Sebastian’s stomach dropped again. “I don’t know,” he admitted. “But it’s a relic; it’s been feeding on its own magical chains for centuries and growing more powerful. Whatever it could have done before, it’s much more dangerous now. So…maybe.”
“Well, that’s not particularly reassuring,” Arthur muttered. “How do you unlock it?”
“It’s not a very nice key,” Sebastian said, wincing. “But at least it’s not easy. You have to murder a paranormal with three kinds of magic.”
“Three?”Arthur said. “That’s going to be a short list. Even Rory, Jade, and Gwen only have two types of magic, their own and their relic.”
Sebastian himself used to have four. He carefully didn’t mention it. “The Earl of Blanshard would have had three—his own innate ability to absorb auras, the brooch relic, and my ancestor’s binding onhim.”
“The earl is at least quite dead, although I suppose there will be other paranormals in the world with three kinds of magic,” Wesley said. “What about the seventh relic—the cuff? What does it do and how does one unlock it?”
Sebastian winced again. This was not his favorite relic to talk about. “It, um. It casts curses.”
“Oh, I don’t like that,” Jade muttered. “Please tell me this one has a difficult key as well.”
“I wish I could tell you that.” Sebastian sighed. “But I don’t know.”
“You don’t know?” Zhang blinked. “Don’t you know all of this stuff? You just mentioned that you’re descended from the Spanish witch-hunter who trackeddown the seven nobles who made the relics. You told us the reason your entire family has magic that works on other magic is because you share the bloodline that he…oh.”
“You share the bloodline that the inquisitorcursed,” Jade said, finishing Zhang’s thought.
Sebastian nodded. “We know the inquisitor used the cuff relic to cast the blood curse on himself and all his future descendants.” He shrugged helplessly. “But naturally he didn’t want us to know how to unlock the cuff, in case one of us got the idea to try and remove the curse.”
Fingers touched Sebastian’s wrist, steady and warm. He looked up to find Wesley’s gaze on him. “But you did remove the curse from yourself.” Wesley’s fingers skated across the black ink outline of the lion. “Mr. Findlay said the brooch relic was drawing on your blood curse. When you let it strip your magic, it took your curse too.”
Wesley so rarely touched him outside of bed, and now his fingers were tracing the delicate skin of Sebastian’s inner wrist, sending pleasant prickles radiating over him. “Are you implying I outsmarted my ancestor?” Sebastian said, trying to concentrate. “I didn’t, though. I can’t use a relic if I don’t have magic.”
“Are you certain?” Zhang said.
Sebastian opened his mouth, then pursed his lips. “I guess I can’t say for sure,” he admitted. “It seems unlikely, though, no?”
“Not at all,” Zhang said firmly. “The relics were created when nobles stripped out their own magic and put it in something else. You also did the first part.”
“But my magic didn’t go into anything else,” Sebastian said.
“We don’t know that either,” Wesley pointed out, moving his hand from Sebastian’s wrist to his own drink. “There was a mass of magic and murder in that attic. Are you sure you didn’t accidentally create a relic?”
“Shouldn’t I have been able to tell if I did?” Sebastian countered. “Why would my own magic go into something but then hide from me?”
“Maybe Gwen can tell us, with her witch-sight,” Arthur said. “She’s in London again. We’re all game for the trip over there with you and Wes, to see if she can figure out what’s happened to you and make sure Wesley’s aura is intact.”
Sebastian gave him a small, grateful smile. “I would like to be sure Wesley’s aura has healed,” he said, once again dancing away from any mention of his now-gone magic the way he’d have avoided the edge of no-man’s-land in the war. “But I would also like a lead on who might be behind everything that happened in October. Alasdair may have been murdered because of it.”
“Maybe you can give us a lead,” Zhang said. “We still have two missing relics. Who did they belong to?”
Sebastian had the first spark of hope. “Thatisa place to start,” he said. “The two remaining relics belonged to a married couple. The cuff belonged to a Spanish countess, and the medallion was created by her husband—who was an English nobleman.”
Jade raised her eyebrows. “Not an ancient marquess by the name of Thornton, by any chance?”
“No,” Sebastian said. “He was a duke, accordingto our family notes. He had a title like a mountain, or something-mount, maybe?”
Wesley pursed his lips. “Valemount?”
“Yes,”Sebastian said. “How did you know?”
“Because I know him,” Wesley said. “Well, nothim, the fellow from the fifteenth century. But I know the line. I was acquainted with the past duke, Alfred Fairfield, who died two years ago in a hunting accident—perhaps a bit of irony there, if he was descended from a paranormal duke with some kind of hunting magic.”
Arthur tilted his head. “So who’s the duke now, then?”
