CHAPTERSEVENTEEN
They debated flying to Oslo, but in the end decided that a plane would be too problematic. And traceable. Malachi, Leo, and Rhys decided to drive. Borrowing a new car from Gabriel, they left as soon as Rhys made it back to the house. The scholar was going in circles with his research into Ava’s family background, so he decided to join them. Max hadn’t given them much information. He didn’t know Ava’s exact location, only how to find her, and he claimed that Oslo was the starting point.
“Be prepared,” he had warned. “There is something going on here. Something big. Grigori are swarming the city. The local scribe house has been inundated and has even called on neighboring houses to help. It’s dangerous. Volund’s soldiers are everywhere.”
There was, of course, no talk of Grigori aggression in Vienna. Gabriel quietly took note of the information, then procured a car for the three scribes to borrow indefinitely. It might have been cramped in back, but it was enough for Leo to stretch out while Rhys took a turn during the eighteen-hour drive.
The modern highway sped past as Malachi watched out the window, alternately disturbed and comforted by how familiar and yet foreign the drive turned out to be.
“I’ve driven this route before,” he said to Rhys. “Many times, I think.”
“Probably.” Rhys reached for the cup of coffee he’d been nursing. “You were in Berlin for a long time. I imagine you drove this way when you went to Vienna.”
He frowned. “Would I have gone to Vienna much?”
“You were second to the Watcher in Berlin. I imagine you spent plenty of time there.”
Malachi shifted uncomfortably. “Konrad called me something when we met with him.”
“What?” The corner of Rhys’s mouth lifted. “The ‘Butcher’ thing?”
“Yes.”
The other scribe chuckled. “You loved that nickname. Cultivated it, once upon a time.”
“Why?”
“Because fear is as potent a weapon as fists or knives,” Rhys said. “Think of how many Grigori avoided Berlin knowing that a scribe known as ‘The Butcher’ was there.”
“So they simply went someplace else. What made Berlin more important than any other city?”
“It’s not more important or less, Malachi. But… we all have places that are significant.”
“And my parents died in Berlin.” He remembered what Konrad had said.
“Yes, they did,” Rhys said. “And when you returned to the city, you painted the walls red with Grigori blood.”
“It sounds like I was very angry.”
“You were. For hundreds of years, you were angry. Until you met Ava, I think.”
Ava. His heart ached with unknown longing. He hungered for something but couldn’t remember the taste.
“We all grieve in different ways,” Rhys said quietly.
Malachi tried to control his frustration. His past was a giant empty wound that would occasionally offer up a bubble of insight. But for the most part, there was nothing. Flashes of knowledge. An image. A scent memory. Most of what his mind offered him came from his childhood. His training. There were occasional flashes of Ava, but nothing concrete.
“You weren’t getting anywhere with the research into her family?” he asked Rhys.
“I’ve run into a brick wall. Her mother’s family is transparent. Grandparents. Great-grandparents. Ava told me once that her mother’s family didn’t talk much about their history, but it was relatively easy to find. French and German, mostly. Midwestern immigrants who came in the middle of the 1800s. Nothing about them stands out as having any supernatural origins. It’s her father who is the problem.”
“So it must be there.”
Rhys opened his mouth. Closed it. Finally, he said, “It goes against everything we know about Irin biology, but yes, it must be on her father’s side.”
“So her grandmother must have been Irina?”
“She must have been. And for Ava to be as powerful as she is, her blood must have been potent. Old. To not be diluted in the third generation, her grandmother must have been extraordinary.”
“But we know nothing about her.”
Rhys shook his head. “Her father is a musical genius, obviously, so the angelic blood shows there. But he had a normal—well, normal for him—relationship with Ava’s mother, so he’s not an Irin male. Not like we are.”
“Does he have any other children beside Ava?”
“Not that we know of.”
“Curious.”
“Or just careful,” Rhys said. “He doesn’t seem like the fatherly type.”
“No.” Though from what Malachi had learned of Ava’s father, perhaps his absence had been a blessing in disguise.
“So, Ava’s magic must come from her paternal grandmother, whom we have no records for except a single note on her father’s file that his mother was also named Ava.”
Malachi said, “Leo and I think that Reed hid her records. As an adult, we think he paid to have them disappear.”
“Why?”