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“Please. Do you see how they were able to summon the banshees?”
Jack stared at the phone.
“I didn’t find anything.”
“Nothing, no rituals or elven text?”
“No.”
“Send us everything you do have,” Argent’s voice was cold.
“Done.” Jack’s wire withdrew from the phone.
“Do you have anything else for us, Jack?”
“No, ma’am.”
His eyes flicked to Adam’s.
“Then you may continue your search for the Archive Infinite.” Argent smiled. “Adam, you’re with me.”
She left the library.
She knows, Jack mouthed.
Yeah. Adam answered over his shoulder as he chased after her.
Argent hadn’t gone far. She opened a door down the hall and gestured for him to enter.
Stepping through, he found himself in the last place he wanted to go. He’d have preferred Shepherd’s domain on a hot summer day, with all the drawers open and the corpses naked.
When the immortals had reconstructed the eastern watchtower and created RCC, they’d needed anchors, places in the mortal realm where the towers would connect to the cardinal points. In Denver that was the downtown clock tower, a unique building that looked like it belonged somewhere in Italy. In Oklahoma, it was Liberty House, the “school,”—and he used the term very loosely—where he’d been institutionalized until he’d turned eighteen and walked out the door.
They’d given the place an extensive makeover. The walls were no longer covered by peeling paint or just raw cinderblocks that trapped the cold and humidity. Everything was plastered and fresh, including the polished hardwood floors, but none of the new trappings put him at ease.
The past echoed. There was the spot where an orderly had slapped him for asking a question or the place where one kid had beaten his head against the wall until he left a splash of red.
“Adam?” Argent called.
He had frozen, hand pressed to the wall, trying to see if he could feel an indent. The smell of the blood was long gone, but the memory . . .
“Adam,” she said gently. “I’m sorry for bringing you here, but this is the last place anyone would expect to find you. I know your feelings about it must be complicated.”
“No, they’re really not.”
A lot of his history was. His feelings about some people and places, more so. There wasn’t any complexity here. Liberty House had been a horror show, a prison, and if he could, if he could get away with it, he’d burn it to the ground.
“Why are we here?”
She nodded toward another door and they stepped into her office. She closed the door behind them and he felt her wards seal them in.
Here, they were safe. There were few things in all the universe that could break in, and if any such power did, he likely wouldn’t have time to notice it before it incinerated him.
The space was surprisingly modern, more like her taste in cars than clothing. She gestured to one of the chairs across from the desk, a glass-topped affair with perfectly ordered knickknacks atop it. It was a powerful contrast to Jesse’s, which had stacks of paper or random car parts scattered over its beaten steel surface.
“I wished to speak in private, and here, I am certain we can. This is a place of power, my power. Not even my brother could breach it.”
“This is about the knight, isn’t it?”
