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I felt the need to try for a professional smile, but it didn’t work, because my fingers started throbbing, and his eyes were blue, like the waters at a lake resort where I’d never go, like I’d never go home and have someone waiting for me that I wanted to see. Why was he so handsome? And why hadn’t my death spell just killed him so I wouldn’t have to deal with seeing him and trying to act normal?
I looked away and took a shaky breath. “It’s not that I’m uninterested, but you must see the logic in using someone whose work is trustworthy.”
When I glanced back at him, he was studying me while his eyes shifted slightly towards black. “It isn’t a matter of trust, but of efficiency. I would never take anyone’s work without double-checking its verity. I have a difference of opinion from every linguist I’ve had the pleasure of working with, so it’s not that I would accept your notes without due diligence, but it would speed things up, and time seems to be of the essence.”
I frowned at him. “Why is that?”
He exchanged a glance with Horace. “It is a sensitive subject, apparently, which I haven’t been given all the details of myself. Mr. Clovsky does seem particularly well-informed, however, and he has assured me that time is of the essence. He used that phrase repeatedly. Three times, to be exact.”
Horace Clovsky sniffed. “Well, time is of the essence, Mr. Stead.” He gave the name a particular emphasis before turning back to me. “The Scholar has been kind enough to offer you his own interpreters to teach you in exchange for your notes.”
I inhaled sharply. Was that blackmail or bribery? Both? I glanced at the Scholar, and he was studying his shoes with a very carefully blank expression. “Is that true? Do you have trained interpreters of ancient Persian willing to teach a complete novice in exchange for some notes which are probably useless to you?”
He sighed and looked up at me, his eyes darker than night, glistening like a river of death waiting to pull me under. He was so dangerous, however nicely he sat in his chair with his ankles crossed. “You are welcome to join our team in the research lab any time, Miss Morell, and I assure you that you will learn as much as you’d like about ancient Persian and any other languages that interest you. I have a wide variety of resources at my disposal as well as excellent interpreters. However, there is always room for more, particularly from one who found the texts you discovered about a topic that has become so pertinent. I’ve recently learned never to underestimate a quiet librarian.”
Maybe he wasn’t stalking me because he suspected that I knew more about the fire than I let on. Maybe he wasn’t stalking me at all, but going down into his lab where nearly everyone would be a proper monster was unthinkable.
“I’ll think about it,” I said, edging towards the door.
“You have until Monday,” Horace said, eyes tight. He was under more stress than I realized, and if he was involved in the Scholar’s urgent need to uncover the mystery about the eternal fire, maybe there was more going on than just my own responsibility for the thing. Had someone else figured out how to replicate my fire, and the Scholar was trying to figure out its origin and how to stop it? I shivered and left the room, struggling with the old dutiful daughter of the House of Mercy who never shrank from evil. It wasn’t my problem, even if it was my fault, or was it?
I shook my head and walked more briskly towards the front desk. I had no proof that anyone was using my impossible mixture of fire that even I couldn’t recreate. I’d tried, because not being able to control something so dangerous was terrifying. It had been a once-in-a-lifetime experience that was the responsibility of the monsters who created those circumstances much more than me, even if I had technically pulled the trigger.
That monster from long ago had given me a potion that made my magic useless and had brought out a weakness in me that I’d never experienced before. The symbols I’d burned into the air with my desperate will were nothing I’d known, something instinctive that I’d since researched and found meaningless. Whatever language it was from didn’t exist. I’d written in a language that no one had ever spoken and never would again.
The rest of my day was a blur, and I didn’t hang around after work to pull out a soothing text that I’d already translated a dozen times, like Hammurabi’s code. I just grabbed my bag and headed out. I had to go down to the music hall tomorrow morning and find an instrument that sang to me. I didn’t have time to learn from real linguists how to break code properly.
I sighed heavily and crossed the street. My grocery order would be waiting for me to put away outside my apartment, so I didn’t need to go get sushi, and I hadn’t made plans with Anna.
I was halfway finished putting away my food when someone took the milk out of my hand and put it in the fridge the right way. Cross was so insanely meticulous about the most inconsequential things. He never would have gotten himself caged. Of course, he wouldn’t have uncovered the conspiracy in the first place. Lucky elf.
“This day keeps getting better and better. What are you doing in town?” I asked, leaning against the counter and letting him take over.
He was tall, as elves are, but he had much more weight than the usual breed, which is part of why he’d been donated to Mother’s House of Mercy. He wasn’t entirely elf, but whatever the other parts were didn’t come out unless he was particularly irritated.
“Bad day? When are you going to get furniture? Just as well. You need to run.”
I grabbed his shoulder, but he shrugged off my hold and carefully put the eggs away.
“Cross, you can’t come into my apartment, take over my groceries, and tell me to run. That’s not how it works.”
He frowned, and his lilac eyes caught the refrigerator light weirdly. He looked much more natural beneath a full moon in a meadow or forest, hacking apart a body he’d killed without any hesitation. “You want me to explain things? I don’t want to. It makes me want to knife somebody, and I don’t do that anymore. I’ve moved up in the ranks over the past six years, my angel. You’re looking at the second commander of the House of mercy.”
“And you still make time to come here twice a year and give me my pension check. Aw. Cross, you’re such a good little brother.”
He wrinkled his nose. “You look younger, prettier, glowing, actually. Could you not do that? You’ll draw all the hungry dark ones from a mile away.”
I shrugged. “They don’t bother me these days. I think that my questionable allure has run down.”
“Mm. That’s not what I heard.”
I raised a brow. “You said that I need to run. Were you joking? No, because you don’t joke, so why do I need to run?”
He pulled out the case of eggs he’d just put away and started breaking them in a bowl, mixing deftly before he stopped to chop some vegetables. He was making an omelet, which would ordinarily be lovely because he was the world’s best omelet maker, but he was taking his time to answer, which meant that he had a case that I wasn’t going to like, and he wasn’t going to like giving. He really wasn’t happy about being here.
I perched on the counter and waited.
“The Scholar, do you know him?” he asked without looking at me. The title on his tongue gave me goosebumps. Was he Cross’s target? For a moment, I was swept away by panic at the thought of my oldest friend killing the handsome monster.
