Page 180 of Serpent and Shadow

Annoyed by their astonished looks, Bones aimed his ire at Greythorne.

“Where?” he snapped.

Alaric jumped, then pointed. “There. Right there. The monocerus stable. See the sign? No one will bother us in there… and I know the owner a little.”

Bones was already walking before Alaric finished speaking.

“Fuck! No… STOP!” Caelum gasped. “STOP!”

He winced as Alaric eased off, and realized he was still gripping Jolie Harringbone’s hand, now tightly enough he had to be hurting her.

He relaxed his fingers guiltily, giving her what probably appeared to be an annoyed look, but she stubbornly held on, seemingly unfazed. He wasn’t even sure which part he felt guilty about. He knew Jolie was more tolerant of the shit that came spewing out of his mouth on occasiona, but he also knew Joran was definitely not liking him touching her.

“Joran, huh?” he said, still panting from the pain.

Harringbone glanced at Joran, her lips twitching, before she looked back at Bones and shrugged. “Suppose so.”

“You could do better.”

Nyx burst out in a laugh, but Joran wasn’t amused.

“Fuck you, you murderous prick,” he snapped.

Alaric continued to flip through the book he’d pulled out of his satchel, muttering in Sanskrit as he stared at the ring around Caelum’s neck. “What am I doing wrong, Minh?” he asked. “I did the spell exactly the way it’s written.”

“What about blood?” Nyx suggested. “Could he have locked it specifically to himself, using blood?”

“Pretty dark,” Darragh muttered, casting another diagnostic over the collar. “But definitely possible.”

“Possible?” Caelum scoffed. He frowned up incredulously at all of them. “You say you’ve been working on this with Leda and Mocking and this is the first time that’s crossed any of your minds? That Malefic Bones might’ve used dark magic to chain me to him?”

He scowled, then scanned through their faces.

“Where is Mocking?” he asked.

Jolie squeezed his hand, as if in warning. Bones felt a flicker of alarm when he saw Miranda Rook’s eyes grow suddenly bright.

“He’s still in there,” Jolie said.

“He opted to stay behind,” Darragh explained. “Something to do with Blackstone. He took those drugs Leda asked me for,” he added, glancing at Jolie. “It’s probable it has something to do with that. Or maybe old Blackstone has something up his sleeve.”

Caelum frowned, looking between them as they spoke.

“Even if it’s blood, you should still be able to break it,” Nyx insisted next, her attention still on Bones’s collar. “He has a divinity primal, right? Like Leda? Is there some way to harness that? It should be able to override the blood, if he can convince it to.”

“He should be able to use his own blood, in theory,” Alaric mused. “His father’s mixed their blood a few times… with the loyalty pledge to Dark Cathedral, and with the do-no-harm thing he forced on him as a kid.”

Joran scoffed, but neither Alaric nor Nyx glanced at him.

Caelum frowned, listening to their back and forth.

Just how long had they been working on this?

And divinity primal? Had Leda told them that?

He glanced in the direction of the barn door, fighting the urge to snap at all of them again, or maybe just search the barn until he found a good set of cutting sheers. He was almost willing to risk the collar murdering him if there was a better than half chance he might break free. His anxiety, now that he was out of the dungeon, was off the charts. It was making his heart hammer in his chest. He still couldn’t feel Leda, or talk to her, which was unsettling enough.

“Can you use your Obeah weirdness to see any more about what’s going on at the school?” Caelum asked Arcturus, for what had to be the fifteenth time. “Can you sense Leda’s magic? Is she still there?”