I gave a reluctant nod. “Yeah, something like that.” Still, something wasn’t adding up, but Tom talked right over my thoughts.
“Some spells aren’t meant to be big and loud. Simple ones can be more effective than powerhouse curses or spells. Because you don’t sense them, and they align with your own hidden thoughts and inclinations. I’ve seen people with spells on them for years without realizing it. Sometimes they think they’re haunted, but they aren’t. Just spelled.” Tom gave my shoulder a squeeze when I shivered. “Trust me, this was not a bad one. Effective, but not bad.”
The real question was why that paperwork would have a deterrent spell on it. Who was trying to keep me from finding out about Gran’s and my parents’ deaths?
“Any idea who did it?” I asked. “I mean, I assume it was someone who had something to do with their deaths, but a name would be great.”
Tom sighed. “I can’t trace magic like that. Sometimes the spell bears someone’s signature style, and it’s obvious, but not in this case. Though you could ask Missy. She’s better at tracing spells than I am.”
I wrinkled my nose. “I’ll put that low on the priority list, thanks.”
Corb, who’d stood quietly beside me the whole time, finally spoke up. “So she’s okay? It really wasn’t bad?”
Tom grinned and looked from Corb to me and back again. “She’s fine, Corb.”
Holy crap, was he that worried about me? I felt the tension in him slide away with Tom’s words, and a terrible warm, fuzzy feeling suffused me. The spell hadn’t been a big deal, but Corb hadn’t known that. And that was why he’d gone out of his way to get Tom over here.
I squeezed his hand. “Thanks.”
Corb didn’t let me go. “I don’t want to lose you, Bree.”
The hum of power under his skin whispered to me, and the smell of the ocean tugged on me. I bit the inside of my lip and pulled my hand away. I wasn’t sure what to think about the possibility of him and me . . . not when Crash was in the picture. Not when Alan was in the damn picture, for that matter.
Behind me, Robert grumbled. “Friend.” I twisted around to him. He pointed at Sarge.
Sarge was across from us, sniffing the air, and I grimaced at the thought that he might be smelling Roderick. I couldn’t say why, but I didn’t feel like explaining my dealings with the council. “What are you smelling?” I asked.
“Goblins.”
That one word from Sarge—goblins—was not unexpected. I shook my head, relief flowing through me. “I have a goblin neighbor, Bridgette. She came over here earlier.” Or so I recalled from my drunken haze.
Sarge shook his head again, nostrils flaring and the muscles across his chest flexing with the deep breaths he was taking. “No, there were a lot of them—a full mob by the way it smells. Way more than should be anywhere this far into Savannah.”
“A mob of goblins?” Tom asked. “There hasn’t been anything like that in Savannah in years. New Orleans, yes, but that’s a whole other ball of wax and trouble.”
A niggling bite of fear had my feet moving toward the front door of the house. I’d warned everyone, but my friends could be stubborn. What if they’d come back anyway?
Just in case, I headed up the stairs and into the house, shouting, “Eric, Feish? Suzy? Kink?”
No answer.
My stomach rolled, although I wasn’t sure why—if they hadn’t come home, they wouldn’t be there to answer, right? Still, something felt wrong.
I picked up speed, heading straight up the stairs to the bedrooms. “Gran, have you seen anyone?”
“No,” she answered quietly. “No one has been here since they were taken. The spider did not stop them.”
I skidded to a stop, grabbing at the banister railing on the second landing. “What did you say?”
Her image was wispy and faded in and out as she walked toward me. “They were taken.”
Only . . . only this wasn’t Gran as I knew her, but a younger version. Like she was aging in reverse and was now closer to fifty rather than a late seventy year old. Was that possible? What was happening to her?
Her image stuttered as if she were on a projection screen that had suddenly hit a rough patch. Her voice was soft, and she kept her eyes low. “They took them all, Bree, and you are the only one who can save them.”
20
I wanted to grab the ghostly version of my now youthful Gran and shake her until her teeth rattled, but of course that was impossible. I settled for snapping my fingers at her, which had worked rather well with Alan’s ghost. Her eyes flew upward so her gaze met mine, hard and flinty with a steel that age had mellowed in her.
“Took them all. Who is gone?”
“The bigfoot, siren, river maid, and fairy, your four friends. The goblins took them. The spider was here too, but they scared her away,” she said, her words barely audible. As if all her energy were going into projecting this more youthful visage. Damn it, when did she get vain?
I raced downstairs to find Corb in the kitchen, leaning over a piece of butcher’s paper. “Let me guess, ransom note?” I asked.
He stared hard at me. “How did you know?”
“Much as I’d love to pretend it was a good guess, Gran told me.” I leaned over the paper myself and shook my head. “It’s in that same Goblinese crap,” I growled as I scooped it up.
“I was trying to decipher that,” Corb said.
“I’ve got someone who can read it.” I jogged out the front door, feeling the pull of time on my entire body.
Grimm had said I needed to protect the paperwork for three days, but I’d only made it two. If I got the pages and coin back to the people who wanted them, they could use them for whatever nefarious purpose they had. Something to do with the silver moon.
And if I didn’t?
Well, I only knew I wouldn’t let them hurt my friends.
I bolted across the street—okay, I was limping a little, but that was because of a muscle pull from earlier in the week—and ran up the steps of the brick house that Charlotte and her mother, Ryoko, lived in with their resident house goblin. I banged a fist on the door.
“Bridgette, tell me you’re home!”
A scuffling came from inside and then the door cracked open. Bridgette’s big round eyes stared up at me in surprise that didn’t look feigned. “Breena? What’s wrong?”
“Did you see a mob of goblins take my friends?” I bent onto one knee so we were at eye level. “They left this.”
I held the butcher’s paper out to her, and she took it gingerly, her eyes scanning the glyphs and letters that made no sense to me. Her eyes rose to meet mine. “They took them to Goblin Town. You have until midnight to bring the spell book to them.”
I blinked a few times. “Spell book.”
Holy shit, so they didn’t want Grimm’s paperwork at all?
That left two options. Either they wanted the black spell book that I’d found in the library, the one that Oster Boon had said I’d need to take. Or they wanted Gran’s spell book. With everything that was happening, I was leaning toward the black spell book. I didn’t really believe in coincidence, which meant I had it for a reason.