The Edifice

42. The Woods Again

There's already a car pulled up outside Lee's home when we step outside the door. A long, sleek affair that gleams beneath the streetlights and hovers above the kerb.

The door pops open as we approach and Lee gestures for me to enter first, bundling up beside me in the back seat.

"Lee, what's going on?" I ask, struggling to get my seatbelt on in time as the driver -hidden behind a screen of frosted glass- sends us careening off down the street at breakneck speed. Something about the experience strikes me as infuriatingly familiar.

"You said you would trust me."

Another sharp corner sends me bumping into Lee and I cling tight to him as my anxiety returns, so foreign after a week without it. Lee's breath hitches in his throat as he wraps his arms around me in turn, as protective as the seatbelt.

"That doesn't mean you get to leave me in the damn dark about everything, Lee! Where are we going? Did you know Otis was going to leave?!"

"Otis was lying to you about the effect of his magic Olivia."

"He can't lie."

"He can't lie about facts he knows for sure. That doesn't mean he's infallible. When Lucia Creed stuffed all that magic into her son, what do you think happened, Olivia?"

"I... I..."

"Otysses Creed was blown to a million pieces. There's a good reason he goes by Otis now." Lee turns to me, voice low. "I like Otis, Liv, I really do. But just because Otis thinks you can take it doesn't mean you can and I'm not letting him kill the both of you. At the end of the day, you and I are human and he's a God. I can't change his mind and we can't overpower him. So we need to be smarter and crueller than he is."

We sit in silence as the words sink in and I think back to words I'd shared with Otis less than an hour ago. He'd seemed so sure of the future for both of us, so utterly in love together. Lee is right, however. Otis isn't as omnipotent as he thinks. His blind faith in his brother is testament to that.

For the thousandth time since I fell here from Earth, I feel as though the rug has been pulled from under me. Another pillar of hope is reduced to nothing more but illusion.

Nevertheless it's different now than it was when I was human. I'm not a whimpering little girl surrounded by strangers more powerful than her. I am the source of power, even if that's what's killing me. If the Edifice has taught me one thing, it's how to adapt.

I look to Lee. "What's the plan?"

"We get you somewhere safe, where Otis can't interfere and then we reroute his soul out of you and into someone else," Lee says. He glances out at the city lights flashing past as the driver high tails it out of Lee's suburb and further from the business district. Offices give way to empty stretches of highway, sparse pockets of forest welcoming the speeding car.

I drink in the sights now more than ever before as the countdown on my life draws closer and closer to the finish.

Should Lee's plan veer even the slightest bit wrong, what exactly is the grand sum of my life? How many weeks have I wasted away in solitude because I've been afraid of exposure to anything beyond my own company? The only meaningful connections I've had in adulthood have been with an insane old man, his barely-saner son and a god who could be killing me.

Hell, the happiest moments of my time on Earth have been the only four days I've ever gotten laid.

If these are the penultimate moments of my life I at the very least need to feel them to the full extent. The moonlight on the trees outside, the cool leather interior of the car... Lee's wooden hand in mine.