There were a lot of things I didn’t like about this.
Wolves didn’t mess with spell books. Few wolf shifters were even literate until the late 1800s, when some charitable Ethereal witches got inspired by their human brethren to school some heathens and ‘enrolled’ wolf children into school with some bribes to their parents, who were generally poor.
It didn’t work out very well, for the usual reasons. Propaganda in the textbooks, cultural tensions flaring, a nasty incident where a teacher was killed. But at least my great-grandparents did learn to read and they were proud of it. When the witches left, the wolves started their own clan schools.
More concerning, perhaps, than the spell books? The fact that I was looking across the table at two incubi. They were both gorgeous by any measure. I wasn’t one to say other men were gorgeous, but I was also fair. They were both imposingly muscular with features like classical statues except better, and they also were genuinely beautiful. I kept catching myself looking at them with a twinge of awe.
Of course, this was just the magic that came with the sex demon territory. If I wasn’t immune, Helena was smitten. They were sitting on either side of her and I swear their chairs inched closer as the hours went by. I wouldn’t be surprised if their knees pressed on her thighs now and then.
The only bright side, I guess, was that they clearly didn’t like each other and were too busy competing with each other to bother with Jake and me.
Actually, that wasn’t a bright side, was it? They didn’t even consider us competition? What the fuck?
Jake was paging through the books, looking at the tiny pictures painted on the pages. One reason Jake was more hot-tempered than I was probably had something to do with the fact that reading had always been a struggle for him. He did terribly in school. I quietly helped him with a lot of his schoolwork so he could cover for it. So he was just moving from picture to picture, trying to piece together something, which is what he always did as a kid anyway. I’m sure he was dreading that someone might suggest heading to a library to find out more about these books. He would absolutely hate to admit to Helena that he couldn’t read well.
“So you said there’s a treasure upstairs?” Jake said. “And it’s shaped like a triangle?”
“Yes. I would bring it but it glows and stuff when you take it out,” Helena said.
“I’m just curious, does it look sort of like this?” Jake spun the book around to face her. There was a painting of some strange half-ethereal, half-demon being with one demon horn and dark demon wing, and one light feathered wing, holding a triangular shaped box of sorts in one hand.
“Yeah! It is like that, except that looks like a three-dimensional object and this is just one side,” Helena said.
“Well, a few pages later, this happens,” Jake said. The next picture showed the demon/angel creature laying on the ground with a sword stuck in its side and blood trickling out of it, and some Medieval wizards holding up three flat triangles. “Looks like they killed this dude who owned the box and broke it into three pieces.”
Byron, the ghost demon who couldn’t tell us anything helpful, tapped his hand on the table rapidly.
“Byron, is that it?” Helena said. “Graham, write that down!”
“I did,” Graham said. “All right, so there are three pieces that go together. And that forms Pandora’s Box? So the other three pieces…”
“Are with the Sons of Pandora?” Helena turned to look at Byron again. “Yes? Yes!” Byron was giving her a mysterious smile. “So maybe we can find another piece in Deveraux’s house? And you already made an offer on it! Graham, you’re a genius! Or—your gut is a genius, at least. And Jake—“ I could see her trying to calm down her excitement when she realized Jake and I did not want to hear about the genius of some guy who didn’t know magic existed a few weeks ago. “You are a genius for noticing these pictures.”
Jake gave a little head-shake. “Nah. You would’ve found it soon enough.” Oh, damn. Jakey getting modest. He really was into her despite the protests.
But how could we run these demons out of town?
“We still need to find Byron’s body, though,” Graham said. “And we don’t know what the box does.”
“And I can’t sell the house with Byron trapped here.”
Fair enough. Byron clearly wasn’t a wandering ghost. I guess the problem would take care of itself.
“Please piece it together before I lose my mind,” Byron said, pressing the bridge of his nose.
“Unless—Byron haunts more than one house,” Graham said. “The lady I talked to on the phone about Deveraux’s death said the house is haunted.”
“Right! Three pieces, three houses…three hauntings?”
“Let me try and get her on the phone and ask what the ghost looks like.”
“Good idea! Yes! We’re really getting somewhere.”
“That’s why you take detailed notes,” Graham said. “It’s just like working with complicated legislation. I read everything, as much as I can, I don’t just let my staff do it. Hang on.” He got out his cell phone.
I was ready to tear city boy demon limb from limb, I swear. Being all smart and useful. But he was basically just a human. I had no idea what was going on, except that clearly Helena had stumbled on something so crucial that even random old lady seers were telling us to go check on it.
“Well…” Helena turned to us now, her expression endearingly tentative, brushing her hair back off her neck. She hadn’t forgotten that kiss after all. “If it turns out we need to work on this place in Louisiana, I still need to get this house sold first. You guys came all the way out
