That would be about par for the course, I thought cynically.
And it looked like other magical societies agreed with them, because it wasn’t just Circle members in the square today. There were a group of mages I didn’t recognize in colorful robes with huge hyenas at their sides. And golden tats on their ebony skin that were almost mesmerizing, since they changed patterns constantly.
They were lounging out front of a café, their pets at their sides, drawing a lot of interested glances. Especially when one of the hyenas rose to its feet, with the wide, gold and jeweled collar it wore releasing a flood of silken material. And then the ‘it’ became a ‘she’, changing in an instant from a sleek beast into a beautiful woman, who sat at the table with the other mages like nothing unusual had happened.
The line moved forward, and I shuffled a few feet ahead, looking away from the square because I needed to think, and that was hard enough without distractions. I’d just spent the last two hours going backward in time, trying to get ahead of the spell on that book. And failing every time, because no matter how far back I went, it stayed the same: blank.
And it always would.
I knew that, because I recognized the spell on it. It was either the same or very similar to one that the demon high council had recently used on Pritkin. He and the demon lords had since made up—sort of—but at one time they’d viewed him as a major threat. Enough of one to knock his soul backward in time, sending it speeding toward the moment of his birth. If it had completed its journey before I’d reached him, it would have literally erased him from existence.
Just like someone had done to page one-ninety-one.
Because that spell had completed, destroying its focus in every time period, leaving literally nothing behind. Someone had really wanted Nodo D’Amore erased from history. Enough to invade the library to place the spell, and then to burn it to down to hide what they’d done? Because that was kind of how it looked.
What I couldn’t figure out was why.
Yeah, most copies of Lover’s Knot had been destroyed centuries ago, since it had some unfortunate side effects. The big one being that it bound two people together on a metaphysical level, to the point that, magically speaking, they were one person. Meaning that, if one died, they both did.
It was one reason I was so pissed at Mircea about that little detour into Faerie. He hadn’t just been risking his own life. He’d been risking mine.
But, normally, that wasn’t how it worked; in fact, it was the opposite problem that had relegated Lover’s Knot to the garbage pile of history.
The spell had been used in some of the old vampire wars, to give master vamps the power of a mage, making them even more deadly than they already were. But the opposite side figured that out and started targeting the magic users that the vamps were linked to, which were much easier kills. After one too many masters was lost when his mage lover died, the spell was discontinued and the copies of it destroyed.
Except for that one, apparently.
Some loud whoops broke out behind me, making me flinch and look around. I spied a group of new recruits, none of whom looked to be over sixteen, taking pot shots at the wall of rotating heads. Their spells dispersed the magic momentarily, making the most wanted list into their own personal shooting gallery.
But their fun didn’t last. A blue light started flashing from no discernable source, splashing the bricks and the boys’ suddenly worried faces. And then a couple of pissed-off looking war mages showed up to crack some skulls.
That ended the game, but one of the boys had been holding onto a final spell and accidentally released it, earning him a cuff around the ears and exploding Jonathan’s head. And causing me to remember that brief, weird vision I’d had of him, as seen through a cat’s eyes. What had he been doing in that library?
From what I understood, Jonathan was pretty high up in the Black Circle, the evil counterpart to the Silver who were allied with our enemies in the war. He was like a general or something, their specialist on weird, old and forgotten spells, and a mastermind of creative attacks in the war. So, what had he been doing on a raid? Didn’t they usually use flunkies for that?
Yet he had been there. Maybe because the spell used on Pritkin wasn’t one that just anybody could lay. The entity that had hexed him was head of the Demon High Council himself, a hugely powerful being known as Adra. I wasn’t even sure that a regular mage could cast it, but if anyone could, it was Jonathan.
You learned a lot in something like nine hundred years.
I was nearing the counter with all the gorgeous pastries, but today, I couldn’t focus on them. Because none of this made sense. It looked like a leader in the opposition had invaded the Circle’s HQ in order to utterly destroy all records of a dangerous spell, then torched the library to hide his interest in it. And maybe even killed a perfectly innocent librarian because she was in charge of that section, and might have read it?
Goddamnit, I thought, suddenly furious. Had Emma died for that? And why? It wasn’t like there weren’t more ways for someone to get that spell!
Mircea had stumbled across it because a couturier had found it in an old grimoire and didn’t realize what he had. There were probably other copies littered around, too, that had been missed in the purge. Not to mention that Pritkin had known it off the top of his head, because he collected old spells.
There were other mages who did the same thing, and who might also have copies squirreled away. They might not cast it, considering how much trouble it could get them in, but they likely knew it. Hell, there might even be other vamps who did, since those long-ago wars weren’t so long ago for them.
So what had been the freaking point?
I didn’t know. I just knew that a good woman was dead and a library was toast all for a spell I was cur
rently wearing.
Motherfucker.
Chapter Ten
I shifted to Pritkin’s room with my haul, not wanting to brave the gruesome corridor again. And found myself in a hole. Literally.