Black smoke boiled from the opening, unseen flames crackling loudly in the hidden room.
Aaron sat up and brushed at the flames eating holes in his leather jacket, the fire vanishing under his touch. At my anxious look, he lifted his other hand, showing me the undamaged envelope.
“What happened?” Justin demanded. “How did the room catch on fire?”
“Booby trap,” I informed him. “But it’s okay. We got the most important thing.”
“And what is that?”
I pointed at the envelope. “An address.”
He blinked.
Pushing to his feet, Aaron unwrapped the item inside the envelope, revealing a scepter in the same design as the large one in the now-burning crate down in the secret room, except this one was only eight inches long. He studied the envelope’s return address.
“Well, Tori?” His blue eyes rose to mine. “Are we going to Portland?”
Wiping the snow off my leather pants, I also stood. Black smoke mushroomed from the hole, the dark haze drifting across the temple ruins where Ezra’s parents and sixty-six other victims of the cult had died.
“We’re going to Portland.”
I surveyed the stack of gear in the SUV, ensuring nothing would bounce around too much on the drive back to civilization. Wedging a shovel more securely in its corner, I pulled the hatch down and slammed it shut.
Justin, leaning against the vehicle’s side panel, scowled at me.
I scowled back.
“You promised,” he reminded me.
Ugh.
Stomping over, I leaned against the cold metal beside him. It was kind of weird because the SUV was sitting two feet lower than it should’ve been. “Do not repeat anything I’m about to tell you to anyone, got it? Including Blake.”
Not that we’d be seeing Blake again once we drove off this property.
Justin nodded, and I heaved a deep sigh.
“Okay.” Another slow inhale, then I spoke at top speed. “Eight years ago, a cult operated here and my friend’s parents got caught up in it and the cult did something to my friend and now we’re here trying to find a grimoire that will explain what they did to my friend so we can save him before he dies.”
Justin blinked a few times. “Uh. Okay. What … what’s a grimoire?”
“A book of magic. Like, spells and instructions and stuff. Sometimes, they’re kind of like journals too, and mythics will write down their experiences.”
“And something in this grimoire will save your friend’s life? Is a spell going to kill him?”
“More or less.” I gave him a hard stare. “So, will you go home now?”
“No. I’m sticking with you, Tori.”
I gritted my teeth. “I already reset my phone.”
“No, you didn’t.”
“I’ll do it right now.”
“I can follow you anyway.”
I gripped my paintball gun, half lifting it from its holster. “No, you can’t. One pop of sleeping potion and I’ll be long gone before you wake up.”
He returned my threatening stare, unflinching. He was calling my bluff and we both knew it.
Ugh. Brothers.
“Don’t you have a job?” I muttered angrily, slumping against the vehicle. “You can’t follow me for days on end.”
“I took some time off.” He sighed. “Tori, I’m not doing this to be annoying. This is important to you, isn’t it? I want to help.”
I tried to think of a comeback and ended up grumbling wordlessly under my breath.
“You’re awfully distrustful of Blake,” he remarked. “Why?”
“He’s a member of the Keys of Solomon—a demon-hunting guild.” I tipped my head back, squinting at the cloud-dotted sky. “Remember back around Halloween, when parts of downtown Vancouver were put in lockdown?”
He nodded.
“That happened because there was a demon on the loose. A Keys of Solomon team showed up to hunt it, and they were so bent on killing it themselves that they deliberately hampered the search efforts and threatened other teams. According to pretty much everyone, that’s standard behavior for the Keys.”
“Does the MPD allow that?”
“It’s complicated.”
He shifted his weight. “Were you involved in the … demon hunt … too?”
“Briefly.”
“Is that normal?” He cleared his throat. “My impression from the law-enforcement side was that venturing into those neighborhoods was extremely dangerous, so it seems … unusual … for civilians to participate.”
I was guessing “unusual” hadn’t been his first word choice, but he was trying to sound neutral.
Pressing my lips together, I considered how to answer. I didn’t want to get into my near-death experience at the unbound demon’s claws, our failed attempt to hunt it, or Ezra’s confrontation with the Keys team. Technically speaking, I shouldn’t have been out there at all. I had only recently been classified as a mythic and hadn’t had any combat training yet.
“Do sleeping potions work on demons?” Justin asked after a moment.
“I don’t think so.”
“Do you have other magic weapons that do work on demons?”
Not really … but though I didn’t say it, my silence answered for me.
“Then …” His brow scrunched. “Then why were you out there hunting a demon?”
I opened my mouth, then closed it. I’d gone to support the guys, but … had they actually needed me?
“Tori!”
I whirled around at Aaron’s call. He was striding toward me, Blake limping in his wake.
“We have a problem,” the pyromage snapped. “Blake here is refusing to undig the hole he put my SUV in until I tell him what we found in the underground room.”
“We found cult junk,” I told the terramage flatly. “Chalices, candelabras, scepters, some fabric—probably cloaks or something creepy and over the top like that.”
“Yeah, sure,” he rumbled, leaning on his staff. “But you also found something that has you rushing off instead of digging through the burnt ‘cult junk.’”
Sometimes I hated smart people. Why couldn’t Blake be dumb as a rock like I’d initially hoped?
I glanced at the SUV’s tires, sitting in the two-foot-deep hole. “Screw it.”
Blake’s eyebrows rose expectantly, then lowered again as I stomped past him. Opening the SUV’s hatch, I yanked out a shovel.
“Do you have any idea how much I didn’t want to dig?” I growled, tossing the shovel to Justin. I grabbed the second one. “Digging sucks.”
Justin followed me to the front bumper, and when I set the point of the shovel against the frozen earth, he copied me. As much as there was to complain about when it came to my brother, he’d never been afraid of hard work.
Now I was thinking nice things about him, and that made me angrier.
Snarling like a dog, I stomped on the shovel’s step. The blade dug an inch into the hard earth.
Aaron hurried over. “Tori, I can—”
“I’ll do it! I can dig a damn hole!”
Blake’s staff thunked toward us. He stopped beside the passenger door, glancing over his handiwork. It was a very nice grave with lovely straight sides. The bastard.