CHAPTER 142

"You nearly killed me just now!" She told him through gritted teeth.

"False. I nearly collected you. There's a difference." He held up the children's book to show her a picture of an X-Ray next to the letter X. "I am struggling with this letter, because I don't know if I am looking at a picture of bones or a portrait of myself. Would you assist me?"

Rolling her eyes in exasperation, she was about to tell him no, but realized that if she didn't help him, he was likely to go downstairs and ask someone who could see him for help. She figured that now wasn't the best time, so turned her attention toward him.

"Here, let me show you." She took the book from him and led him away from the ledge, Naia's cries vanishing on the breeze. "Have you ever heard the term, 'X marks the spot'?"

Death stopped in his tracks, a giant smile on his face. "Did you just make a map analogy? I love maps!"

Kisa sighed in exasperation.

Mike sat and chatted with Amymone while Yuki sat in the corner of the yard on a chair made of ice. After coming outside, the kitsune had announced that she needed some time to think and process what she had seen, so he had left her alone.

Amymone was curious how everyone in the house was doing, so Mike answered her questions as best as he could. When the conversation about the others became thin, she asked him questions about book series that she had been reading and if he knew how they had ended.

Unfortunately, he did not. He had never been much of a reader for a bunch of reasons, and she was visibly disappointed when he couldn't tell her anything about the books. Still, she seemed happy to chat with him about anything and everything, and it was only after he checked the time on his phone that he decided he may need to move things forward.

He excused himself and walked across the yard to where Yuki sat. She was on her throne with Daisy on her shoulder, and she was wistfully looking at something in her hands.

"Hey." He put his hands in his pockets and waited. If his phone was correct, evening was well on its way, and he had no idea if this place had nocturnal cycles as well, or if it stayed the same. It also occurred to him that he should have asked Amymone about it, because it would have given them something with actual substance to talk about. "What are you looking at?"

Yuki lifted her hand and flipped the object over. It was a tarot card with a man and a woman standing apart from each other, and the word LOVERS was written on the bottom.

"When I made this, I had it in my head that I would use it on Emily." She turned the card around so she could see it once more, and then rubbed her eyes with her free hand. "I had this weird fantasy that I would use it on her, make her fall in love with me once again, and then leave her ass in another dimension to pine over me."

Mike nodded. "I guess that's only fair."

She groaned, and leaned forward in her chair. "That's probably a lie, though. I was so angry and full of rage, that's what I wanted to happen. But knowing me, I may have used it and just pretended like all was forgiven, at least until the next time she pissed me off. It's hard to say. I was a different person in the tower, after all."

She meant it literally and figuratively. Emily had taken some of Yuki's magic by removing her eye, and when Mike had put it back, most of Yuki's rage had left her.

"So it makes someone fall in love with you? Seems kind of..." He tried to think of the best word for it, but couldn't. Trying to talk ethics with a three-hundred-year-old fox spirit who had a broken heart wasn't a battle he thought he could win. "Powerful," he finished.

"Indeed. The magic is much like the card, so it's interpretive." She spun the card between her fingers and tucked it in her sleeve like a magic trick. "It's meant to seek out feelings related to love. Things like passion, loyalty, even friendship. Then it amplifies them, and overrides negative emotions."

"So it doesn't just make them super horny or anything?" He felt the phantom itch of mandragora pollen in his collar and scratched it.

"No, nothing like that. Not that it matters, because I don't feel like making anyone fall in love with me. What could easily be the most powerful card in this deck ended up being a giant waste of my time."

"Well, maybe not. You never know, right?" Realizing he had no evidence to back this up and that he was only saying it to make her feel better, he changed the subject. "So, I spoke with Amymone for a bit, and learned that she has absolutely no idea how to deal with our dog problem. You don't happen to have a card in there that makes you super strong, do you? Cause apparently Hercules choked the shit out of one until it passed out, and I'm not even sure how to go about doing that to something with three heads."

"You're lucky this one doesn't have more than that." She pulled her cards out and fanned through them. "I don't know, I might be able to get creative, but I wasted so many of my good cards trying to smash you into paste."

"Must not have been that good," he told her with a grin. "Because I assure you that I am quite smashable."

She narrowed her eyes at him. "Was that...did you seriously just make a joke about your sex life?"

"According to the others, my skill set is primarily getting real lucky or fucking my way out of trouble." He shrugged, then took a seat on the ground. "Figured I would work on not needing to do either, but apparently I'm always going to be in over my head on every problem. For example, did you expect a three-headed hellfire-breathing dog today? Because it wasn't on my Bingo card."