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“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.”
Camille let out a harsh snort. “That figures,” she said, but then bit her lip. “I’m sorry. It’s a knee-jerk reaction.”
“Once you’re in the chat room and forums, we can sort through and see if we can find any information to help.” I pushed the laptop back after setting up Shamas’s new e-mail. “What next? We can’t register him until we get the proxy server going with Tim, and I don’t think he’d appreciate being woken up at…” I glanced at the clock. “Oh man, at four thirty in the morning.”
Menolly suddenly jumped out of her chair. “I know where we saw that table! Motherfucking pus bucket.” Her eyes turned bloodred and her fangs descended. “If I’m right, and if it’s what I think it is, I’m going to feast on Wilbur’s blood tonight.”
“Wilbur?” I frowned, trying to remember. We’d been inside his house a couple of times, Menolly a couple more than the rest of us, since she was usually the one who showed up on his doorstep when we needed his help.
A blurry memory of standing in his dining room filtered into my head. The cramped chamber had held a large, old china hutch that was filled with books instead of dishes, and there had been several dusty plants, and…a dining room table. The table I’d described. “You’re right! Wilbur! That’s his table.”
“I knew it!” Menolly started to slam the wall, but Morio caught her wrist. She glared at him for a moment, then stopped. “Sorry.”
“You would have put a hole through it.” He held on to her wrist for a beat longer than he needed to, then stopped, looked at her, then Camille, and let go. Menolly pulled her hand back.
“We need to pay Wilbur a little visit,” she said. “We can do that now. I don’t mind waking him up this early.”
I sighed. “Might as well. Camille, you coming?”
She nodded. “Sure. But I want Smoky and Shade with us. That should be enough. If we show up en masse and we’re wrong, we’ll ostracize someone who has been, up till now, a valuable if questionable ally. Morio and Roz, you two wait near his porch. The rest of you stay here and keep an eye on the house.”
