I miss you?” Then, at a volume meant to carry, “Wait for me downstairs.”

  He must have heard the catch in my voice.

  “Right,” he said. “I’ll just go wait in the...which room?”

  “Kitchen,” I said. “Pour yourself tea and wait for me.”

  “Right. Good.” I didn’t hear him move away, could still feel his hand on the finial like a ghostly echo.

  “You’re burning minutes, Card, and you do not have them to spare.”

  “I just wanted to say, if I get a choice, I’m all for the cellar ants.”

  “You don’t,” I called out, but I was smiling again.

  His chuckle was soft, then his footsteps finally sounded on the floor, moving toward the kitchen.

  Chapter Five

  I took a deep breath and held it, willing the tumble of emotions to settle down. Card stirred things in me I thought I’d left behind years ago.

  But there was no going back, no changing the fact that he had left me.

  This, him showing up, was just a blip in the tick and tock of my long, long life.

  I reminded myself that he was only here because he was desperate. He was only here for his tree. He was only here because he knew I had rules that included helping people.

  He also knew, or at least suspected, that I had enough decency to not throw him to the wolves.

  Years ago, he had saved my life, put his own on the line to do so. I had liked him. Then I had loved him. For his patience, his persistence, for his spark of unexpected trickery that somehow both excited me and made me feel safe.

  I followed rules.

  He broke them.

  We pretty much covered the bases of any situation. I loved his impulsiveness, his wild schemes.

  I’d thought he had loved my steady reason, my logic, my predictability.

  But maybe that had all been illusion and I’d been a fool. A man who lies to Fate’s face isn’t someone to trust.

  “You want me to keep an eye on him?” Val asked as he drifted out of the shadows, his ghost wolf padding along with him. “Or do you want me to watch Fate?”

  “I’m not worried about Fate yet,” I said. “Please watch Card.”

  He hesitated. “Are you okay, Ricky?”

  “Yeah. No.” I gave him a smile, hoping it wasn’t too pathetic. “Old history is a bitch sometimes. But it is what it is.”

  “If you need someone to talk to, you know I got nothing but time on my hands. Or, if you’d like, I could go practice my poltergeist tricks. Maybe hit him in the head with a can of tuna.”

  I grinned and this time it felt real. “Thanks for the offer, but no tuna concussions. I need his brain intact for the next twenty-four hours or so. Ask me again after noon tomorrow.”

  “Anything else I can do to help?”

  “Not unless you know someone who can make the coins appear.”

  He looked up and to one side, going through his memories. “I mean, not really. Cupid, I guess, but getting another god involved in this might be bad.”

  “Totally bad. No gods.”

  “I’ll think it over.”

  “Good. I’ll be down soon. Don’t let him steal anything.”

  “On it.”

  He winked out of existence.

  I pressed my palm to the door, letting the house know I needed to step into this private space.

  A lick of lavender light bloomed along the edges of invisible symbols embedded in the door. Leaf and tree, stream and stone, star and sun. It was a rough map of the land and boundaries of this Crossroad. Thin fuchsia lines spider-webbed out to connect with the other Crossroads across America and the world.

  I pushed the door and stepped into the notion room.

  When the Crossroads had belonged to my dad, the room had been dark polished wood, shelves of books, and rich velvet and leather furnishings.

  Now that it was mine, it had changed to soft dawn gray walls, midnight blue shelves for books, and jewel-toned, comfortable furnishings with quilted and wooly blankets.

  Woven baskets held rare magical devices. Stones and crystals were tucked into nooks, and random bits and bobs, which were deceptively powerful, filled the rest of the space.

  A high, square window directly across from the door allowed a view of blue sky.

  I loved it here. Other than the kitchen and porch, I always felt closest to the Crossroads in this room.

  The door shut behind me, and a candle on the little desk lit. A pot of tea appeared next to the couch, the orange and cinnamon steam tempting me to stay, to rest.

  “Not right now,” I said to the room, to the house, to the magic that shuffled and mixed like a deck of cards.

  “I need to help Cardamom. He’s looking for Fate’s coins. What should I take to help get them back?”

  This was always a bit of a risk. The Crossroads contained scrying magic, but that didn’t make its guesses one hundred percent accurate.

  The Crossroads didn’t know the future, didn’t know destiny. But because it was made out of patchworked magic, it was tied to a million different things in the universe.

  Sometimes it could sense a pattern, which made its guesses very, very good. I was asking it to look for a pattern around Card, around the tangle of knotted threads he’d stepped into.

  Several items on the shelf disappeared to be replaced by other items deemed more helpful. Books swapped out with other volumes, scrolls shuffled and were pushed away, then a shallow bowl of stones appeared on the desk. Next to that, glistening and dark, was a rare Minotaur horn.

  “No other hints?”

  A moment passed. Then a single sheet of paper appeared in the middle of it all.

  The language was old, an account of a prophet’s dreams. With no key to her particular dream, it was nearly impossible to read.

  For most people.

  I pressed the heel of my palm to the tattooed eye above my elbow. I snapped my fingers and made a circle with the fingers on my other hand. My tattoo flared, and I held my circled fingers to my eye and read the page through them.

  Fate’s coins, spindle, scroll, scissors, fall from my hand with no sound. Spent for the whole of nothing. Where are your promised gifts, Fate? From what fingers will you answer true?

  It sounded more like a customer service complaint than a dream, but I read it silently once, then whispered it out loud, so I could commit it to memory.

  “Something in this is useful?”

  The Crossroads hummed, agreeing.

  “Thank you. Please put it back where it will be safe. I’ll take the pebbles and horn with me.”

  The Crossroads spiked with the stench of burnt ozone, the salty scent of fear.

  “I’m not leaving you. Not alone. Val is going to be here to keep you company.”

  The ozone grew stronger, mixing with the chemical stink of burnt fireworks.

  I pressed my fingertips over my heart where an infinity sign—the first and deepest connection between me and the Crossroads—was inked.

  “I’ll be gone for a few hours at the longest. We need to get Fate’s coins, or Fate will kill his tree.”

  The Crossroads was conflicted. Card had saved me, but even more, he had saved the Crossroads.

  When my dad had disconnected his soul from the place, the Crossroads had done two things: panicked and gone into a rage.

  The Crossroads had reached out to me, maybe only because I was nearby, or maybe because I carried Dad’s DNA. But unlike my dad, I was not born to be a Crossroads.

  The Crossroads’ magic had torn through me, ripping me apart as it begged me to be its keeper, as it begged me not to let it be devoured by the chaos and disarray of the unmoored magics within it.

  I’d spent so much of my life with the Crossroads, I knew it was panicking. I’d done what I could to calm it down.

  It hadn’t been enough.

  But to leave the Crossroads, especially in a panicked state, would be like walking away from a ticking nuclear bomb.

  No matter how fast I ran, I wouldn’t have gotten far enough away before it blew up half of Missouri and most of Kansas and Oklahoma.

  So I’d stayed and tried to find a way to fix the mess my father had left behind.

  The Crossroads hadn’t meant to pour thousands of years’ worth of magic and information into my brain. It hadn’t meant to change me in ways that could not be unchanged.

  But it had recognized its mistake almost instantly, and had called Card.

  Card, who had taken the seed of his tree from one of the oaks grown here on Crossroads’ land. Card, who had always been kind to Dad and to the Crossroads.

  Card, who had ink, and magic, and a skill the Crossroads very much needed.

  The infinity tattoo over my heart warmed as the Crossroads thought about Card’s tree and his help.

  “Yeah, I know you like him. But Val’s staying with you. And I will be back. Just like every other time I’ve left. I’m not my father.”

  The Crossroads’ memories of Dad flickered across my mind like a movie.

  He had been quiet, but happy. He had been strong and clever. He had been the Crossroads, born to it, one of the rare.

  The movie hit a couple blank spots where Dad had disconnected himself from the Crossroads. The place didn’t know how he’d done it, but it did know why: to keep the Crossroads safe.

  I’d asked a thousand times, but Crossroads didn’t know what that meant, though it did believe it completely.

  “Val’s here to look after you,” I said one more time. “Fate needs to stay outside the property line. You have my permission to keep her there and not allow her inside.”

  The Crossroads perked up at that, happy to have a mission and a clear set of rules.

  “Yeah, well at least one of us feels like they have a handle on things.”

  I filled my pocket with the stones, dropped the Minotaur horn into my other pocket, then stepped out of the notion room, shutting the door behind me.

  Chapter Six

  “All good?” Val asked from where he waited for me at the top of the stairs.

  “You tell me. Has Card pilfered all my silver yet?”

  Val grinned. “Nope. Nothing hinky, see how I worked the word in there—you’re welcome. He’s doing the dishes.”

  “I do not need him washing my dishes.” I jogged down the stairs and hallway.

  “He was almost done when I came up here.”

  Card was in the kitchen, singing along with the radio, a Joni Mitchell song about ice cream castles in the air, and so many things that she would have done if the clouds hadn’t gotten in her way.

  I slowed my approach and indulged in a moment of nostalgia. When he sang like this, I knew his eyes were closed, and he was holding very still, his head tipped toward the sky.

  He was beautiful when he sang.

  I pressed fingertips against my eyes. Nope. No. No falling in...whatever this was. Friendliness with him. I had one goal: Find the coins and send Card packing.

  I cleared my throat and strode into the kitchen.

  Just like I thought, Card was at the table, rocked back in a chair, his eyes closed, looking beautiful.

  “Ready?” I asked, my voice a little gruff.

  He opened his eyes and, for a moment, his pupils were huge and filled with stars. “What happened upstairs? Were you talking to someone?”

  “When my life becomes your business, I’ll add you to my newsletter list.”

  The corner of his mouth quirked. “I’m already signed up. I used a fake name.”

  “Nope. I deleted Dumbass McDumberson last month.”

  “Well that explains why I haven’t gotten the latest issue.”

  “You think we’ll need weapons?” I asked.

  “Maybe. Better prepared than caught unaware.”

  “Okay, then let’s swing by the mud room before we go.”

  His whole face lit up. “Sure.” He pushed away from the table and stood. “Swing away. After you.”

  He followed me to the room where I kept the weapons that were safe enough to handle. The really dangerous weapons, the ones that could turn the moon into mashed potatoes, or create time traveling frog overlords, were locked in the danger cupboard.

  Card whistled softly as he entered the room. “You’ve been busy while I was gone.”

  I glanced at the swords, daggers, axes, spears, guns, wands, amulets, tablets, rings, lightning rods, and crystals covering the walls, chests of drawers, and tables. The collection had, indeed, grown.

  “Everyone needs a hobby.”

  “Lots of ways to kill a person here, Ricks. Must be hard to choose,” he said. “I suppose instead of choosing your weapon, you could just invite people into the room and let them pick up something. Lure them to their death.”

  “Maybe I’ll install a chute to the basement in here,” I mused.

  Card paused, his hands carefully locked behind his back, the whole of him bent toward a set of very old wands that vibrated with magic.

  “For the bodies?” he asked without looking my way.

  “For the bodies,” I agreed. I scanned the room, wondering which weapons I should take, and decided on my tried and true: battle axe and short sword.

  I hefted the axe off the wall. It was a beautiful weapon made by a royal smith from the kingdom of the Fae. She had a knack for carving fire and starlight into the curved blade’s spellwork and had done a hell of a job with this axe.

  I secured it in the holster and slung the leather strap over my shoulder. I repeated the actions with my berserker short sword. Unlike the axe, the short sword’s magic wasn’t noticeable or activated until it drank blood.

  “You could just adopt a hungry hell hound,” Card suggested.

  “For the bodies?”