Darkest Misery (17 page)

“So I take it that broke up the meeting?”

“Weeell.” Lucen made me wait while he drank more beer. “I think the meeting could have survived if it weren't for the other disaster. I can't believe you didn't hear about this where you are.”

Devon put his hands on my shoulders. “You've met Tom Kassin. He's fairly single-minded and is probably trying to keep Jess focused.”

Lucen shook his head. “Yeah, but seeing as this concerns us.”

“What?” I asked, a second time.

“Atlanta.”

Lucen didn't have to be more specific. From his tone, it was obvious what had happened, and I almost jumped out of my chair, but Devon's hands got in the way. “No. How bad?”

Lucen must have brought his laptop closer to his face because his head got larger. “As bad as you'd expect. I'd say this was almost exactly the same M.O. too.”

I pushed down my fear as best I could, but my blood wouldn't be warmed. “Buenos Aires, Sydney and Atlanta. That's three. If they have the Vessels, they only need two more.”

“Europe, Asia or Africa—should we start placing bets on which continent goes next?”

“You're making unfunny jokes,” I told Devon.

“Things are less scary when you can laugh at them.” He leaned over my shoulder so he could see the laptop better. “In light of this, is his Supreme Upper Asshole still not saying anything useful?”

Lucen smiled grimly at the description of Claudius. “I don't know. The meeting broke up when the news came in. The Gryphons left to confer, and Dezzi went with Claudius. He doesn't like me, so she might have thought she could talk sense into him better alone. That was only a couple hours ago. I'm hoping she'll call later.”

“When do we start to panic?” I mused aloud, but I was mostly talking to myself. “Three down, two to go, and we're not getting anywhere half as fast.”

Lucen glared at me through the camera. “You don't panic. You keep doing what you're doing where you are. I do think we need to be more proactive on this side of the Atlantic though. The Gryphons need to lean harder on the magi. Fuck Xander. It's not as though he's the only one with connections among them. And we need to think about expanding our allies. Dezzi should talk more to Eyff. There hasn't been a breakthrough on the murder investigation, but we don't have time to wait for everyone's feathers to un-ruffle.”

“Agreed,” Devon said. “I'm so disappointed our people sent Claudius instead of someone more reasonable. There had to have been a better choice.”

Discussing satyr politics wasn't anything I was interested in, and I drank more wine, too stressed out to appreciate the taste. It wasn't until Devon started massaging my shoulders that my attention returned to the men's conversation.

“You know what else I think? I think we need to help Jess relax so she can sleep tonight.”

Lucen grinned. “Excellent idea. I even have a plan for how to do this remotely.”

I held out my glass to Devon. “Fill please. Whatever you two are scheming, I don't think I'm drunk enough yet.”

Chapter Twenty-Three

Tom didn't want to talk to me about Atlanta other than to acknowledge the situation wasn't good. Well, no shit. He did, however, get called into a meeting with members of the Brotherhood, leaving me and Marie in the archives without him.

The silence and dreary tediousness of the work left me restless, and the hours of sitting drove me batshit. I'd regretted never going to college, but if this was what it was like to study, I couldn't help think I'd been better off. Poorer, possibly, but at least when I'd been waiting tables, I never started having auditory hallucinations or too much time to daydream.

The latter was particularly problematic as my daydreams tended to involve two satyrs, and then I became bored
and
horny. And until the evening came around, there was nothing I could do about either problem.

The ceaseless whir of the A/C droned on as I made my way down a row of shelves, searching for another book I had depressingly low hopes for. A moment of horror when I almost dropped it livened up my life for a split second, then normality returned. The book was larger than anything I'd checked out yet, and consequently it weighed a ton. But it was just as fragile as the others, and I feared what a good smack on the floor would have done to it.

I set it down on one of the tables within the archive itself, missing the gentle clicking sounds of Umut's scanner, which at least came in irregular intervals. Irregular intervals gave the brain something to notice and therefore offset auditory hallucinations. Or so was my working theory.

Taking a deep breath, I flipped open the cover. Naturally, a book like this had no index, but the archivist who'd stashed it away had said it contained information about the Pit, and one of the keywords it had been logged under was “key”. Alas, I'd have to read the whole thing to find the word, and the English was as archaic as the book.

I yawned, fidgeted and occasionally twitched when I thought I heard Marie nearby, but no one else was ever there. My head was propped on my left hand, my right hand turned the pages, and my eyes glazed over. Focusing on the words became difficult.

So thank dragons the book contained interesting illustrations, one of which was a fancy key.

I inhaled sharply and sat up. With a white-gloved hand, I traced my finger over the difficult-to-decipher English. Best as I could tell, the author was merely reciting things about the fury prison we already knew, but at last I discovered a small paragraph with something useful.

I read through it several times, wishing I had an English-to-English dictionary for help, but I thought I caught the gist. Surely Tom or someone else here was more fluent in sixteenth-century verbiage and could translate.

The book had several silk bookmarks attached, so I used one to mark the page and hurried into the research room. It must have been about lunchtime because Umut was gone, and Marie was getting ready to leave.

“Is Tom still in his meeting?”

“I think so, yes.” She beckoned me forward. “You want to come to lunch?”

My stomach growled. “Yeah, sure.”

I'd learned the hard way that light breakfasts plus skipping lunch and a long time until dinner did not improve my research skills or my mood. The book would have to wait.

The upside of getting food was that Tom had returned to the archives before we did, and I practically dragged him out of his chair when we got back. “I found something, but I'm not one hundred percent positive I'm translating it right.”

He bounded after me into the archive while Umut looked on in amusement. “Why aren't you sure?”

“Well, the English is painful, and it doesn't make much sense. But it means Olef was on to something.” I led Tom to the book and pointed to the passage. “It sounds like the people who created the Pit needed to make some kind of key as part of the spell, along with the Vessels. But the key could then be used to unlock the prison. Since no one wanted that obviously, they tossed the key into the prison when they sealed it so it could never be unlocked from the outside.”

Tom's brow furrowed in concentration as he read, and he flipped the page a couple times as if hoping more text would appear. None did—I'd already checked. “That's my read of it too,” he said after a couple minutes. “This part right here explains the key can't be used from the inside.”

I grabbed the back of a chair, my blood racing. “So whatever Olef was on to means something. But it also doesn't make sense.”

“Why not?” He checked the book's covers.

“Because he wrote ‘Jess use key'. How can I use a key locked inside a prison we're trying to stop from being opened, and why would I?”

Unless, that was, Olef had known more that we'd never learned. What if he hadn't merely had visions of cities burning but also of the prison opening? I shivered and declined to mention this idea.

If Tom had the same one, he also kept the gloomy possibility to himself. “Are there any other mentions of the key?”

“In this book? No clue. This is as far as I got. I searched the rest of the chapter, but then I ended up going to lunch.”

Tom pulled a slip of paper from the table and jotted down information about the book, including the author's name. “We can see if he wrote anything else, but you should finish. These older scholars weren't always the most organized. There could be more in some of the later chapters.”

I tried to suppress my groan but apparently failed given the way Tom glared at me. “What? I thought you had me training to be a warrior, not a researcher.”

“It's true, although this was your idea. Maybe we should take a break soon so we can work on your other skills.”

“Oh, I have skills?” I smiled because the thought of doing anything to get out of the archives appealed, even if it meant being lectured by Tom. My discovery, exciting as it was, could not get my adrenaline going for more than a few minutes.

Unfortunately, the archives was where I was to remain for several more hours. Tom left to follow up on whatever he was doing, and I went back to the book. Hope that it really did contain more badly organized information was all that kept me going, but the hope diminished with each new page. When I got to the end, I was ready to drown myself in a vat of coffee.

The archive rule was that anything you didn't check out had to be returned as soon as you were done. Since we'd made note of the book, I took it back to its shelf, and I swore it felt heavier this time around. If I was lucky, Tom was ready to go do that training session. My back ached from being hunched over, and my fidgeting was starting to annoy even me.

As I slid the book in place, the bright red cover of the one next to it caught my eye. Whatever you weren't searching for was always more fascinating than what you were, so I picked it up, curious about what other treasures were locked away in this vast warehouse.

A Treatise on the Nature of Transformative Magic.
Idly, I opened the cover and scanned the contents. It was a more modern book than what I'd been reading, published in the late eighteen hundreds. It also seemed to take pains to treat its subject area like a science. The author described being inspired by the “flourishing field of medicine and the recent biological discoveries of Mr. Darwin” and others whose names I didn't recognize.

The chapter titles read almost as much like a medical textbook as they did a magical one. Amused, I skimmed through them until the last one made me catch my breath.

IX. Reversing the Effects of Transformative Magic

Reversing the effects. Holy shit. This was the very thing I'd been wanting to know—was it possible?

I wet my lips, bidding the guilt that bubbled up inside me to go away. Just because I wished I could make Lucen human again didn't mean he wished for the same. And my reasons for wanting him human were entirely selfish. I wanted him to myself. I hated having to share him with addicts.

I supposed I should feel hypocritical since I was sexing it up with Devon, but I couldn't. What I'd told Devon the other day was true—I liked him. But I'd cut Devon from my life without a second thought if it meant a normal life with Lucen.

My fingers trembled as I flipped the page.

“Find something new?” Tom asked.

I almost dropped the book, so lost in my thoughts I hadn't heard him arrive. “Uh, no. I knocked this off the shelf while I was putting the other one away.”

Lying to Tom was a subconscious decision, one that I wrote off to more guilt. This time that I'd been distracted from my real purpose. But whatever the cause, I didn't need him knowing what I'd found so interesting in the book. I'd likely get another lecture about relationships with satyrs.

I slid the book on the shelf, making a mental note of the red cover and which book I'd found it by. I'd be back to the archives tomorrow. And if tomorrow yielded no time, the day after. Assuming the furies didn't carry out their plans by then.

“Are we going to train?” I asked.

We did for another two hours, only it wasn't physical training like I'd been hoping for. Tom took me to an empty lab and began instructing me in the finer points of defensive magic. From creating basic counter-curses to healing charms to the rudiments of how to make quick and dirty curse grenades—it sounded more exciting than it was. In fact, it all resembled chemistry too much to be fascinating in the details. I also wasn't ready to do more than learn the fundamentals, so there was no mixing magical anti-pred dust for me yet.

For the third day in a row, I had the beginnings of a headache when I left the building. Devon waited across the street at a café, same as he'd done yesterday, his horns hidden by a disguise charm. I wondered what the Gryphons going in and out of the building thought of it. They might not see the satyr in their midst, but they'd sense him and certainly wonder if one was staking out the building.

“Where to tonight?” I asked as he took my arm.

Devon had taken to playing tourist since Tom had refused his offer to help. While not surprising, the refusal was also a touch infuriating. But then, I could understand the Gryphons not wanting a satyr in their archives.

So as not to completely waste time, however, Devon also had taken to designing magic lessons for me. Lucen had suggested it, and I'd reluctantly agreed, so Devon spent about an hour each night magically assaulting me. After my encounter with Claudius, I knew I had to get better at mentally thwarting pred influence without relying on my ability to reverse the bond. I just wasn't sure it was possible to practice such a thing, nor did it help that these training sessions invariably ended up with both of us naked.

But ultimately, the vast hours of Devon's afternoons and late nights without me had been given over to his own research—choosing attractions, restaurants and cafés we could visit in the evening. He'd be wide awake, and I'd be tired but in need of mental rest.

“There's a Moroccan restaurant I want to check out,” Devon said.

“In France?”

“Honestly, Jess, Morocco was a French colony. Why not?”

Why not? Even if I were awake, I'd have had no answer.

I ordered some excellent dish with couscous and more wine, and I was feeling a little too relaxed as we exited the restaurant. Certainly too relaxed for someone in my position. The universe drove home that fact when I caught sight of two familiar-looking men down the street.

I grabbed Devon's arm. “Hold on. Did you see them?”

One of the two glanced over his shoulder the moment I spoke. Our eyes met, then he quickly spun around, and he and his partner disappeared around the corner.

“See who?”

“Two guys.” I dragged Devon with me down the sidewalk. “One's wearing a jeans jacket, and the other has on a colorful scarf. They're not human. I can't sense them, but I saw them earlier at lunch and thought it was weird. They were out early for preds, and magi don't usually bother disguising themselves.”

The amusement in Devon's eyes vanished, and he picked up his pace so that I had to struggle to keep up with his longer legs. If he thought I was being paranoid, he gave no indication of it. “Most nonhumans live on the other side of the city, far from the Gryphons. No idea about the magi.”

We turned the corner, but the street was busy, filled with outdoor table seating and lined with trees. I strained on my toes, my vision stymied by the canvas patio covers on the bistros and a passing bus.

“I see them.” Devon took off, and I followed blindly. “I think they're addicts.”

I kept close behind as we weaved through the crowds. All the wine, combined with the aroma of food and the smell of perfume and sweat, made my insides regret the past hour's indulgence. It would be just what I needed, to catch up with these guys and vomit when I should be fighting.

Note to self: from now on, only one glass of wine after a long day.

“There. Damn.” Devon pulled me toward the intersection, and I saw them at last. A tram stop was up ahead and the tram already there. Although we darted through traffic, we weren't going to make it. I wasn't anyway.

“Go!” I pushed Devon from behind, cursing my spinning head. He could make it if he ran.

He didn't respond, and in unison we slowed to a stop several seconds later as the tram doors shut in front of us.

I swore. “You could have caught them.”

“My job here is to protect you. Not to chase after potential threats. For all we know, seeing them twice was a coincidence.”

I kicked a pebble down the platform. “That guy took off when he saw me watching him. It doesn't feel like a coincidence.”

Devon ran his hands through his hair, catching his breath. “No, it doesn't, but that's all the more reason for me not to abandon you. Who could know you're here?”

It sounded like a rhetorical question, and it had many obvious answers, but I responded aloud anyway. “Everybody. Nobody. The goblins know Tom and I stopped coming to the meetings. They'll have had plenty of opportunities to send new assassins after me. Or Claudius could have figured out the same thing and contacted the local Dom to dispatch me. Or it's the furies.” I gave Devon a quick rundown on my suspicions about a Gryphon leak.