Gray Dawn, page 3
Cold dread trickled down my spine, but I wanted to hear him confirm it. “You know about the grimoire?”
“Know about it?” His indulgent smile revealed algae-green teeth. “I helped write it.”
“Your father is the only author still alive.”
That was what Meg had told me, and she wouldn’t have lied to me.
“I was under the impression Dad was the only surviving author.”
“I slumbered for a time.” Proctor tugged a gray-green lichen off his cheek. “It’s the troll in me.”
“I see.”
“I can fall asleep in the shade one afternoon and wake up as a rock five years later.” He dusted the front of an old linen shirt streaked with dirt that appeared to have been worn for several days. “Six months ago, I woke up as part of a water feature in a…” he twisted his wrist, “…sub-di-vi-sion.” He wrinkled his nose. “I stank of chemicals, humanity, and canine urine.” He glanced around. “It’s good to be home.”
The book was filled with lethal spells Dad had purged from his mind to prevent himself from becoming a monster. He didn’t regret his choice. He made it for Mom, and for me. For our family. For our future. But I could see how, if he hadn’t been confined to a cell for so much of my life, his hatred might have turned to resolve to hunt down the grimoire and devour the magic he had once sacrificed and take his revenge.
Proctor claimed to have been sleeping, which might have fooled Meg into thinking he was dead. Maybe. But the long years he spent without the magic he fed to the book, and his avarice when he learned what I had created, left me concerned he might want his pages back. Worse. He might want them all.
Angling toward Dad, I wished I had some privacy to quiz him. “How did you know he was alive?”
“I could sense him.” He hesitated, as if loathe to admit the rest. “Through you.”
“Through the book, he means.” Proctor slid his gaze down my body slowly. “A piece of me is inside you.”
Ick.
How had Dad put up with this sleazeball long enough to extract his chapter of information?
The bunny, who Proctor seemed to have forgotten about, leapt from my arms onto his face. He raked the slender black claws on his hind legs across Proctor’s cheek, tearing furrows in his grayed flesh, then sank his fangs into the side of his knobby throat. The whole attack lasted seconds, but when Blay kicked off of his chest and sprung into my arms, he was smeared with a different sort of crimson.
“Why you little—” Proctor, who had begun to lunge at me, pulled up short. “What’s that I smell?”
“The end of the world as you know it,” Marita said from behind me, “if you don’t back the fuck off Rue.”
The wolf who padded beside her, teeth flashing and eyes golden, spooked Proctor into stepping back.
As much as I appreciated the quick save, we had to be careful how I presented myself around him. If my friends kept fighting my battles for me, he would start to wonder why I wasn’t defending myself. I wasn’t sure how much Dad had told him about my condition, but I wasn’t going to volunteer anything he didn’t already know.
“Wargs.” Proctor licked his lips. “They’re quite good with proper seasoning.”
A low rumble poured out of Derry, and Proctor blanched as the wolf stepped in front of his mate.
“Make you a deal.” Marita rubbed Derry’s ears. “Help my friend, and we’ll hunt for you when you’re done. We can guarantee you a deer apiece. Maybe one black bear. Possibly a cougar. Your choice.”
“Delightful.” Proctor eyed the bunny warily. “Set that aside, and we’ll begin.”
After the looks Derry and Marita had shot the bunny, I elected to entrust Blay into Dad’s care.
“May I see the artifact?” Proctor crowded my personal space. “A pendant, if I recall correctly?”
With no magic to feed on, the Hunk was pliant when I tugged on the chain, fishing out the gaudy ruby.
“Hello, there.” Avarice brightened his eyes. “Do you mind…?”
“Be careful.” I held it out so he wouldn’t touch my skin. “It’s protective of me.”
“It’s dormant.” He flexed his fingers as if debating with himself. “I ought to be fine.”
“Suit yourself.”
A vestigial twinge prickled through me as the Hunk protested his touch. Or, since he was another author, maybe the reaction was worse. Say, rousing his embedded powers, calling them to the surface.
When it didn’t punish him, just lay quiescent, he shut his eyes and cocked his head as if listening.
“I hear my magic calling to me, but it’s faint. I can’t understand what it’s trying to tell me.” A deep groove appeared between his brows. “There’s…a barrier.” He opened his eyes on Dad. “Your doing, Hiram?”
“Focus on the artifact.” Dad’s voice came out cold. “The rest doesn’t concern you.”
“They might be one and the same.” Proctor rubbed his thumb over the pendant. “There’s a connection.”
The Hunk had been feeding off me, so, yes. We were connected. Without my magic, though, it was inert.
“Explain this to me.” He didn’t take his eyes off the pendant. “I must know the ingredients.”
On the edge of my periphery, Dad nodded that I could tell him, but I had to work up to speaking about it to someone new. I was so used to hiding it, protecting it, avoiding thinking about it, I had trouble picking a place to start. One that wouldn’t give more than I got in return for sharing.
“The pendant was home to a djinn, but it’s been vacant for decades. I decided to store the grimoire in it. I was able to call it out and return it without a problem for a while.” I didn’t see a way around admitting I had added one final element. By accident. But still. “My grandmother-in-law knitted me a Tinkkit choker. Its gift was protection.” More or less. “The moment the choker touched the pendant’s chain, they fused. I couldn’t call the grimoire after that, and I couldn’t remove the pendant. Anyone who tried to remove it for me got zapped. Anyone who tried to hurt me, well, they got dead. Whether that was my intention or not.”
“I saw the aftermath of one such incident,” Dad told Proctor. “She vaporized a coven of black witches.”
“What a terrible waste of food.” Proctor did glance up then, to frown at me. “How many did you kill?”
The pendant did it. Not me. I’m not to blame.
That was what I wanted to say, but it was a cop-out.
“Enough,” I rasped, recalling the sense of helplessness in the aftermath of the slaughter.
The answer didn’t please him, but it did appear to amuse him. “You’re death averse for a black witch.”
I’m not a black witch. Not anymore. I’m a gray witch.
Yet another facet of my power I couldn’t risk explaining to him without endangering Colby.
No black witch had ever forged a familiar bond with a loinnir, as far as I could tell.
Most would rather eat the loinnir for immediate gratification than bind their life to its ephemeral existence.
“I am my father’s daughter,” I assured him, letting him see in my face I had no problem killing to survive.
“You would have to be,” he mused, “to harness the power of your creation.”
Dad, who had shifted closer during the evaluation, demanded, “Can you help or not?”
“Are you sure you want to remove it?” Proctor aimed the question at me. “You could be magnificent.”
“I could be its puppet,” I corrected him. “The artifact wants to control me. It wants to absorb me too.”
That was the only word that fit how it had burrowed into the tender flesh between my breasts. I had no idea if or when it would have stopped if Dad hadn’t bound my magic to release its stranglehold on me.
“Fascinating.” His gaze went unfocused in a way that reminded me of how Dad spaced out to view spells and the threads that knotted them together. “I’m not sure if it’s a comfort,” he said moments later, “but the sentience is an extension of the book. The other objects are channeling its will.” He blinked away the blankness in his stare. “They have none of their own.” He shook his head. “The grimoire alone was a feat of mastery, but this? This is artistry. Does this configuration allow you to access the book’s pages? Does it whisper its secrets to you?”
“I see what it wants to show me.” I kept darting glances at Dad. “It has a mind of its own.”
“Let me think on it.” He lowered the pendant with reverence. “I would like it intact, if possible.”
“What about me?”
“I’ll see what I can do.” He withdrew a few steps. “Come back to see me tomorrow.”
“We don’t have that kind of time,” I protested, as concern for Colby flared within me. “Can you do this or not?”
“Do this for us,” Dad offered Proctor, “and I will be in your debt.”
“An unspecified favor from the great Hiram Nádasdy is not worth nothing.” Proctor angled toward his bridge with an odd longing, as if it hurt him to stand even this far away from it. “Give me a half hour.”
“All right.” Dad locked a hand on my shoulder before I could protest. “We’ll take a short walk.”
Halfway back to his bridge, Proctor raised a hand in farewell as he hustled toward its dank shade.
Using his grip on me, Dad aimed me at the woods and nudged me into a brisk walk.
Marita and Derry followed until the bridge was almost out of sight then hid in the overgrowth to watch over Proctor. They must have worried, like me, that he would call for reinforcements or plot some other way to take the Hunk from me. Probably my head too, while he was at it. And my heart. Why waste free food?
“How long have you known where to find him?”
“I found him three days ago. As soon as I read your magic, I could tell the thread he had woven into the grimoire burned as bright as mine. I suspected then that the book was feeding on him in some way. Which meant he was alive. Perhaps dormant but alive. That was when I began searching.”
“And you didn’t tell me this sooner because…?”
“Proctor didn’t want to participate in the grimoire. His partner, Edward, convinced him they had enough magic between them that they could afford to part with a little. Edward was a black witch but not a very good one. He didn’t have the stomach for it. I believed then Edward longed to save Proctor in the same way your mother wanted to save me.”
As we walked, Dad began scratching Blay’s ears, but it was an absent gesture as his thoughts meandered through the past.
The condition we found Proctor in spoke for itself, but I asked anyway. “Are they still together?”
“Edward was killed not long after we completed the grimoire. Another black witch cut out his heart.”
Yep. I had been right to dread the answer. No surprise there. Love and black witches didn’t mix.
“That’s why Proctor went to sleep.” I couldn’t say I blame him. “He had no reason to stay awake.”
“Without Edward, he has no reason to hold back.” Dad delivered the news with the bite of a guillotine blade. “Proctor will want his magic returned to him.”
“I picked up on that,” I said dryly.
“Asking Proctor for help was a last resort.” Dad continued petting the bunny. “I don’t trust him, and I don’t trust him to be useful, but these are desperate times.”
A buzz in my pocket sent me reaching for my phone to read a text from Isiforos.
>>Witches have finished warding Ballroom Three. Kellies are en route.
>Get them plugged in and ready to work ASAP.
>>Will do, boss.
“We’re still looking at a couple of hours until the Kellies get settled and start searching for the director.” I thumped my phone across my palm. “I hate this.” I wrapped my hand around the pendant and yanked out of frustration. “I could find my familiar if I could sense her.” I wet my lips. “It might be worth—”
“The book will consume you if it gets a foothold in your power again.” He pried the ruby from my hand. “No familiar is worth your life.”
That was where he was wrong. Colby and my lives were intertwined. But to explain my desperation to reach her, I would have to give my parents more of my story. That presented its own complications.
Better to press the angle that, through her, we could track Clay’s—and therefore the director’s—movements.
Under orders, Clay had the personality of a wet paper bag. He became an empty vessel, a blank slate, and it gutted me to watch how it whittled him down to a bare-bones version of himself I didn’t recognize as my best friend.
Clay would do everything in his power to protect Colby, to get her back to me. But the golem? The shell? She didn’t matter to him. Her fate wasn’t his problem. He wouldn’t care if she lived or if she died.
A shimmer distorted the air, and a figure limned in soft blue light appeared before us.
“Mom?” I reached out and touched her, expecting my fingers to pass through, but she felt solid. “How did you do that?”
“Your father made me a teleportation charm.” She lifted her wrist to display a thin row of small pearls. “I can only travel to him then return to my point of origin, but where else would I want to be?”
She winked at him when she said it, and that somehow warmed me. I let myself enjoy the grossness of having parents who still flirted with each other then made retching noises to do Clay proud.
“Yuck.” I wiped the back of my hand across my mouth. “I thought you were with Meg, working on the contract for Calixta.”
“We’re in the thick of it.” Her expression reflected my own frustration at how much time we didn’t have. “I came to check on my two great loves while she consults a daemon colleague on some obscure law.”
While Meg kept up to date on the ever-evolving legal system from beyond the veil, she required help for the physical job of purchasing new books, turning pages, writing notes. That sort of thing. She employed an army of paralegals across realms, factions, and species.
“I’m fine.” I heard in my voice how not-fine I was, and she must have too. “I just want Clay back.”
And Colby.
Goddess, I missed my little girl.
I would do anything, anything to get her home safely.
Even if it was the last thing I ever did.
CHAPTER FOUR
Colby
I can’t breathe, I can’t breathe, I can’t breathe.
“Calm down,” I ordered myself in my best Rue-like voice. “There are holes in the lid. I can breathe. I have air, a sugar cube, and a soda bottle lid full of water.”
I locked down my twitching wings before instinct launched me into another spin around the jar I was trapped in. Beating myself against the glass didn’t help. It just gave me a headache.
“Moth?”
The golem, who was and wasn’t Clay, must have heard me and peeked into his suit jacket where he kept the jar close to where his heart would be.
A lump welled in my throat, but I wouldn’t cry. I wasn’t a baby. I was Captain Colby of the Scurvy Dog. What would my team think if they saw me break on my first day as a captive? I wasn’t even being interrogated. This was pathetic. I couldn’t let them down.
“Moth cry?”
Barnacles, I cursed to myself. I couldn’t stop hot tears from pouring down my cheeks. Not when he looked at me with Clay’s eyes in Clay’s face and spoke in Clay’s voice. Except his speech was all wrong.
The golem wasn’t clever or quick like Clay. He wasn’t dumb or slow. He was just wrong, wrong, wrong.
Every time he spoke to me, I could tell the words took effort. They got caught in his mouth sometimes, like he wasn’t supposed to say them. Or think them.
“I want to go home.” I sniffled, sort of. I didn’t have a nose anymore. “I want Rue.”
“Rue,” he said thoughtfully, a film covering his eyes, and he didn’t move for the longest time.
He did that too. Froze. Just stopped. Like he was a wind-up toy that had run out of key turns.
The real Clay was never still. He was always moving, always laughing, always smiling. He was alive.
“Hush,” he breathed, animating once more, and closed his jacket with a snap of his wrist.
As darkness fell, the door groaned on its hinges, and that weird step, step, thump noise approached us.
“Are the preparations in order?”
Holding my breath, I hoped he would explain what preparations, but he held out longer than me.
“The safehouse in Charlotte is secure,” the golem said, able to speak clearly when asked a direct question by the man, who must have been Rue’s scary grandfather. “The condo in Dallas is also freshly warded and ready for your arrival.”
Charlotte?
Dallas?
I could remember those cities. I would remember. As soon as I got back to Rue, I would tell her.
“Bjorn was always so meticulous,” he lamented then sighed. “We leave within the hour.”
“Yes, Master.”
Step, step, thump.
Step, step, thump.
Step, step, thump.
The door protested as it closed behind the director. Former director. I wasn’t sure what to call him.
Names held power.
My mom taught me that…before.
He didn’t deserve my fear. No one did.
Rue taught me that.
There was a big bad in Mystic Seas that I hated with the fire of a thousand suns. Big Nose Baron. I bet the director would flip if he heard me call him that. I couldn’t picture his face—I had never seen it—but I could imagine a grumpy old man scowling at me while his cheeks turned as red as a shark bite.
Big Nose Baron, it is.
“Clay?” I pitched my voice low. “Can I ask you something?”
The golem didn’t answer, just continued his task, leaving me to sit and stare into the dark.
