LOT'S MOUNTAIN

CHAPTER FORTY-ONE: Time for a Little Churchin'

Nothing's happening yet, well, not exactly nothing. Mark and Father Sherman are getting the humans ready right now. Mark has told them that they're just going to sleep for a while. I think some of them know that he's lying, but they don't ask him what's really going to happen. Diane is somewhere. I'm not quite sure where. I think about her hugging me. Yeah, it really stuck with me. It wasn't a glad-you're-ok hug. It was one to say good-bye.

That's what we've been doing all this time. It hasn't just been to gather Belle Lake's forces against Glass. It's to let everybody say good-bye while we have the chance.

I step up to the edge of the lake where the Old Bone Woman's waiting. Grim's right behind me. Thank god he doesn't need a hug. Instead, he tells me stuff, though I'm not really listening, and drops names I've never heard before, like Cautopates and Cautes. Then there's something about a thing called Keto. He says the names again, real slow this time, like they're supposed to mean something to me.

They don't.

Cautopates ...

Cautes ...

Keto ...

And then he says them again. This third time ... He doesn't say them any differently, but there's something about them ... It's like I used to know them, just like humans used to know about monsters, and magic too.

Keto ... Did I hear that name in literature class at school? Or is it the magic inside of me that knows? I DO know that name. Mother of sea monsters ... Is that really what I want to hear when I'm at a lake? Sister and wife of Phorkys. Sister AND wife? Well, that's all kinds of nasty.

Within the water I can see two monsters, no, it's just one monster. The middle is green and scaly. At one end, it has the chest and head of a bearded man. At the other, a woman. From them came the Scylla the long-toothed monster and Charybdis the whirlpool. I really don't want to know how that works.

This is the magic deep within the lake, the magic that ties us all together.

Scylla and Charybdis ... They're from Greek mythology, right?

The other names Grim said—

Cautopates and Cautes ... the torch bringers. One of light and one of dark. Dusk and Dawn. Roman ... Yeah, this is Roman stuff ... They were friends to the god Helios, one showing the rise of the sun, the other the fall. This stuff is in my blood. Instinct isn't the right word ... But I know this stuff.

Just like magic.

The Old Bone Woman ... she's talking again, piping up with, "Tonight is about old rites—"

Um ... what? In movies and books, when you hear old rites, somebody ends up with his throat cut. Nobody pulls out any knives and nobody dies. I'm guessing whatever rites there were, they've already been done and that the price has been paid. I don't know what they had to do or even how they're doing it. I imagine I never will.

But right now, I just want them to get to the freaking point. They said we were going to get Jamie back ... right now ... and—

The center of the lake starts to swirl around, like a whirlpool's forming in the center of it. That better not be Charybdis. I don't know what I'm supposed to do, but it sure does. And so does Grim.

He stops spitting out names and finally spells it out for me. "They're making a portal."

"A portal?"

Grim nods and keeps going, "The lake's turning into a door that you can walk through ... a door to where Jamie is."

Tons of monsters crowd around the lake, but they stay clear of me.