“Yes, well. Hate to kill the mood when the world’s sexiest nerd isfinallyabout to bust a move,” he says, “but… Seriously. Come with me, now. There’s something you guys need to see.”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
AUGUSTINE
The red light of the darkroom soothes my soul, the scent of the developing chemicals as familiar to me as the scent of old books is to Rook or fresh blood is to Jude.
It’s a bit crowded with three of us in here—I’m used to working alone—but I’m happy for the company.
It’s one more thing West has brought me—a reminder of how important my brothers are to me, and a need to be closer to them. Like a real family—a family we all started taking for granted after so many centuries together. And now Westlyn herself is part of that family—the beautiful, courageous witch we’d all die to protect.
It’s that instinctual urge to protect her that has me calling them closer now, the three of us huddling around the photos I’ve hung from a thin rope stretching from one side of the small space to the other.
The runes West carved on the bodies glow bright against their skin, the images grotesque in the red light. But that’s not what I need them to see.
“Look.” I point to the three photos closest to us—enlargements from the series I shot while West was slicing and dicing. They’re not entirely in focus—I was too shocked by what was happening to properly frame the shots—but you can see West in each one of them. Her back is to the camera, her hair tied up, giving us a clear view of the back of her neck.
And the dark fae rune glowing there, just beneath her hairline.
“What the fuck?” She touches the spot on one of the photos, her other hand scratching the back of her neck. “I don’t have a mark there, do I?”
“It’s not visible now, no,” I confirm.
“So it’s probably just dust on your lens or something, right?” Rook asks.
“I wish it was.” I point it out in other photos—at least a dozen of West, all showing the same mark in the same position on her neck. “If that was dust or a crack in the lens, or even a lens flare, it wouldn’t show up like this, always in the same spot on West’s skin.”
“But… I don’t understand.” West turns to me, her eyes searching mine in the dim red light. “Did you guys notice it last night? What about when you were behind me, when we… Come on, Auggie. You wererightthere. You would’ve seen it.”
“I know. And it’s not like I don’t pay attention to every inch of you, witchling.” I smile and cup her face between my hands, but I can’t hide the concern in my voice. “I don’t know why the lens picked it up when we couldn’t see it. I’ll take some more photos of you tonight, if you’re okay with that. See if it shows up again.”
She nods and blows out a breath, but her eyes are frantic with fear. “What the hell do you think it is?”
“It appears to be some sort of binding rune.” Rook adjusts his glasses and brings in one of the prints for a closer look. “I’ll need to do more research to confirm, but I’m almost positive that’s what we’re looking at.”
“Why would I have a dark fae binding rune on my neck?” She rubs her skin as if she can make it disappear. “What does it do?”
“In most cases,” he says, “binding runes are used to contain power—kind of like a magical lockbox.”
“Most cases? What are the others?”
“Sometimes they can be used to siphon power from one person or object to another, as with a curse. Our gargoyle curse, for example, is bound by demonic magic. It makes the dark fae part of the spell that much more terrible and powerful.”
“But Ihaveno magic. I was born impotent.”
“Unless you weren’t,” I say. “What if youweren’tborn without magic, West? What if that magic was just… just bound?”
“Eloise,” she whispers, tears filling her eyes. “What if she—”
“Hey.” Rook draws her into his embrace, rubbing slow circles on her back. “For one thing, Eloise isn’t fae, and this is definitely a fae rune. More importantly, we said we wouldn’t jump to conclusions, right? This is another clue. Another piece of the puzzle. You’ve been marked with a fae rune—it appears to be a binding rune. We don’t know why, or by whom, or when.”
“If it showed up last night,” she says, “maybe I caused it. Whatever happened to me when I was cutting up those mages… I didn’t feel like myself. I still can’t remember it. Maybe I—”
“Correlation does not imply causation.” Rook pulls back, his hands wrapped around her arms. “It’s possible the two thingsarerelated, but we can’t say for sure your actions last night caused the rune to appear, any more than we can say the rune caused your actions last night. We have to—”
“Do more research,” she says with a soft sigh. “I’m catching on.”
Rook smiles. “You really are a quick study.”
