Despite the twinkle in Silas’s eyes, Darien snatched up a fork and pretended to stab at his hand. “Mine. My share.”
At his side, Pip turned big eyes to him. “I don’t mind the smaller bowl. Really. I’m much smaller than you are.”
Darien grabbed the little dog in a hug, forcing Silas to steady the tray. “It was a joke. But if you ever wanted the big bowl, I’d absolutely give it to you.” Pip’s whipping tail thumped his ribs.
Silas lifted the small dish down to the rug and Pip leaped to stick his nose in it. Darien deployed his fork for the purpose intended, groaning with pleasure as the flavors hit his tongue. “God, I’m hungry.” After scarfing a few bites, he looked up at Silas, who was staring down with a little smile. “Did you eat? We can share.”
“I’ve had mine. I figured I’d let you get a little sleep before feeding you.”
“Yeah, not sure which I’d have picked when we got home. I’d probably have drowned in my dish.” He slurped up most of the bowlful before slowing down enough to take a bite of the homemade bread set next to it. “What’s happening?” he asked through a crusty mouthful. “Do we need to go help Joanna Spry? Did you check the map for more demons? Did Worthington—” He cut himself off by wiping the bowl with the bread and stuffing the perfect gravy-soaked result in his mouth. Mmmmm.
“Spry got her demon,” Silas said. “It was a summoning, and the council will have to deal with the summoner, but the demon’s gone. Worthington says that the rise in demon appearances isn’t just us. Sounds like every necromancer has noticed, but they mostly figured it was just happenstance, like we did.”
“Hm. I don’t like the sound of that.” He was rather proud of that calm alternative to Motherfucking hell, not more demons! Scraping the last of the stew from his bowl kept him from ruining the effect with more profanity, because Goddamned, son-of-a-bitch, motherfucking hell, I really, really hoped we were done with demons for a bit.
“So far, no one has an explanation for why—” Silas stopped short as Kii swooped into the room with Grim loping in front of her. “What’s wrong?”
Kii landed on the back of a chair. “Do you know about the spell that’s running down in your cellars?”
“Yes, of course. I created it.”
“Not that map one.” Kii’s head swiveled to look back out the door, then her dark gaze fixed on Silas. “The other one. The big one.”
“The what?” Silas frowned. “There’s no other spell down there.”
“There certainly is.” Kii mantled her wings. “Detecting magic is my talent, and I don’t care how many wards you put around it, something that powerful is always going to trigger my talent. I’d assumed it was the map down there, but when Grim showed me the map spell and all its limits, I could tell this other stuff was separate, and different.”
“Grim?” Silas asked.
“I don’t know.” Grim gave his shoulder a fast lick. “I’ve never sensed another spell down there, but the cellars are extensive. Even I may not have explored every part of them. Especially if the location is hidden and warded.”
Pip bounced. “Something new? I never saw it either. That’s exciting.”
“That’s worrying,” Silas snapped. “Sorry, but really…” He pinched his nose like he had a headache. “Why don’t I know about this?”
Grim eyed Silas, his expression oddly somber. “Maybe it was something of Norlington’s that Coldwell didn’t know about.”
“How likely is that? Coldwell and Norlington lived in each other’s pockets.” Silas straightened his shoulders. “Perhaps it’s an intruder, set up shop right under our noses. There were months between Norlington’s death and my gaining possession of the house. Someone could’ve broken in.”
“Could it be some kind of demon portal?” Darien didn’t want to be a downer, but under the circumstances that seemed all too likely.
“That should’ve lit up my map spell like a bonfire, if demons were that close by.” Silas pressed the heels of his hands to his temples, like he had the worst headache. “We’ll know soon enough. Kii, will you lead us to it?”
“I’ll try.” The hawk shrugged. “It’s warded, as I said. I cruised around a bit, trying to get a sight of it, and never could.”
Darien swung his legs out of bed and pushed to his feet, even though his body felt both broiled and beaten up. And woozy, wow. He reached out and Silas grabbed his arm to steady him.
“You okay?”
“Yeah. Head rush. I’m fine.” He pulled out of Silas’s grip. “Let’s go hunt that spell.”
“You’ll want a flashlight,” Grim said. “Or better, two.”
They collected Jasper and flashlights from the kitchen and headed for the unused parts of the house. The cellar where Silas had set up his spell was nearest the kitchen, and connected to one further room with the water boiler and electrical panel, but each wing and tower of the mansion seemed to have its own bit of subterranean landscape. Some were damp, the walls occasionally slimy and the mortar crumbling. Others were dry and empty, or rubble-filled. Doors connected one small room to another, and stairs rose at odd angles. Several times the bit of cellar they were in ended, and they had to climb back up to ground level and descend again.
“What a mess,” Silas muttered as they headed down the next stair. “I’m starting to expect to find a dungeon.”
Darien moved close enough to whisper, “For prisoners or for play?”
Jasper probably didn’t hear him, but Grim’s snort sounded a lot like Silas’s.
Kii paused now and then to indicate, “That way,” with a tilt of her beak or a stretch of wing. Unfortunately, the directions she sensed were impossible to narrow down, at one moment pointing toward the heart of the west wing, and at another toward the north wall. She admitted grumpily that her sense of the power was faint and tangled in the warding spells.
Grim and the other two familiars seemed pretty well-acquainted with the maze of cellars. Twice, Grim said, “There’s a deeper bit,” and led them through a door and down more stairs, to rubble-filled narrow spaces without any electric lighting at all.
After what felt like miles of tramping on too little food and sleep, they ended up back near the kitchen. “That’s all the places I know of,” Grim said, “other than the sub-level tunnels used by the rats.”
“I’m not fond of rats lately.” Jasper’s tone was impressively cool, considering that in one of the deeper bits, a rat had jumped from a crack in the wall to Jasper’s shoulder and run down his pants to the floor.
Grim had killed it before it could escape, but Darien had been grateful that an inhale of saliva had ended up making him cough instead of scream. A scream had definitely tried to get out. “Me neither.”
Silas flexed his fingers and set the kettle on the kitchen stove for hot water. He’d been tossing find and magic and demon runes left and right as they searched. Darien was surprised he still had any strength left. As the kettle heated, they stood around silently.
“We’ll have to try that again.” Jasper had also been tossing detection runes, in case the spell was less well hidden from a sorcerer than a necromancer, but he looked less wiped out than Silas. Of course, he hadn’t banished a demon first. “I might try to craft a location spell, maybe something like a pendulum, to swing toward hidden magic. Like pendulum scrying.”