Page 89 of A Shade of Myself
I dropped the rest of my chocolate piece, the rich flavor turning to sawdust. “The final corner is Poe, isn’t it?”
“Not specifically Poe, but all raven shifters, yeah.” Jude squeezed my hand. “Don’t be scared. When you played them that time, you aborted the consequences by stabbing the card face before the game could finish. Thank God,” she added.
Something in my stomach twinged.
I bit my lip. “I didn’t just play them once. There was a second time.”
Jude’s face drained of all color. “Fuck me.” Her reassuring squeeze turned into a death grip on my poor hand. “What happened? Very specifically?”
I pulled free, turning my engagement ring around hard enough to leave grooves. “Poe took advantage of an urgent situation. They handed over a phony token, believing they were sending me to my death via sea monster and there wouldn’t be repercussions, but I’m alive and well.” I turned hopeful eyes on her. “So, I don’t have to worry about that game either, right? And I won’t ever tangle with them again.”
In my head, I crossed Poe off my list as the one to ask about the Ascendant. It wasn’t ideal, but I’d have to find someone else.
Jude gnawed on the end of the ballpoint. “The sea monster wasn’t their end goal, Mir.”
“Then what was?” I licked chocolate off my finger. “When Tatiana told me not to get involved with Poe, she didn’t say why. I figured it was a general warning, like stay away from vamps. If there was something specific, why wasn’t I told?”
“According to my Ohrist connection, people have forgotten the reason why you don’t play games with raven shifters, but they’re tricksters who live to introduce chaos and conflict in a person’s life.”
“Obviously. Poe always makes me feel crappy playing a game with them. But what’s the catch?”
“Their shifter abilities come from ohr, but they don’t care about that. They care about these games. I don’t know where those powers stem from and neither did the Ohrist, but like ohr, the source has to be fed.”
“That’s their problem. Cost to dealer,” I said.
Shaking her head, Jude drew a circle around the final point on the triangle. “First of all, their information isn’t neutral, and it isn’t like Emmett’s prophecies where the future aspect of it only comes into play if you do something with it. Remember how mad Poe was when the game of memory got interrupted?”
“Yeah.”
“It’s because they didn’t get any concrete information out of you.”
“Cry me a river,” I said.
“Did they this time?”
I touched the finger that had been bitten when I played blackjack. “Yeah, one of the suits on their cards used ravens. A bird came to life and bit me, then another raven joined the others, changing the card from a nine to a ten. That’s when Poe announced there was a new player, but there’s always a new player. What makes this person or thing a bigger deal?”
“The game brings the information into being,” Jude said. “This person wouldn’t exist otherwise. Though,” she added, “it doesn’t mean they’re your enemy. We don’t know what side they’re on, only that they are tangled up in something that involves you.”
I’d wondered what Poe got out of these encounters, and damn, that was quite the answer. “So, this is my fault? Fucking awesome. Who are they? Where are they?”
“Hey.” Jude’s eyes flashed in irritation. “Don’t shoot the messenger.”
I held up my hands. Note to self: we were still both touchier than usual. “Sorry.”
“As for who? It’s hard to say. They might already have been put on the gameboard or they may be yet to be unveiled. The only certainty is that either now or in the future they will be a part of this because of that game with Poe.”
“If shifters pay the price for failing to bring new information into being, then I hope Poe suffered huge torments when I stopped our first game,” I said viciously.
“Every time someone turns them down, the raven shifters suffer,” Jude said. “It’s why they manipulate people into engaging with them.”
“My new mission is to spread the word far and wide about the exact danger of raven shifters,” I said with steely determination.
“Like how people spread the word about the dangers of Banim Shovavim?”
I narrowed my eyes. “It’s not the same thing.”
Jude shrugged. “If you say so. You got room for another target on your back?”
