Gravetender dove her hand into her dark robe. I threw myself at her, as I had no intention of letting her retrieve whatever she intended to pull out. We collided and toppled over with me pinning her hand in place. 

She spat in my eye while trying to squirm out from under me. I threw a sloppy punch down at her face, but pinned as she was, it managed to connect anyway. It knocked her head back and she cried out in pain when her head met the floor. 

 I tried to grab her other hand while she reeled from the fall, but she wasn’t as disoriented as I had hoped and she slammed a fist into the base of my skull. While she was only about as strong as me and she was at an awkward angle she put as much force into the blow as possible in her situation. It doesn't take much force before an impact on your head becomes disorienting.

As an unintended side-effect, my forehead smashed into the necromancer's face. There was a nasty crunch and I felt something wet coating my face.

It took both of us several seconds to regain our senses. I pushed myself off of her and tried to get on my feet, but she pulled one of my legs out from under me and I rejoined her on the ground a couple of feet away.

Gravetender's nose was a bloody mess and was clearly broken from my inadvertent but lucky headbutt. 

She hastily pulled out one of those black and white composition notebooks out of her robe and opened it to the first page.

I could barely make out that one of those magic circles that mages use was drawn on the page. The design was rather angular compared to the ones I'd seen Mark and William use. The main feature was two thick parallel lines running down the center of the circle.

She slapped a hand over the circle and spat out a short phrase in an unknown language, sending specks of blood onto my face.

A pale blue light shot out from the circle and expanded into a strange bubble-like sphere around her. Gravetender sighed in relief and put her book down to one side.

Whatever she had done, she didn't seem worried I'd be able to hurt her anymore. I grabbed the oily rag that had been Dad's gag and flung it at the necromancer to test my suspicion that it was some sort of shield.

The cloth stopped in midair when it hit the light and slid off as if the light was a solid object, confirming my theory.

"Give it a rest, boy," she sneered.

I physically recoiled at the slight insult, for some reason that phrase hurt more than I would've thought.

"Fuck you!" I shouted. 

Who does this bitch think she is calling me that? She can't be more than five years older than me! 

Her words echoed in my mind, or specifically one word did, "boy."

Why did being called that feel so awful? Her using the diminutive was condescending as fuck, but that shouldn't have been that bad. 

I briefly tried to figure out why and if there was a connection to certain other thoughts I'd had, but quickly caught myself from ignoring the situation at hand.

I'm going to have to face these thoughts sometime, but not now.

Gravetender held her nose in both hands and took a deep breath, then with a sickening snap she set her nose back into place.

Dad made a pitiable noise and tried to say something, then seemingly gave up the effort. His condition was quickly deteriorating and infuriatingly there wasn't much I could do at that moment, so I redirected my rage back towards the necromancer. 

"What did you do to my Dad?" I snared.

"This guy's your dad?" she asked while wiping blood off her face. 

"Don't play dumb, you bitch!" I shouted.

"I didn't touch the guy, he was like that when we got there."

"Sounds like bullshit to me."

"Listen boy, I'm not lying to you. When we arrived he wasn't even conscious. I'm the one who bandaged him up, for Christ sake," she insisted.

"Why would you do that?" I asked skeptically.

"He wasn't a threat, and Eiry didn't tell me to kill him. She was only interested in some old tome he had next to him. She just took it and left, then we ran into you in the parking lot."

"Where is the book now?" 

"I assume she still has it."

I would have asked how could I know she doesn't have the book, but I honestly couldn't believe Eiry was the type to let her lackey hold onto something this powerful. Anyway, there were more immediate things to deal with.

Thinking furiously about my options, but try as I might here seemed to only be three and none of them were without massive downsides.

First option was to just make a break for it, but that would mean leaving Dad to the mercy of Gravetender and Eiry and there was no telling what they would do with him, so that plan was out.

Secondly was to try and break through her magical force field and attempt to disable her, but she looked unconcerned by the possibility of me being able to attack her. 

Even if I could break the shield, I wasn't confident I could even beat her in a fight; She still had what appeared to be her spellbook and I was exhausted from the previous two skirmishes. 

All the lightning punches I had done had taken a serious toll on me and I felt as if I might collapse if I pushed myself much farther, so fighting was a tenuous plan at the very best.

Lastly was the less likely one to actually work: Diplomacy. Even if her claims of saving Dad were true, she appeared rather hostile, and I found it difficult to trust the word of a necromancer who, up until a minute ago, was trying to kill me.

We sat for a moment in silence staring at each other. She made no move to cast a spell or something to try and kill me, she was just calming sitting there.

Why isn't she doing something? It's almost more scary that she's just relaxing instead of continuing the fight. What's she planning?

"What's your game?" I asked cautiously. 

"Sus amongus," she replied without missing a beat, then she sucked in a breath like she didn't mean to make a joke.

I was unsure what to make of that and we sat for another minute while I tried to gauge if she would attack if I just took Dad and left. My confusion was interrupted when she spoke up.

"We're parked illegally," she said matter-of-factly.

"Huh?"

"We need to move before the cop on duty gets suspicious."

"Huh?" I repeated. 

"We're at a hospital."

"What?!?"

"Fuck's wrong with you? Your dad's burned all to hell and we're at a hospital! Put two and two together."

"Who the fuck are you?" I wondered aloud. 

"You must think me a fool to believe I'd actually give you my name."

"Not really what I meant."

"Whatever, not important right now, you need to decide if you're going to help me move him so we can go before the cops come to check what's up."

"How do I know that you won't attack me while we move him?"

"You don't," she said.

Deliberating my options I eyed the woman suspiciously, then inspiration struck me. I can't leave without Dad, but maybe I can use my sidhe power to my advantage.

According to Ashe, if I could get her to make a deal with me and she were to break that deal, I could gain some amount of power over her, whatever that means, but she seems smart enough to not and break faith so hopefully it wouldn't actually come to that.

"Let's make a deal," I proposed. Gravetender didn't respond for a moment, then grunted affirmatively.  

"You're a sidhe scion, aren't you?" she guessed.

I froze in shock. How the fuck does she know that? I tried not to show how much her eerily accurate guess had shook me.

"What makes you say that?" I replied somewhat nonchalantly. There was no way for me to know if she had seen past my misdirection, but my hopes weren’t super high.

"You're obviously new to combat, possibly to the supernatural in general, you were with two sidhe, I didn't see you use a foci, and you're asking to make a deal. Not particularly hard to guess."

Fucking hell she's perceptive. I need to try and not give anything else away. 

"You tell me what you are and I will tell you what I am," I offered.

"Human," she replied quickly.

"Anything else?"

The necromancer barked out a raspy laugh, "You aren't as naÏve as I thought. I'm half sidhe and half human."

"So am I," I admitted.

“Alright, go ahead and make your deal,” she said.

I've got to be very careful with my wording, if either of us break the deal the other will gain some amount of power over the deal-breaker, whatever that means. Time to break out my inner rules lawyer.

"I propose that, for the period of time it takes to ensure that my father receives medical attention, I will not take any hostile action, including attacking, impeding your movement, and intentionally taking indirect actions that I know would cause harm towards you, if you agree to not taking those actions towards me or my Dad."

She thought silently for a moment, then said, "How about thirty minutes flat instead?"

Thirty minutes would be nice, it would allow a little rest and hopefully Ashe and Vincent will be able to find me by then. But how would she benefit from more time? Eiry catching up with us is the obvious answer, but is that the only reason?

Unfortunately, I knew next to nothing about Gravetender, so anything I could come up with was pure conjecture. 

She could be waiting for something to happen at a specific time, but getting Dad to a hospital is more important. It seems reasonable enough of a precaution to reduce the amount of time, as it would put a damper on any plans if that is the case.

"Make it fifteen minutes and we have a deal," I compromised. 

"Deal," she confirmed.

Immediately I felt the same instinctual feeling that I had when I made a deal with Ashe. A pact had been made that would mean dire consequences if one of us broke it, but I knew I never would break faith like that anyway as it wouldn't be right.

Gravetender put on hand on the magic circle in her spellbook and muttered something I couldn't make out and the force field slowly dimmed until we were engulfed into the darkness caused from the still raging storm outside the van.

We both stood up and I wearily moved over to Dad, then stopped in my tracks as Gravetender did the same. 

I tensed up and readied myself for the fight to resume, but it didn't. Instead she continued past Dad and me and opened the rear door revealing that she hadn't been lying about us being parked at a hospital.

We were at the bus station just outside the parking lot of the closest hospital to our apartment.

Gravetender turned back around and put her hands up in a placating manner.

"Are you okay with me helping move him?" she asked.

"I guess so," I replied.

"We should leave him on the bench, there's a camera watching the station that updates the ER on incoming patients. He'll be out of the rain and it will give us time to get away while they come to get him."

How would she know that? Does she work here or something? Whatever, she couldn’t lie about that else end up breaking the bargain. 

Together we picked Dad up using the tarp that had once covered him as a makeshift stretcher and laid him gently on the bench, then folded the tarp over to cover him.

“What will you do now?” Gravetender asked.

“Not sure,” I mumbled while debating that question myself.

Again, I was left with only shitty choices to choose between: get back into the van and try to get The Morrígan’s Grimoire back or stay here and try to help Dad as best I could.

The answer of what I wanted to do was obvious - go with Dad - but if I did that I would be stuck at the hospital asking questions from doctors and police about what happened for hours. There were no answers I could give to anything they could ask that would really help. I couldn't just say what actually happened.

'Oh yeah, my mother who's a powerful fae noblewoman probably threw a fireball at him or some such and oh by the way, the van we came here in was driven by a necromancer that just tried to kill me with zombies.'

They'd probably hold me as a suspect for as long as they possibly could if I told the truth and if I lied enough to make it plausible I'd probably need to be admitted for massive brain damage. 

I could make a break for it, but I didn’t like my chances of not being caught by cops looking for me from the CCTV, but the alternative was far riskier.

"Good luck," Gravetender called as she started running to the van.

I saw a police officer and a couple doctors hurrying out of the ER with a gurney towards the bus station. What else could I do? I ran.