I wasn’t, but, thanks, Mother.
“The house is beautiful,” Mother said, looking uncertain. “I hope you found a good buyer and I appreciate you letting us look around.” She could be very polite. Piers clearly didn’t want to let it go that easily. Mother made a little jerking hand gesture indicating they should go.
“Mrs. Nicolescu, with all due respect—“ Piers began.
“We talked about this,” Mother hissed. “Helena is my daughter. Let’s go.”
I hadn’t seen the last of them, but she was buying me time.
Piers’ footsteps were catlike down the stairs, I noticed. He must spend a lot of time sneaking around for it to come naturally. Man, I didn’t trust him at all. I kept my wand in my hand.
At the bottom of the stairs, while Mother turned to the front door, he darted to the back, flung open the door, and ran toward the woods.
“Hey!”
“I saw the truck, cousin!” Piers shouted back at me. “Where are those dirty dogs?”
Ohhh. Right. I remembered the Sullivan brothers’ logo on the side of the truck. Wolves at the Door. Not subtle at all. Couldn’t they have just called it Sullivan Bros. Remodels or something? Anything? The jig was up now for such a stupid reason.
Mother stopped at the back door. She was wearing designer pumps and there was no way she could run after us, so she just stood there.
“I’m sorry, spider,” she said, using my childhood nickname—because I used to save all the spiders—for the first time in a long time. A very long time. I wish she hadn’t. It made her words sound like a serious parting.
It made me very nervous, but I plunged into the forest after Piers.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
HELENA
PIERS WAS FAST, moving like a man on a mission. Ahead, I saw a pile of flannel shirts and jeans. The guys had turned into wolves, and wolves would always be faster. They could travel more easily through thicker parts of the forest.
Piers started whispering out a spell. From the snatches of words I could hear, he was trying to illuminate their trail.
“Stop it!” I said.
“Helena…” Piers looked at me. “It is an offense punishable by prison to conceal a dark and dangerous object from the councils. I suggest you cut out the children’s game you’re playing and call your friends home. Give me the object and you can get back to your normal business. Sell the house.”
“What is the object?” I asked, hoping he didn’t notice my shaky knees. “At least tell me that. I want to know what it is before I give it to you.”
Piers stared at me for a moment. Again I was struck by the blankness in his eyes. I’d never liked my cousin much, but I wondered what being on the council had done to him.
“It’s a map of Sinistral,” he said. “From what I understand.”
“A map?” But it’s just a triangle, I thought. And how can you map the magical realms? They’re always changing.
“Not a normal map,” he said. “Our scholars have theorized that the map was created to control the realms. Think about what a great power there is in a map, cousin. Before man has a map, everything beyond his neighborhood is an unknown. It could be anything. But once he has a map, he can travel, expand territory, or go to war. To create a map of the magical realm gives one power over it. Of course, the magical realms cannot be mapped the same way the Fixed Plane can. I presume that’s what made it such a special map.”
“A map…” I’d never considered that. I was very intrigued and I couldn’t wait to ask Byron if he knew how to read the map.
“That’s my end of the bargain,” Piers said. “Call the wolves.”
He said ‘the object’. So he didn’t even know about the books.
I took a deep breath, my lungs seeming to collide with my wildly pounding heart. “Jake! Jasper! Bring the triangle thingie! I don’t want to get you in trouble with the council!”
I didn’t see many options now. I didn’t want to get arrested and lose all of the stuff. If we gave Piers the map, then we would still have the books and we might be able to get our hands on the other two pieces. I was guessing now that they were maps of Etherium and Wyrd. I hoped Jake and Jasper had the sense to leave the books behind.
After a long moment, they came running out of the woods. One of them had the map in his mouth. No books. Phew.
Their wolf forms are so cute, I thought. Was that the right word for a wolf? Or so majestic. Even though they slept in their wolf forms, they were upstairs and I was downstairs, and I had never seen them in their fluffy glory.
“L’eclair,” Piers said, in the most dispassionate voice I had ever heard.
“Piers, no!” I cried as I saw him flick out his wand, a conductor of pain as he shot lightning toward the unfortunate wolf who was carrying the map. The wolf was thrown back, crashing into brush. Piers waved a hand and the map whisked from the wolf’s mouth, which now slacked open, and into his grasp.
“Piers! He brought the map! Why did you hurt him?”
“He tried to run from a member of the council. And he’s just a wolf. What good do they do for this world in the first place?”
The other Sullivan launched at Piers and a scream tore from me in what felt like slow motion as I saw the disaster unfolding. If a wolf mauled a council member, they would arrest him and execute him.
“No!” I shot a blast between them with my own wand. I think I gave the wolf’s fur a little scorch and sent Piers stumbling back. The heat seemed to freak him out. I guess whatever burned him before was a bad memory, so now he had a weakness, like Frankenstein’s monster.
Byron appeared behind him and yanked
