“Has anyone ever tried to eat you?” I paused, momentarily distracted. Just what kind of creature would eat a book wyrm?
“Several times. It didn’t go well for them.”His opal eyes gleamed in the lamplight.“But we’re not here to discuss one of my many brushes with death. You felt it too, didn’t you? The ring calling.”
I crossed to the table and sank into one of the old wooden chairs.
“How’d you know?” Holding my hand up, I studied Gran’s ring, the soft light glinting dully off the silver.
“I don’t know how to explain it really.”Quilliam tilted his head.“I guess I’ve never much had to explain myself before. The closest I could come is to say that because I’m bonded with you, I can feel when there’s a ripple in your force, so to speak. Magick disrupting you. And that ring is trying to tell you something. Loudly.”
“Aye, but what?” I laughed softly, leaning back to stare at the ceiling for a moment. “It’s not like a magickal detector ring or something like that.”
“Isn’t it?”
At that, I snapped upward, regarding my wee book wyrm with curiosity.
“You know what would be super cool? Is if you just told me what I needed to know, Quilliam. My patience, well, it’s not great, okay? Like, I’m holding on by a damn thread here.” My voice caught as I held my fingers up to indicate the short amount of patience I was barely holding on to.
“You’re upset,”Quilliam murmured, coming closer to me.
“Aye, of course I’m upset!” I threw up my hands and Quilliam jumped back, taking flight. “I almost lost Graham today. And I can’t help but think it will happen again. No, Iknowit will happen again. And sure, we can drink and dance and make love and be all happy before the darkness of dawn but, bloody hell, Quilliam, I’m begging you. If you know anything, anything at all, can you please bloody well just tell me?”
“Goodness, lass. Why didn’t you just ask me then?”Quilliam sniffed, and then he flew toward a stack of ancient looking books.
“So help me …”
“Och, wheesht. I do, actually, have something new and potentially useful to offer.”Quilliam landed on a small leather-bound book.“That is, if you can calm your hysterics enough to take a look.”
“Now, Quilliam. Don’t make me punt you into the loch for a misogynistic comment about women and their hysterics. Because I’ll gladly do it,” I threatened, standing and walking over to pick up the book.
My ring flared so hot, I almost dropped the book.
“Damn it,” I hissed and rushed back to the table to lay the book down. Slipping the ring off, I set it by the corner of the book and studied the cover.
“I found this only just tonight. Hidden in a compartment behind one of the shelves. I’ve flown past that shelf a thousand times and never once noticed it. But then, tonight, it just seemed to call to me.”
“You think it called to you?”
“To us. Look.”He tapped the book with one wee claw.“It’s a diary, Agnes. And look at the cover.”
I leaned closer. The leather was old and cracked, but I could make out a symbol pressed into the surface. A chalice design. Theexactdesign engraved on Gran’s ring.
“Did this belong to one of the Alewives?” It’s what I’d heard the unicorn call one branch of my family when it had shared its vision with me. I’d had more time to process now and had remembered the term for those who protected the chalice.
“It belonged to someone connected to them, I think. But here’s the problem.”Quilliam flipped the book open with his snout, revealing pages covered in an unfamiliar script.“I can’t read it. Which says something, because I speak many languages. But the text is encoded.”
I studied the strange letters. They looked almost like Gaelic but twisted somehow. Rearranged.
“A cipher?” My eyebrows lifted.
“Aye. The Wright family often used them to protect sensitive information. And I think it needs a key.”Quilliam’s opal eyes met mine.“Which just might be your ring.”
I looked down at Gran’s ring. It looked so simple and innocuous next to the book, when it could hold answers we so desperately needed. Gran couldn’t have known it had so much …purpose, or she would have been more insistent on trying to find the truth herself.
This is up to me. Agnes Wright, the Bookkeeper.
“You were always deigned for something incredible, wee Agnes.”
I’d largely forgotten Gran’s words to me before she died, being so consumed by grief for the impending losses of her and Graham.Was this what she saw as my role but didn’t tell me?
