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It’s tucked away in my wallet right now, he’d said.It brought me back to you. I’d like to know it always could again.
My throat squeezed tight. Who else could it be? What else could he be talking about?
My hand shook as I fumbled for my new phone. I typed a quick text to the group conversation with the rest of my consorts.
I just got a message. I think it’s from Gabriel.
I couldn’t stand there waiting to see how they’d answer. I ducked back into the magicking room and set down my purse. With a slow breath, I summoned the energy of my spark again. I didn’t need to light any fires this time. Just to touch the essence of a piece of paper that had meant so much to me in so many ways both before I’d given it to Gabriel and afterward.
My arms drifted through the air. My tongue moved, forming the syllables of words I’d read so often I knew them by heart. I pictured that day those months ago when all my longing for my former friend had welled up inside me and I’d gone into the forest to the old witching ruins to try to summon him here through that page.
A faintly sweet flavor trembled across my tongue. A tickle of energy shot down my throat. It formed into a tiny bead of sensation in my chest—a bead that gave me a faint tug to the west, as if I were being drawn by a tiny glowing thread.
That way. That was where the page was. And maybe my missing consort too.
* * *
“Are you sure this is a good idea?” Damon said, peering out the window from where he was sitting next to me in the back of the car. The Portland suburbs slipped by us. “What if it’s a trap Frankford got him to set up?”
I closed my eyes, focusing for a moment on the tug of magic that had brought us this far. The magic that was tracing the path between me and the page I’d given Gabriel. “If the Frankfords wanted me to show up somewhere, having him say where he needed to meet me would make more sense. I’m the only person who could have understood that message—well, except the four of you. Why would he do that unless he was sending something he didn’t want them to understand if they saw it? Something he was hiding from them?”
“Why would he send us on this scavenger hunt at all?” Damon said.
At my other side, Jin slipped his hand around mine. “That’s what we’re here to find out, isn’t it?”
“The Frankfords can’t come right out and hurt us directly,” Kyler said from the front passenger seat. “The oath stops them. They’ve had tons of chances to attack us a lot more effectively otherwise.”
“That doesn’t mean it couldn’t be a trap to hurt usindirectly,” Seth put in. He checked the street signs as he hit the brake at a stop sign. “Still straight here?”
“Keep going,” I said. “And we’ll be cautious. I’m not going running in anywhere assuming it’s all good. But we have to see. Do any of you really think we should have ignored that message?”
The silence that followed that question gave me my answer. I shut my eyes to tune back into that thread of connection.
Gabriel wasn’t with the page anymore. We were close enough to the spot that I’d have sensed his presence through our consort bond now if he had been. When I’d stretched my awareness out to search for him as we approached, I’d gotten a vague impression from the opposite edge of the city, where the Frankfords’ house here was. Hewasstill with them, I had to assume.
So, what was it he could have wanted me to see?
The lawns and more distantly spaced houses gave way to packed city streets. The thread of magic tugged me. “Take the next right turn,” I said. We cruised by a few blocks, and the tug shifted again. “Now left. Wait. Stop here.”
Seth found a spot to park by the curb. It was mid-afternoon now, but a cooler breeze broke the summer air as I climbed out of the car. I paused for a second on the sidewalk, getting my bearings. Focusing on that tug inside me.
It reeled me back down the street until I reached what looked like a posh nightclub, tidy brick exterior with a sleek black sign, the name of the place written there in graceful white lettering.Den of Spades. I shifted my hands in a quick casting, searching for any signs of magicking in or around the building, but there didn’t appear to be any spells laid in the area.
I started up the front steps tentatively, expecting to send another testing spell before I entered, but the tug stilled as I reached the black doormat. Okay. I was here. Where was the page?
I prodded the thread of connection delicately, and my hand lifted to a plaque mounted to the side of the door, proclaiming the building’s historical legacy. The barest tip of a piece of paper protruded from behind it. My heart skipped a beat.
No unsparked person could have fished that paper out. I summoned it with a twitch of my fingers over the plaque, and it leapt from between the brass and brick with a soft rasp. I clutched it against my palm.
Two men in business suits were coming up the steps now, one of them giving me an odd look. I slipped past them down to the sidewalk.
“That’s it?” Ky said, glancing at the club. “You found it?”
I nodded. “Let’s get back in the car to look at it. It’s safe enough. No magic on it.” Except the tinge my love had imbued it with.
We piled back into the car in the same positions. Seth and Ky twisted around to watch as I unfolded the paper. My pulse thumped on at a frantic rhythm. There had to be some reason Gabriel had left it there, had told me to come for it. None of this made sense yet.
It still didn’t make sense in the first instant my eyes fell on the open page. Gabriel had scrawled seven pairs of words—seven names, I realized after a moment—in the margins, his handwriting so messy I almost couldn’t decipher the letters. As if he’d been writing without even being able to look at what he was doing, I thought, a lump rising in my throat.
