Rogue Soul (The Mythean Arcana 3) - Page 81
“That part of my life is over. No more running.” The idea felt as foreign to him now as emotion once had.
“I’ll call Esha now. She can aetherwalk and be here within minutes.”
“Could she pick up someone else?” They’d need all the help they could get, and Harp was good in a battle.
“Sure, I suppose. As long as you’re willing to give her some of your power to refuel. A long trip really takes it out of her, and she’ll need all the power she can get if this is going to be a fight.”
“It’s going to be a fight. She can refuel off me.” He wouldn’t like it, but it was the least he could do if the soulceress was helping him. He’d go get his phone and call Harp— “Shit. We need a phone. My charger was in my bag at Logan’s. Does Esha have a landline?”
“Yes.” Her brow furrowed. “By the way, do you know which god Logan was?”
“Is. Logan is the god Loki.”
Ana’s jaw dropped. “You’re joking. He’s one of the most famous in the world. He’s been hiding and no one recognizes him?”
“He’s a shapeshifter. I haven’t heard from him in nearly a thousand years, not since he was Loki, but I’d guess he’s been
holding that form as Logan all this time, avoiding discovery for whatever reason. Whatever he’s working toward, it’s probably big. He was never subtle.”
“But you could see through it back at his rental place.”
“Yeah. Because of our blood vow, his illusions don’t work on me. I can see him. But I also can’t harm him, by word or by deed. And neither can you.”
“I wouldn’t.”
“I know, else I wouldn’t have been able to tell you his identity. It’s a clever vow.”
Ana showed him to an old phone on the wall near the refrigerator. He called Harp first and determined that his friend could come—along with the fact that he had located the origin of the Rosa McManus sample.
“Esha will meet us in the historian Lea’s office in twenty minutes. With her sister Aurora,” Ana said when she hung up the phone.
“Excellent.” Two soulceresses would be better than one.
They knocked on the door to Lea’s office twenty minutes later.
“Come in!” The voice echoed through the door and Cam and Ana stepped into a very Dumbledorian office. Cavernous and filled with bookshelves and statuary and furniture, it looked well lived in.
“Andrasta. Camulos.” A translucent female gestured them inside.
Before entering the office, Ana had told him that Lea insisted that she absolutely was not a ghost. But he had no idea what she was.
She didn’t come close enough to shake their hands. He wasn’t even sure if she could touch others.
“Thanks for meeting here.” Lea smiled warmly. She led them through her huge office to the group sitting around a table in the corner. Bookshelves towered around them, giving the illusion of a separate meeting room.
“Thank you for coming,” Cam said as he and Ana sat at the head of the large rectangular table. He stiffened when he caught sight of the blond woman watching him from the other end.
Aerten. Celtic goddess of fate, and the one who’d been at Blackmoor when he’d been chained to the tor. She’d watched curiously then, a strange expression on her face, as she did now. Her head bobbed in acknowledgment, and his shoulders relaxed infinitesimally.
She’d hear him out, at least. Because she presided over the Mythean Guard, she left Otherworld more often than the other gods. The exposure might make her more inclined to believe him.
“We couldn’t gather very many council members on such short notice,” Lea said as she took a seat.
In its entirety, the university council was made up of nearly twenty university department heads. Together, they made the decisions that not only ran the university, but kept the peace between the major afterworlds created by European beliefs. A task that might have once been handled by war was now handled by knowledge and diplomacy. Other regions, such as Asia, had their own governing bodies.
He recognized some of the individuals at the table, though Esha and her sister had not yet appeared. A pink-haired witch named Cora introduced herself. Next to Aerten sat Warren, her right-hand man and the one in charge of day-to-day operations for the Mythean Guard because Aerten was forced to stay in Otherworld most of the time.
A dark-haired woman smiled and said, “Hi, I’m Vivienne. I’m a Sila Jinn. I’m new to the university, but I work with Diana. When she mentioned this, I thought I’d come along.”
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