There was a long silence. So long I thought I might have lost them.
“Hold, please. I’ll transfer you to the top.”
CHAPTER 23
ARES
Rhiannonand I rode the elevator down together. She didn’t seem inclined to chat, and neither was I. When we reached the lobby, she walked beside me, matching my strides exactly. As I hailed a cab, she waited next to me.
“I’m going downtown,” she murmured.
I nodded. “As am I.”
“I am going to the Library of Amarante,” she said.
That piqued my interest. The Library of Amarante was a private institution. “Do you have a card?”
She smiled. “I do. And I am able to bring one guest per visit. Would you like to come with me?”
My heart slowed. Rhiannon’s question was so mundane, nearly friendly. But the woman did nothing by chance, nothing without meaning. I’d known her peripherally for years, and that was enough to make such an assumption, but one week in an apartment together and I knew now, without a doubt, that she was the other side to Ember’s coin.
Both were vastly intelligent, strategic even. While Ember operated on instinct, and a good heap of chaos, Rhiannon Brontë was sheer calculation. They made a good team. I did have a contact or two I wanted to speak to, but I could send Avlater. She’d get more out of them than I would, anyway. I was mostly getting out of the house to escape the tension between Ember and myself.
“I’d love to come along.” I had the sneaking suspicion I’d learn more with Rhiannon than going my own way.
The cab pulled up, Rhiannon gave the address for the library, and we rode across town in perfect silence. Far from being uncomfortable, the two of us seemed relieved to be out of the crowded flat at the Carlyle. She stared out the window, watching rain drip down the window in the gray-blue light of the morning. I didn’t need to watch the world go by, so I caught up on email.
The Library of Amarante was silent, smelling of books and cold stone. Everything in this place was clean, bright marble and highly polished crystal chandeliers. Giant statues of the Saints towered over us in the lobby. Rhiannon signed in, then motioned silently for me to follow her up an enormous spiral staircase.
We climbed six stories. On the sixth floor, Rhiannon motioned for me to follow her into a honeycomb of passages, making a sharp left turn down a narrow hallway. The walls here were close, but the brightly painted white wood panels and embedded shell-shaped sconces made things feel less claustrophobic. Each door had a brass figurine affixed to the front, like a door knocker.
Rhiannon stopped in front of a door with a swan. But not the usual placid creature depicted in so much art, its curved neck making an elegant S. This swan faced us, beak open in a scream, wings raised in aggression. It was, to be frank, a bit disturbing, but it fit Rhiannon Brontë perfectly.
She gestured to the door. “After you.” I triedthe crystal knob, and though it turned, I could not open it. I frowned, but Rhiannon smiled. “Watch.”
She pressed her hand to the door, just under the angry swan. The door knob turned, and the door swung on silent hinges. This area of the library was so quiet my ears rang with the rush of blood in my veins. Far from being calm, this place vibrated with alien energy.
“Would it have opened for me?” I asked as I followed Rhiannon into what appeared to be an empty room, but for a marble plinth at its center, risen out of the floor itself. The entire room appeared to be constructed from the same piece of stone, almost as if it had been hollowed out from an enormous rock.
She shook her head. “No, none but myself may enter here.” Then she smiled. “My guests, of course, are also welcome. Please place your hand on the plinth.”
My heart beat faster at her request. Was this some sort of trick? I suddenly realized how very alone I was with an immortal capable of ending my life in mere seconds. I wouldn’t even have time to scream at Rhiannon Brontë’s hands.
“I don’t want to hurt you, Ares Necroline,” Rhiannon said. “I will show the truth of who you are. Who we all are. It is a gift. A sacred gift—a burden, really—but a gift all the same.”
“All right,” I agreed, placing my hand on the plinth.
“If you tell anyone what you saw here, you will forget it instantly. The same will happen should the person you tell attempt to speak of what they learned.”
My eyebrows raised, as I thought through the logic. “Would that happen to you if you tried to tell someone?”
She nodded. “Yes, the only way to know this is to be shown. The only way to retain the knowledge is to keep it secret.”
That sounded like magic to me. The Authority had taken so many pains to paint parapsychism as preternatural prowess. As an abomination of humanity, rather than magic. Magic, according to the Authority, did not exist. But what Rhiannonspoke of was a spell. Something that not even a Thaumas could manage.
My curiosity was far, far too piqued. “All right,” I said. “I want to know.”
She stood directly across from me, placing her hand on the plinth, next to mine, but facing the opposite direction. “Close your eyes.”
