I WOULD NEVER FORGET the moment I found the Arcana in the stacks of the Great Library.
I didn’t know what I was, back then. I had not yet remembered. I had no idea of the sacrifices my sister made in secret to bring me into this world.
The building was so vast that books could easily be lost in place. Shelved in ancient corners of the library, perhaps put out of place by some absent scholar a hundred years prior, written in languages no one knew. The Arcana were so dirty that I couldn’t even read the titles. Their pages were rippled and sticking together. They had been a casualty of the flood in the library basement, I guessed, some three hundred years ago.
Only the most talented Sinistral scholars were granted positions in the library. Incubi were not usually considered very learned, but that was a stereotype. My focus was excellent once my needs had been satisfied. So good, in fact, that I was organizing and cleaning up old and neglected books and adding them to the more modern card catalog, and was soon granted my own title: Head Cataloguer of Archaic Titles. I was able to take on an apprentice to help with my work, a succubus named Talin.
One day, an ordinary sort of day until that moment, we found the Arcana.
I was fascinated with the history in their pages. I started to remember things.
Talin was at my side as I frantically flipped through the pages, my heart pounding. She was the one who heard me ramble on about what it all meant. And she would be by my side as we found wizards who would share our secret. Talin would also be the love of Fiore’s life, after the end of his loveless arranged marriage with a ‘good’ witch.
For the sake of that love, Fiore was banished from the realm of good magic, and Talin would die. Fiore would be heartbroken once again. Heartbroken and shunned. It was an old story in the magical world, so common it was a cliche. Love between dark and light. Both doomed to suffer for it.
And as long as we live in a world where Ethereal witches are punished for loving demons, Helena would not be happy with Graham either. Nor with those werewolves. She would be banished from Etherium, shunned and shamed.
So we might as well open Pandora’s Box.
The books were a manual for using the box. But it was not just a box. Not really.
It was the thing that would destroy the world that had doomed so many people to suffer.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Graham
“…AND it looks like there was an elemental attack in the one upstairs bedroom over the kitchen at some point,” Helena said. “So I guess that could be something. Or it could just be a kid’s bedroom. That sort of thing happens…”
“Has Byron said anything to you that could be a clue about where is body is or what the Arcana do?” I asked. “Anything subtle?”
“I’m not great with subtlety,” she said. “I’m a sledgehammer kind of girl.” She traced patterns on the table with her ragged, dirty fingertip.
Her hands are so dirty. A sledgehammer kind of girl. I’ll sledgehammer you, all night…
Good lord, what the hell is wrong with me.
I wrote down neatly: Elemental attack possibly occurred in the bedroom. Questions: What time period? Who was involved? Was Byron killed in this attack?
I had already filled up many pages with similar notes. Most of them were just questions upon questions.
“We have no answers,” I said. “So we need theories. We have three books, and one unknown object. The council seems to want these things. What would their motive be? What does the Ethereal council want?”
“Well, every council wants the same thing,” Helena said. “To have more power for their world than the other worlds. The magical beings are always fighting for supremacy and territory. For many years, it was just Sinistral and Etherium fighting, but recently the realm of Wyrd got back in the game. So you basically have light, dark, and the neutral realm, and they all want their magic and their people to be the strongest, so they fight to influence humans and to gain control over parallels. Those are the spots where the worlds meet. They’re like the strategic gateways.”
She had no idea how hard I was working to concentrate on her words and not the beautiful mouth that spoke them. So much of my life made sense now. It was an eternal fight between the needs of a demon and the ambitions of a man. With Helena, the need seemed even sharper. She’s mine, I thought. I’m going to make her mine. It wasn’t sensible, and it didn’t have to be.
“I see. And this fight has been going on for…?”
“Ever.”
“Does anyone ever get ahead?”
She paused. “Sometimes, I guess. When the Fixed Plane is more chaotic, like during world wars, Sinistral gets ahead.”
“But the pendulum always swings,” I said. “Just like in politics. So no one ever gains more power for long.”
“That’s pretty much true.”
“Pandora’s Box unleashed sickness and death on the world. Chaos. So maybe this thing would give Sinistral an edge.”
“If that’s true, I wonder why we’re protecting it,” Helena said. “In theory, the council would just want to keep it safe.” She seemed uncertain. “The council doesn’t seem as good as they used to be.” Then she yawned. “I’m sorry, Graham. I don’t know anything.”
“Did Byron give you any clues in his dreams?”
“Um…the dreams were just…” She bit her lip.
“What has he done to you?” I asked, unable to stand it anymore. “With all those extra appendages of his?”
“Graham!” She slapped the table. “I don’t have to tell you anything. You and I are not dating, and even if we did, I’m not going to ask you what you’ve done with the women you’ve slept with, so for you to get possessive because I had sex with a demon in
