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Smoky was at their side instantly, and Shamas found himself dangling from the dragon’s grasp. The look on Smoky’s face was terrifying and cruel.
“You dare to shake my wife?”
Shamas kicked at him, livid. “She’s my cousin and I loved her before you ever knew she existed!”
“You really choose to say that to me?” Smoky turned toward the door, Shamas struggling against his grasp. “I will show you what I do to—”
“Stop.” Camille’s voice was sharp. “He didn’t hurt me. Smoky, you have to let me fight my own battles. I need your help when it comes to the demons and dragons of the world, but not my relatives.”
Smoky slowly put Shamas down. “I am trying, my wife. But remember: I am a dragon. This is not easy for me.”
“I know.” She wrapped her arms around his waist and leaned up to kiss him. “You have nothing to worry about. Shamas and I are cousins. Nothing more. What we felt years ago has long changed.”
I glanced over at Shamas. I was sure that he didn’t feel the same way. He rubbed his neck where his collar had chafed him. After a moment, he cleared his throat and turned to Smoky and Camille.
“I’m sorry. Camille, I’ve never forgiven myself for not standing up to my family about us. I crumbled. And I ran away because of the pressure.” He hung his head. “Forgive me? Please? Smoky, I would never intrude on your relationship. It’s obvious Camille’s madly in love with the three of you. I just…I just want to be friends. Cousins, again. Without her hating me.”
The silence in the room was deafening. Shamas looked heartbroken, his cockiness vanished under a wave of despair and loneliness that was tangible—palpable. Camille closed her eyes, breathing deep. Smoky waited for her move. After a moment, she reached out, took Shamas’s hands in hers.
“I believe you. I forgive you. You’re with us now. You’re helping us. You made a hard choice. We all make mistakes. I should know about that.” She glanced over at Smoky, who gave her a nod and took his seat again.
Shamas held out his arms and Camille hugged him, kissing his cheek. “Thank you. I promise, I’ll make you proud of me.” He gave her a faint smile.
“If you’re done with the feel-goods, how about taking a look at this symbol already?” I wasn’t sure why the scene bothered me. Maybe it was that Shamas had never had much use for Menolly or me, but it was obvious he chased after Camille. Or maybe it was that I thought Camille was too quick to forgive, and it probably stemmed from her being afraid Smoky would mangle our cousin rather from her truly being okay with what was going on. Or maybe…maybe I was just on edge lately and taking it out on everybody around me. We’d all been so stressed, I was surprised we hadn’t gotten in more arguments than we had.
Shamas blinked, then shrugged and peered at the symbol. “Sorcerer’s Tongue for sure—Firespeak. And that…is the symbol for the Subterranean Realms.”
“The Sub-Realms.” I bit my lip, staring at the website. “What the fuck is information about the Sub-Realms doing on the Internet?”
“There’s one way to find out.” Shamas pointed to a link. “Register under a fake name and find out.”
I shivered. The last thing I wanted to do was hang out in a sorcerers’ chat room. “I don’t know the lingo. What about you?”
“Me?” Shamas cocked his head. “I could do it. But we need to create a fake e-mail address on one of the webmail servers.”
“You learn fast. They could still look up our IP address, but not if I call Tim and ask him if we can use his proxy server. He can route us around so that whoever owns Fire Burn Me will never find us. Or find Tim.” That was an absolute must. We needed to make sure Tim didn’t get caught in the crossfire. I jotted down a note to call him first thing in the morning. “For now, we’ll create your e-mail address—how about using webbeemail.com? What do you want?”
Shamas thought for a moment. “Ixsornosum at webbeemail dot com.” He spelled it out for me. “It’s a sorcerer’s term meaning ‘My desire is my Will.’ It’s a specialized credo that will be recognized by anybody who’s seriously studied sorcery. They’ll know I’m experienced. No one would use that name without the training to back it up. They’d be setting themselves up for retaliation if they were discovered.”
The look on his face scared me. He noticed my reaction and shrugged. “What can I say? There are harsh penalties in the world of sorcery for those who tread on toes. And pretending to be a sorcerer when you aren’t brings with it harsh repercussions. So does knowing the secret dialects of Firespeak if you haven’t been given the training. Spies have been killed before for trying to infiltrate the inner societies.”>Oh, a dragon could bust through it, or maybe a strong demon, but they’d have to find it first, behind the bookcase. But Tregarts and bloatworgles and most other vampires—they couldn’t get through to her.
“Camille and the guys are on the way down. I called Rozurial on his cell phone and woke him up. He, Shamas, and Vanzir will be up here in a few minutes. Did you want Hanna?”
“Hanna is already awake.” Her voice echoed through the kitchen, and we turned to see her standing there. “What’s going on? Is Iris okay?”
“Iris is fine, Hanna. We just have important info to go over. Could you please make a pot of tea, and maybe find something for us to eat?” I turned to the others. “I’m going to wait till everyone is here. And then we have some decisions to make. And a table to find.”
“Table?” Camille, blurry eyed, wandered into the room, followed by Smoky, Morio, and Trillian.
“Yeah…because we’re stuck on the tracks and there’s a train barreling down on us. And Van and Jaycee are right up there at the controls.”
My nerves were jumping. Somehow, I knew that even Van and Jaycee weren’t the ones with the final say on things. The image of the bald-headed man kept flickering through my mind. Bigger, badder forces were at work, and I feared actually finding out just who they were and what they could do.
Chapter 11
Once everyone was gathered around the table, I outlined everything that had happened. I was still high off the catch and felt like I’d had a triple shot of espresso. And I wasn’t a caffeine junkie like Camille.
“We have to find that table. If we find the table, we have a starting place. I remember seeing it—I distinctly remember seeing it, but I can’t pinpoint where.” I described it to them in detail, hoping it would spark some memories. After all, most of them had been one place or another with me over the past couple years.
