“Look. I’m sorry. I wish I knew more about this. But don’t worry, I won’t leave you to blow up our apartment alone.”
“Gee, thanks.”
Dante left the room and grabbed his car keys. “Are you ready to go?”
“I think I’ll walk today.”
“Oh, come on. Don’t be upset. I said I’d help.”
Noah sighed. “It’s not you. Or it’s notjustyou. I was rejected by Kizzy.”
“Huh? I thought she was into you.”
“I thought so too. I sent her a friend request on Facebook, and she accepted it. So I sent her a private message. We started chatting, and that was going well, so I asked her out. Everything went quiet for a while, then she came back with a million excuses about being busy and helping her father with something, and her sister needing her, and whatever. The thing is, she turned me down.”
“I’m sorry, Bro. I really thought you two hit it off. Did you ask her to the basketball game?”
“No. I figured I’d take her out to dinner some night when neither of us had to work.”
“Maybe she’s tired at night. The game is on a Saturday. She can’t be working every weekend. Come on. Let me drive you to work. We can figure this out on the way.”
“No. Thanks though. I really want to walk.” Noah grabbed his Boston Fire Department jacket. “I need to think about the science experiment.”
“Okay. Call me if you want to talk it over.”
“Nah. I’ll be fine.” He dashed down the stairs and set off for his downtown firehouse. He had avoided the sting of rejection by setting up the lab, and now that he’d had time to process what happened with Kizzy, he wanted to be alone. Obviously, he’d done something wrong, but what?
Noah had dated off and on, but never had a serious relationship.
Just like his brothers, he had to find a woman he could totally trust with his and his family’s paranormal secret. That took a special kind of woman. Someone with maturity. His older brothers were lucky to have found their soulmates. The loves of their lives. He wondered if that kind of luck could continue.
Women were a puzzle, and not one as easily figured out as a chemical formula. Relationships could be just as volatile—if not more so.
* * *
Two members of the secret group in Brazil had been sent to Boston. The spell to make the developer leave hadn’t produced the desired result, and now their commandant was angry. Unlimited power would be theirs if they could only locate the companion occult books, so Wilhelm and Franz were selected to go. Franz was the commandant’s grandson and Wilhelm was a trusted advisor.
“The books are around here somewhere. I can feel it,” Wilhelm, the elder, said as they deplaned at Logan Airport.
“Here? In the airport itself?” his younger pupil, Franz, asked. “I sense nothing unusual.”
Wilhelm rolled his eyes. “Notherehere. Somewhere in the area, which is more than I sensed in Brazil using a locator spell.”
Franz frowned at him. “We still have no idea how to narrow it down to a smaller area.”
“Actually, I do have an idea. I put a spell on us before we left. If anyone is using the power contained in those books, we’ll gravitate toward it.”
“Huh? You didn’t tell me that. So, your plan is to just wander around a city of more than six hundred thousand people, hoping to sense someone using the supernatural power in those books?”
“Do you have a better idea, Franz?”
He shook his sandy-blond head. “No.”
“Until you think of something helpful, keep your mouth shut and your eyes open.”
His young charge followed him to the baggage claim area.
After collecting their suitcases, Franz dared to speak again. “I wonder how the books got split up in the first place. I figured all the occult texts went to South America with the original elders. I thought using occult knowledge was how they evaded capture and trial as war criminals.”
“No one knows exactly what happened. Someone may have had a change of heart and sent them in different directions. At the end of the war, items were seized. Even someone on our side may have feared the power promised if all three books were used together. They could make us gods.”
“But the other two went in the same direction,” Franz insisted. “The locator spell only found one place.”
“Yes. One place. Someone may have stolen two of the three books,orone book may have been destroyed and there’s only one here.”
“So, we may not be able to find all three? Is that what you’re saying?” Franz nervously bit his lip. “Our mission is to recover both books and reunite all three.”
“No one knows the mission better than I,” Wilhelm said. “Your grandfather cautioned us not to come back without them. We could face death if we fail.”
