“I wouldn’t get too comfortable, Mister Sands. Might I remind you that the borders and the pact still stand? Regardless of you having recently broken it.” Grace given life, Calanthe headed for the door, wrapping her trench coat tightly around her body. “My people will contact yours, should I receive any valuable information.” She scanned the kitchen, making eye contact with every person—slayer and werewolf—present. “Until then.”
Flanked by her bodyguards, she vanished into the rain, Emilie at her side. As the door closed behind them, leaving nothing behind that would indicate any vampires had been here but the scent of roses, Darien remembered an old proverb.
The enemy of my enemy is my friend.
—
“I thought you were fluent in Ancient Reunerian,” Logan said to Darien as he took a swig of beer. The wolf was lounging across from him at the patio table at Hell’s Gate, watching with amusement as he and Loren jotted down letters in the open notebook that sat between them. A full moon hung overhead, brightening the night. “Why’s a little scroll like that taking you so long to decipher?”
Darien pulled his gaze from the lantern-lit Dominus Volumen and shot Logan a hard look. “Why don’t you go play fetch with the Familiars? I’m sure they would love for a pup like you to join in on their fun.”
In the centre of the yard, not far from where Sabrine and Ivy were roasting coco-mallows over the firepit, Darien’s Familiar sparred with Dallas’s winged tiger for a murkball the witch had thrown into the shrubs.
Logan gave Darien a dirty look but got up and went to join Sabrine at the firepit. The wolf-witch looked more than a little happy to see Logan approaching her, and Darien was more than a little happy to be alone with Loren. The clock had ticked at a painfully slow pace all day until he was finally able to get back to Hell’s Gate and see her again.
Paper fluttered as Loren flipped through the book on Ancient Reunerian. It was their last day before the old tome would teleport itself back to the library. Darien had deciphered enough of the scroll to conclude that the chemicals the Butcher’s anonymous client had ordered were the very same ones necessary to create the Arcanum Well, written in the scroll under codenames that’d taken a million years to decipher. But it wasn’t just the chemicals that were needed.
The scroll spoke of a material that formed the Well itself—thetub,for lack of a better word. But that part of the scroll involved words so ageless and elusive, even this old book insisted on keeping them secret. Darien hoped if they could find out what this Arcanum Well was made of, he might be able to track it with the Sight. Magical artefacts tended to exude their own color into the universe—a vibration he might be able to nail down and trace.
Loren had seemed just as surprised as Darien to hear of the information Calanthe had given them earlier that day—and just as doubtful as Darien that she had any magical tracking ability that might help them find the Well. There had to be a mistake; Loren was human, there was no doubt about that. Perhaps shewasrelated to someone who had been able to track or use this Well, but the odds of her having inherited a magical ability like this… It was unheard of. And it was out of simple curiosity that he had asked Loren earlier that evening to reach within herself, to see if she couldfeelsomething in her soul, the same way he could feel the Sight—could feel his various magical gifts. She had come up empty, and more than a little frustrated.
If anyone would be able to track the Well, it would be a hellseher, as long as they knew what material to look for. Darien wasn’t certain what they would do with the Well if theydidmanage to find it; he would cross one bridge at a time and see where they ended up.
“I think I might’ve figured out what this part says,” Loren said, her soft voice coaxing him out of the depths of his thoughts. She was sitting so close to him that her thigh was pressed against his, the warmth from her body spreading into his. Her dog was sprawled out at her feet, nose whistling as he slept.
A gust of wind threatened to tear the scroll out from under the chunks of crystal they were using as paper weights. Darien reached over and flattened the fluttering paper with a hand as she read aloud.
“I am male and female,
everything and nothing.
I am heaven and earth,
Body and spirit.
The rainbow,
the blood of the soul,
the fiery and burning water.
I am…”
When she glanced up at him, Darien found himself more at awe of the way her ocean eyes glinted in the moonlight than the fact that she seemed to have deciphered the most confusing part of the scroll.
“It’s one giant riddle.” She blew out a long sigh. “Every time we find an answer, there’s always another question.”
“This book is going back to the shelf soon,” he said, “so let’s look over what we’ve got.”
She slid the notebook his way, and he read aloud from the middle section of the scroll.
“Mortal is my father,
Fire my mother.
I shall tell you my secret,
Oh, curious one.
