Page 31 of Irreverent (The Marked Saga #7)

The sun hid behind a tangle of thick clouds as I drove into Temple early the next morning. I wasn’t particularly excited about meeting with William, the Senior Magister, being that it was something I had avoided doing for the last couple of weeks. I already knew that he had one topic of conversation on his mind, and it also happened to be the very last thing I wanted to discuss.

I tried to quell my nerves by telling myself that maybe they’d had some progress on the whole anointing-me-as-the-Fourth-Horseman front and that maybe he could tell me exactly what signing up for that would mean for my life. Because frankly, until he could give me a clear answer, I didn’t see that happening any time soon.

With my stomach twisted into uncomfortable knots, I made my way through the slew of security measures and headed straight to William’s office, knocking on the door before I had a chance to change my mind.

“Come in,”

he called, his voice muffled from the other side of the door.

I gripped the handle and pushed the door open a crack before peeking inside. He was sitting at his desk with the phone receiver cradled between his ear and shoulder as he scribbled something down on the agenda in front of him.

“Is this a bad time?”

I asked quietly, hoping it was and that I could delay this meeting for yet another day.

He signaled with his hand for me to make my way inside. “I’m going to have to call you back,”

he said speedily, his eyes still firmly fixed on me as though I might disappear from his sight if he happened to look away. He hung up the receiver and then promptly produced a welcoming smile as I took the chair across from him.

“It’s so wonderful to see you, Jemma. Thank you for coming in to meet with me.”

“Sorry for showing up without calling first. I had some free time before school and figured I should stop by while I had the chance.”

That and the fact that Tessa wouldn’t stop badgering me this morning until I agreed.

“Ah. No apologies necessary.”

He waved the idea off with his hand as his kindly smile stretched all the way up to his eyes. “I’m just happy that you’re here. I was beginning to fear you’d dropped off the face of the earth.”

I knew it was meant as a joke, but I could still hear the message behind it. The clock was ticking, and he didn’t appreciate the way I was dicking him around as of late.

“I have a lot going on right now.”

The excuse sounded lame even as I heard it come out of my mouth.

“Yes. I heard.”

My brows puckered with confusion.

“Tessa has made me privy to some of the details. I think it’s very noble what you’re doing for the Macarthur boy.”

Something about that rubbed me entirely the wrong way. “Well, seeing as none of this is his fault, it’s the least we could do,”

I replied, putting emphasis on the ‘we’ part since we all had a piece of the blame in what had happened to him.

“Of course.”

He nodded. “And I heard your mother is back in town as well. Assisting with your training, is she?”

“Yeah. Something like that,”

I answered wearily, feeling as though he were trying to dig for more information than I was comfortable sharing with him.

I also couldn’t help but notice that he hadn’t mentioned anything about Dominic. I could only presume that Tessa The Fink had left that part out of her update, seeing as how the Council probably wouldn’t be on board with me trying to restore a Revenants humanity. In my basement no less.

As far as the Order was concerned, Revenants were disposable, lesser-than beings who, unless they pledged their lives to the Order as Gabriel had done, didn’t even deserve to exist in our world.

“I’m glad to see everything coming together for you,”

he said, leaning back in his plush leather desk chair. “Perhaps you might even show us how well you’re advancing. It’s been quite a while since we’ve been allowed the opportunity to see your progression. It would be incredibly dishonest of me if I didn’t say I was curious.”

“Yeah. Sure. Maybe.”

Unsure of how else to respond to his strange line of questioning, I changed the direction altogether. “I wanted to thank you for giving Tessa access to the grimoires. It’s pretty much the only lead we have right now.”

“Of course. I’m happy to assist in any way I can.”

“Have you ever seen anything like what happened to Trace?”

I had to ask. As much as I wasn’t really buying his newfound eagerness to help, I also wasn’t going to waste my opportunity.

“Well, let’s just say Miss Parker certainly isn’t the first to ever attempt a reanimation and she probably won’t be the last. We do our best to discourage such magic, but, well, you know how it is.”

“Have you ever known anyone to come back from this?”

I asked, my hands trembling in my lap with nervous energy.

He pursed his lips at my question. “Unfortunately, I have not.”

My stomach dropped all the way down to the basement Necropolis. That was so not the answer I wanted to hear.

“It doesn’t mean it’s never happened,”

he clarified upon seeing the dejected look on my face. “Just that I have never witnessed it personally.”

Still not the answer I wanted, but not a total crapshoot.

“Has there been any change in him at all?”

he asked, bringing his fingers together into a steeple on his desk. “A movement of the muscles perhaps?”

I shook my head. “It’s like he’s stuck in this permanent dream-state.”

There was no movement, or twitching, or blinking of his eyes. No requirement of food or water or any other normal bodily functions.

All he did was lay there, frozen in time.

He dropped his head in a curt nod. “I was afraid of that.”

Dread strangled my airway as a tremor-inducing panic attack plowed down onto me. “How bad is it?”

I asked before I could think it through. I wasn’t sure why I’d asked the question. I certainly didn’t want to know the answer, but there I was, waiting for him to speak, as though it weren’t going to shatter me completely.

“I don’t want to lie to you, Jemma. From what I can tell, his chances of recovering from this are slim to none. As powerful as Anakim are, our minds are simply not built to withstand this sort of damage.”

The room suddenly felt as though it were caving in on me. As though the ground were rising up around me to swallow me whole. “That can’t be true. There has to be a way. If magic did this to him, then magic can also undo it. We just need to find the right spell,”

I rambled on breathlessly, unable to pull in enough air to fill my lungs anymore. “Somebody, somewhere, has to know how to help him.”

“It’s nice to see you staying so positive, and I do hope you’re right,”

he said, though the look in his eyes told me not to hold my breath on it. That I was a fool to see it as anything other than hopeless.

“I could be right—if I wasn’t stuck doing this on my own.”

The bitter accusation in my tone escaped neither of us.

And who could blame me? The Order had more than enough resources to put toward this. They could help if they wanted to—if they cared enough to do it. But they didn’t, because in the grand scheme of things, Trace didn’t matter to them. They had bigger fish to fry, greater apocalypses to thwart.

But he mattered to me.

And they needed me.

Perhaps it was time I used that to my advantage. But then, wouldn’t that mean I’d have to agree to do the one thing I wanted no part of? Could I really do that?

And if not, what the hell was the alternative? Let the clock slowly run out and watch him die?

The heavy burden of acceptance burrowed into the pit of my stomach as I realized what I had to do. It was the only thing I could do. I needed all hands on deck if I had any hope of bringing Trace out of the sleep coma he was in, which meant I needed to bargain away the only thing I had that was of value to them.

“I’ll do what you asked me to do,”

I blurted out before I had a chance to think it all the way through and back out. “I’ll become the Fourth Horseman.”

William’s eyes lit up like a solar storm at my unexpected statement. “Jemma, that’s—”

“On one condition.”

My voice was so hollow and defeated, I barely recognized it as my own. “You need to fix Trace first. I don’t care how you do it, or who you use to do it, so long as it’s done. The only thing that matters to me is that he wakes up again.”

His elation melted away. “That’s quite a tall order, Jemma.”

“And he has to be okay again—no. Better than okay. He has to be free of all pain and suffering caused by everything that happened to him. He has to be as good as he was the day I met him.”

“What you’re asking…”

He shook his head. “It’s not possible.”

“Well, it’s going to have to be if you want me to do this. As it stands, I have no idea what I’m signing up for here or what it even means to become the Fourth Horseman. Whether I’ll even have a soul or life to come back to when this is over. But I can come to terms with that—I can give that up if it means Trace gets to have the life he deserves. It’s the only way I’ll do this.”

His gaze probed me for a long moment as though evaluating my seriousness, as though searching for cracks in my demands. Though we both knew he wasn’t going to find anything. The price of my life just went up and he was going to have to pay every last cent of it.

“You have yourself a deal,”

he finally said, splaying his palms on his desk. “But we must move fast. We need to begin preparing you at once—”

“No,”

I cut in before he could say another word. “You’re not getting it. I’m not making a single move until you bring Trace back to me in one piece.” Because I needed to see those ocean eyes again for myself. To look into them and explain to him why I did what I did. To have a chance to say goodbye. “It’s the only way I’ll do this.”

“Very well.”

He blew out a sharp breath and nodded. “I’ll have my top Casters begin work on this immediately.”

“Thank you,”

I said as I rose from my chair and then shook his hand.

And just like that, I’d signed my life away.