“That’s not what I meant. I want you to come into the vault with me.”
She studied him until he frowned.
“You’ll be fine, I promise. You deactivated the spell when you shut the book,” he told her.
That book was full of dark magic she had no desire to encounter again. She ran a million excuses through her head, but knew none of them were good enough. She sighed. “All right, let’s get this over with.”
James led Thomas and Juliana down a hallway deep below the Apocryphan. Jeremiah stayed behind to oversee the search for the new host. They came to a door with two large battle mages on either side of it. They nodded in greeting. James stepped past them to a small pad and placed his palm on it. The technology was a paranoid’s wet dream. Not only was it a palm reader, the door wouldn’t unlock unless the power signature fed into it matched the palm print.
The door swung open with a hiss. They all stepped into the dark little room, the first of three chambers. From this point forward the walls, ceiling and floors were all made of three-foot thick steel over reinforced concrete. The rooms really did resemble bank vaults.
Beams of light started at the ceiling and moved slowly to the floor as they scanned the group. All items of a magical nature had to be left in the outer chamber to keep them from interacting with anything in the other rooms. She put her gun and sword on the table before the alarm could beep at her. When they’d convinced the tech running the scanner that they had no contraband on them, he unsealed the next door.
The room was three times the size of the previous one. A large steel table sat in the middle of the floor while several smaller ones lined the walls. There was another door on the wall opposite them, but Juliana had never been through it. James told her there were rows and rows of mini vaults that they locked items up in until they were brought out for examination. There were also several vaults that could not be opened, the items in them so dangerous they’d been sealed away forever.
The book lay open in the middle of the large table. Again, she felt it beckoning her. This time it was more a gentle prodding than an overwhelming, undeniable need. Thomas cleared his throat. She glanced at him and realized the men stood at the table waiting for her to join them. She picked up her feet one step at a time, forcing herself to move forward.
“It’s just a book, Juliana,” Thomas said with a sneer.
A sliver of hurt stabbed through her and she frowned. “Let the damn thing throw you across a room and see if you feel that way.”
She looked at James. “What have you found out so far?”
“Not much, unfortunately. Though I did find your summoning spell.” He gestured to the page open before him.
“How do you know it’s the spell they used?” Thomas asked.
James grinned. “It wasn’t hard. It’s the only spell that’s translated. At least we assume that’s the one they used. We haven’t been able to decipher the rest of it to determine if there are any more summoning spells. It seems to be some archaic derivative of the dark fae language.”
She glanced at the book. A pencil had been used to write the translation above the original lines of the spell. She could read every word of both. “The translation’s wrong. He put Beacon instead of Sacrifice. Can’t help but think that was done on purpose. There’s also a couple of other minor errors that were probably mistakes. Obviously it didn’t matter. The demons got here just fine.”
James stared at her with wide eyes.
“What?”
“When I said we hadn’t been able to decipher the rest of the spells, I didn’t mean we hadn’t had the time. I meant I literally hadn’t found anyone that could read them.”
Curse it. She should have picked up on that. Now he was going to want her to translate the whole thing. “Oh.”
“Oh? That’s all you’ve got for me?”
She shrugged. “What do you want me to say, James? It’s dark fae. I’m dark fae.”
He shook his head. “That doesn’t work this time, Jules. I’ve had other dark fae in here. None of them could read it.”
She pressed her lips together and he growled in frustration.
“We’ve been researching its origins, but haven’t had much luck. And I can’t get its power to respond to any of the people that have looked at it. Have either of you seen it before?”
They both shook their head, but the book looked familiar to Thomas. He knew he’d seen it somewhere before, that he should remember where it came from, but the information eluded his grasp. He clenched his teeth making a muscle in his jaw twitch. A millennium of having a near perfect memory and he couldn’t recall this. Somehow it must be Juliana’s fault. His bride had his head so twisted his brain wasn’t even working right.
Juliana reached out her hand and the book pulsed with purple light. She snatched her hand back, crossed her arms over her chest and buried her hands tight against her body.
“What did you do?” Thomas asked.
“And can you do it again?” Excitement lit James’s voice. Thomas resisted the urge to say that he’d prefer if she didn’t. He had no way to protect her from magic.
“I reached for it.”
“There has to be something else,” James insisted. “Were you thinking of something specific?”
She shook her head. She reached out again and held her hand over the book without touching it. Again, the purple light pulsed. It stayed lit longer because she didn’t remove her hand, but eventually the light faded.
“Remarkable,” James breathed.
“There’s nothing remarkable about it.” She crossed her arms over her chest again. “I already told you it’s old dark fae magic.”
“And again, what makes you different from every other dark fae I’ve had in here?” James asked.
She looked at him without saying anything.
“Is that why the demon is targeting you? Does it have something to do with your ability to read this book?” he asked, his voice sharp, his eyes searching.
Her shoulders slumped as she sighed. “I don’t know. I don’t know anything at all.” She raked a hand through her hair. “I knew it called me by name. It did the same to Thomas, I thought it was a game it was playing. Didn’t it use any of your names today?”
James shook his head. “Just yours. Of all the names it had access to, it only used yours. And it homed in on you the moment you arrived, like it was waiting for you to get here.”
She looked at Thomas. “You have anything to say about all this?”
“Why should I have an opinion on it?” he asked.
“Because you have an opinion on everything,” his brother-in-law answered for her.
Irritation spiked through him. He shrugged and went over to lean against the wall by the door.
James turned back to the book. “You’ll have to begin the translation immediately.”
“I’ll translate it because I need to find the demon, James, but I’m not giving your people access to those spells. I’m only telling you what you need to know.”
“You can’t be serious.”
She leaned forward on the table and looked him in the eye. “That book scares me.”
It must terrify her for her to admit that. James studied her for a moment before nodding once. “All right.”
Juliana straightened and shifted on her feet. She ran her fingernails across her palms and hunched her shoulders. “I’ve got to get out of here,” she said. Ignoring James’s protests she hurried out the door.
Thomas straightened and followed her without hesitation. He watched while she reequipped her weapons. Her movements were agitated, hurried. Stepping forward, he wrapped a hand around the back of her neck. Her head dropped forward when he began to knead the muscles.
“You okay?”
“Yeah.” She turned to face him.
James stood looking between the two of them. “Finally claiming her then?”
“If she’ll let me.”
