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The Keeper stared at him for a second, one eyebrow raised, as if he wasn’t quite sure whether to trust Hale and his questions. “I think we have about a quarter of the spells properly entered into the database and tagged so they can be searched.”
“Run across any interesting spells?”
Harrison’s handsome face furrowed and he glared at the ground for a moment. “I’m not sure what you’d consider an interesting spell.”
Hale shrugged and shoved his hands into the back pockets of his jeans. “I don’t know. I guess anything out of the ordinary.”
That earned him two raised eyebrows, but Harrison’s expression did have a good point. Weren’t magic spells out of the ordinary in the first place?
Hale laughed at himself. “Okay, how about any spells that caught your eye?”
“Oh, well…there was an unexpected spell for washing dishes.” Hale thought he might have seen one corner of Harrison’s mouth twitch in an almost smile, but it might have also been a muscle spasm. “I hadn’t thought something like that would be included within the spell books.”
“True, true,” Hale agreed with a nod. There was a good chance he would need to get this man drunk to get him to laugh or at least smile. He’d never encountered anyone quite so stiff before.
“Did you study any spells as part of the society?”
Harrison shook his head. “We had several volumes dedicated to spells that our past Keepers had seen the Weavers use, but we never had any actual spells to study. Keepers and Guardians can’t do magic. We’re just normal humans.”
“That’s a shame. It would have been fun growing up studying magic.”
Harrison’s lips pulled into a frown. “If any of the Guardians had used magic, it would have increased the chances of the pestilents locating the society and the Heart. We couldn’t have risked such a thing.”
He had a point, but it still would have been fun to grow up with magic. Hale would have loved to have grown up with his power of air magic. Flying through the air would have driven his mother crazy with worry and his brothers would have been insanely jealous, but it would have been a great way to escape from his studies for a few hours.
From the corner of his eye, he saw Cort straighten, his attention sharpening toward the motel. Hale turned around to see Dane and Clay crossing the parking lot to them. The leader of the Weavers appeared to be weary, his shoulders slightly hunched and lines digging into his face. They all seemed to be more than a little tired, and it didn’t feel like it was just from the drive. They were all fearful of the pestilents catching up to them. Things were quiet now, but how long would it take for the bastards to catch up to them again?
A chill ran down Hale’s spine that had nothing to do with the wind whipping through the nearly empty lot. He’d survived days of captivity with the pestilents, the air tainted by their rotten odor, always aware that they could march into his prison and kill him at any moment. And for what? At the time, so much of what they said to him, when they even bothered to talk to him, didn’t make any sense. He didn’t understand why they’d fixated on him. Only that his life as well as the lives of others were hanging by a thread.
“I got the last five rooms in the place,” Clay announced as he joined their group gathered near the three SUVs at the back of the lot. He handed a plastic card in a little paper folder to Baer and another to Calder. “We’re all on the first floor, facing the parking lot. Ice machine is broken. You’ll have to go to the office if you need more towels.” He handed a card to Grey and then one to Hale.
“In the morning, the office offers hot coffee and bagels,” Dane added.
Lucien wrinkled his nose at the card in his lover’s hand. “I knew we’d be roughing it, but bagels and no ice? That’s what we’ve come to?”
Baer laughed. “This is roughing it for you? This isn’t roughing it. Wait till we start camping.”
“I’m not sleeping on the ground, you fucking lumberjack,” Lucien grumbled.
“That’s why we got an air mattress,” Gio crowed.
Wiley wrapped both of his fists in Baer’s shirt and pulled him down so that their noses touched. “We have an air mattress, right? You’re not going to make me sleep on the cold, hard ground, are you?”
Baer smiled warmly and kissed the tip of Wiley’s nose. “No, baby. I wouldn’t make you sleep on the ground. We have an air mattress too.”
“Excuse me,” Harrison said sharply, raising his voice above the madness. “Are you sure there are no more rooms?”
“No more rooms,” Clay confirmed. “You’re sharing with Hale.”
