Choice number two wasn’t much better. In theory, I was supposed to be able to protect Atlanta after claiming it. In practice, I had no idea how. When I reached for the magic of the land, it was like a placid ocean. Within its depths, life moved and shimmered. The waters were capable of storms, but I had no idea how to start one.

Choice number three was what my father wanted. That alone should’ve been enough to stop me. Except when I closed my eyes, I saw two lifeless bodies. If I went to him now, if I left Curran, he would survive. My father couldn’t kill my child if the child didn’t exist.

I loved them both. I loved my unborn future baby. I loved Curran, his eyes, his laugh, his smile. I woke up next to him, I ate breakfast with him, we went to work together, and we came home together. That was the core of who I was: Curran, Julie, Derek, even Grendel, the family I’d made. It was my life, the one I fought for, the one I built and wanted. We were together. That was how things were.

If I went to serve my father, I would save them, at least for a little while. But I was only good at one thing: killing. Sooner or later my father would use me in that capacity and then I would be taking someone else’s Curran or Kate away from them. Because people would oppose my father, the kind of people who were bothered by crosses with human beings dying on them, and I would have to kill them.

I couldn’t do it. I’d been Voron’s attack dog for the first fifteen years of my life. I wouldn’t be one again.

I crossed the list out and started over.

New Plan

1. Get Awesome Cosmic Powers.
2. Nuke my dad.
3. Retire from the land-claiming business.

I was so down with this plan. If only I had some way to implement it.

Maybe someone would bring me a magic scroll, an incantation that would magically imprison my father in some cave. I would totally be willing to help old ladies carry wood, spin straw into gold, or go on a quest for that kind of scroll.

I stared at the door. Come on, magic scroll.

Come on.

Nope.

I needed to get out of the office and go home. I would feel better at home.

I would get home, work out, cook a big dinner because I felt like it, and figure out what I had to do about Saiman and my father.

•   •   •

WHEN I PULLED up to the house, Christopher was sitting in the driveway on the grass. That’s right. The meditation.