I heard something crash in the background and then the sound of a frustrated kitty cat, but we moved forward. The cameras would catch a pixie flying around trying not to get eaten. If Myrddin complained, I would simply state that even pixies get drunk and lose their way from time to time. Sorry about whatever got trashed.
“It’s cool, Mom. We’ll say Dannan got into the bourbon syrup and apologize. We’re almost there.”
It was good to know we thought alike.
We moved through the open French-style doors. This room was lovely, too, and made me worry I was missing something. There were lights on, soft ones from a table lamp and an antique standing light. There was an elegant desk and a modern laptop computer in the center. Books were stacked in neat piles, but they all seemed to be in Latin or some other old language.
Was this really Myrddin’s office or was it the one he showed to the world? My father had kept two. Myrddin might do the same. Hell, as brilliant as Nimue was, his real office might be in some weird pocket universe I wouldn’t be able to find.
This might have all been for nothing.
Except Sarah told me she’d felt something. She was sure the grimoire was here.
“Do you think it’s one of the books on the desk?” Lee asked.
If it was, we couldn’t steal all of them. “I’m not sure.”
“The top one is titled The Planes of Existence,” Lee said. “There’s one called Closing the Veil. I think two of them are in Aramaic and one is in German, but I don’t know either of those yet. I should have brought a notepad. I could write them down and have one of the academics translate for us. Then we would know what he’s been reading. That’s what Kelsey would do.”
I felt my jaw drop because those titles hadn’t been in English. “Since when do you know Latin?”
He shrugged. “Kelsey told me she wasn’t good with languages except wolf. She’s pretty good with growls. I thought I could help her out with that because she comes up against it a lot. Like that time she found the door in a witch’s house that said Beware of Dragon but she couldn’t read it so she opened it anyway and then it took Liv days to get her hair to grow back. I could have told her not to open it.”
Or Kelsey would have opened it anyway because she was pretty stubborn. “This is what you’re studying instead of your homework?”
“Yep.”
“Okay.” It was past time for me to accept that Lee was never going to be a normal kid. I didn’t even know what normal was. “But you have to put some effort in. I’ll ease up on the after-school activities and get you a Latin tutor.”
“Cool.” He turned his head slightly so he could look up at me. “He’s got a lot of books. Will it say grimoire on the spine?”
I doubted that mightily. It wouldn’t simply announce Myrddin’s grimoire, Please Steal Me.
“Mom, why does the wizard have Gladys?”
My skin went cold as I looked to where Lee was staring. There was a second desk, one that sat close to the big windows. It was taller than a normal desk and there was no chair. There was a lamp and another pile of books. A notepad laid open and it looked as if Myrddin had walked away while in the middle of studying the sword that lay on the tabletop.
This was what Jacob had meant. Gladys. Kelsey’s sword. For the last few thousand years the vampires had claimed it as their own, letting the history of the sword die. It had become the traditional weapon of the Nex Apparatus—the ultimate enforcer of the vamp world. Daniel had held the title at one point. In one of those crazy twists the universe sends us from time to time, Kelsey Owens had taken up the sword a few years back, the first non-vampire Nex Apparatus ever. Kelsey had also been the reason we got that part of our history back. Kelsey had led us to discover that the sword had once been given to the Amazon tribe by the prophet Jacob. Those women would later come to be known by another name, by my name. Companion.
We had been warriors once, and Kelsey was leading us back.
They damn straight weren’t taking our weapon again.
“I’m going to suspect that he asked your father if he could study it while Kelsey was on her honeymoon.” I could see exactly how he would have convinced Danny to open the armory and let him take a look at the Sword of Light. I didn’t like thinking about what he would do with it. The Sword of Light had some properties that the wizard would be interested in. It soaked up the blood of whoever it cut and saved it for later. All the victim’s power could be held in the sword and shared with Kelsey when she needed it. Naturally I had to bleed for it to happen, but I was willing to take one for the team from time to time.
“But the prophet guy said we should take it.” I could hear the will in my son’s voice. “I don’t think Kelsey would like the wizard playing around with Gladys. She would say something about consent and then take it back. I’m just going to steal it.”
I was with baby boy on this one. “Yes, we are. But first you’re going to look at those books and see if you can translate any of them. This feels like a project to me, and I don’t like not knowing what Myrddin’s doing.”
We eased over to the table and Gladys’s blade shone in the lamp light. Pure silver forged on the Heaven plane. I found it interesting that there was a pair of gloves sitting beside the sword. Myrddin couldn’t touch her without getting burned. His demonic side apparently held more sway than he liked to discuss.
“These are almost all in Latin,” Lee said, studying the spines of the books. “And they all refer to one thing. Caelum.”
“Yeah, I’m going to need a translation.” It was weird, but my son was proving how capable he was once again.
“Heaven, Mom. These are all books about the Heaven plane. And angels. Except that one. It doesn’t have a title. It looks different from the others.”
“Which one?” I tried not to think about the fact that Myrddin was studying up on Heaven and angels.
“The black leather one.”
I stared at the tall desk, trying to figure out what I wasn’t seeing. All of the books were old, each one with a leather cover and carefully made binding. “They’re all brown to me, and from what I can tell they’re all leather.”
I would have questioned if my eyesight was going, but it really couldn’t go. I was full up on king’s blood. I was kind of in top condition.
“The one that’s open by the sword.”
I should have worn a sweater because another chill went through me. There was nothing sitting particularly close to the sword with the exception of the gloves. “I don’t see it. Lee, I need you to describe it to me.”
I wasn’t about to argue with him. He wouldn’t pull some prank on me in the middle of a job. He’d been taught by my father, and even at his age, he would be professional. If he said something was there it was there. I just couldn’t see it, and boy that made me wonder.
“It’s a big book. It probably has like a thousand pages in it. It looks heavy. It’s open to a page that’s written in some language I don’t even know. It’s weird and has a lot of squiggles.”
“It’s probably Demonish. We can have your Aunt Sarah confirm it for us.” Sarah had grown up in a dark magic family. She had some demon in her DNA, and it gave her spells quite the kick. She should be able to read whatever was written on the page.