Gem adjusted her floral skirt and knelt in front of the box. “Yes, but he has the best stuff in town. I bet he’s got a special arrangement with the cleaners or whoever.”
“Top dollar for top dead?”
“Something like that. Do you see anything here that belongs to a poor man?” She tossed aside an Armani jacket and a few strange bookends shaped like little monsters. “The people who deliver this stuff aren’t supposed to pack illegal weapons. But they do. Where else would Cosmo get that stuff?”
“Why would they bring them here? Why not keep them and skip the middleman?”
Gem tapped the face of a watch and added it to the pile. “Because they’d get caught. Bringing them here is easy money. Cosmo probably pays them up front. Anyhow, it explains why he also has the best books.”
Claude snorted and sat on a taped-up box. “The most nefarious men are literate?”
“Bingo.” She lifted a stack of books. “Think about it. Wealthy immortals have to be intelligent to get away with their crimes. Fortune favors the bold, but time favors the brilliant.”
Claude reached down and retied his white sneakers. “And what about the strong?”
Gem opened a book and thumbed through the pages. “How many strong, dumb men do you know who lived past two hundred and who weren’t under the protection of a brilliant man?”
Claude smiled handsomely and sat back up. “I guess I better brush up on my education.”
Without looking his way, Gem said, “Don’t worry. You fall in the beautiful category.”
“And what does that mean?”
“Opportunity favors the beautiful. You might never be rich, but you’ll never lack options.”
Claude lifted a pen and twirled it between his fingers. “You’re a clever female.”
“Not clever enough,” she muttered.
“I know you’re searching for answers to help Niko, but you can’t take all this responsibility upon yourself.”
Little did he know.
“What are you looking for?” he asked, thumbing through the pages of a dictionary. “And what interests you from that specific collection?”
Gem knew she shouldn’t have invited Claude along, but it was the only way to get a ride into the city. “Claude, would you be an angel and get me a box of donuts?”
“Donuts?”
She flipped a page. “I haven’t had them in forever, and I’m famished.”
He stood up like a soldier, unable to fight the instinct to feed a woman. “Plain or chocolate?”
“A variety box would be divine! And get extra so we can take the rest home. While you’re out there, can you tell Cosmo that I need an hour?”
“Why didn’t you tell him when he was in here?”
She batted her eyelashes at him. “Because you’re so much better at convincing people.”
Once Claude left the room, Gem was able to concentrate without a barrage of questions. She combed through all the books, one at a time. All but two were written in archaic languages, and she carefully scanned each and every page, ignoring the impending deadline that loomed over her like a swinging pendulum blade.
A knock sounded. “It’s been an hour,” Cosmo complained from the doorway. “Are you done yet?”
Gem blinked and looked up. Had it already been a whole hour? It seemed as if only minutes had passed, but when she checked her internal clock, Cosmo was right.
“Your friend’s waiting in the car,” he added. “Eating donuts.”
Claude was sweet. He knew Gem liked to work alone, so he’d gone for donuts and left her by herself, despite his protective nature.
“I just have one more to look at,” she promised.
He gave her the stink eye before leaving, once again slamming the door behind him.
Gem opened the last book in the box, and her heart sank. It was Gaelic and looked like work from the thirteenth century. She dutifully examined it anyway. There were a few random drawings, and as she flipped the pages, she identified strange anomalies, like passages written in Old Irish, which was long before the thirteenth century. Scholars often tried to be consistent, but even the handwriting differed throughout, as if immortals from different centuries had contributed. Some sections detailed battles she’d never heard of, and others listed spies sent to live among the English monarchy during the 1500s. The book hadn’t even been written in chronological order, which meant it hadn’t been passed down within a family or organization. A collective group had organized facts they felt were important to remember. It listed a surprising number of names along with their crimes and last known location. How had she missed this? Probably because the first few pages looked like an uninspiring account of Irish clans and battles, something Christian might have enjoyed.
The deeper she dove, the more intriguing the facts.
“Healing plants?” she murmured. “Definitely giving you to Shepherd.”
Many Relics knew of ancient remedies, but they passed that knowledge down to their children. They didn’t document those facts in books. This collector’s item was a treasure trove of information. One of the plants allegedly worked the same as liquid fire when ground into a paste, and another temporarily changed eye color. Imagine!
Gem tamped down her excitement when she remembered that she had only two days to find a cure for Niko. No one had obtained any helpful information on his condition, including Mary Rothchild. Wyatt’s internet research had turned up nothing, Shepherd’s contacts were clueless, and once again, Gem felt as if Niko’s life was in her hands.
She stared at the collection of worthless items on the floor. Something more had to be in the red book, but her progress had slowed significantly. Viktor didn’t want to try another spell, but what harm could it do when Niko had one foot in the grave?
Numbness ran down the length of her leg when she attempted to get up. “Ow.” Her entire leg from hip to toe had fallen asleep.
The book slid to the floor with the pages facing up. Gem had put her palms on the linoleum to stand when something in the book caught her eye: a drawing of an ouroboros, a snake eating its tail. She leaned over it and studied the text written within the serpent.
“The beginning and end,” she translated.
When she turned the page, she discovered more drawings. One was of a quill. The text described it as the Creator. It purported that a feather from a phoenix dipped in blessed ink could bind spells.
Her eyes widened. Blessed ink must have been ink infused with a rare Mage gift. But the feather of a phoenix? They had it wrong. Phoenixes were mythical creatures in Greek mythology. It was possible she was misinterpreting the word, and maybe it referred to a specific family or clan of avian Shifters. She skimmed over to the adjacent page. DESTROYER was written beneath a knife sketch.
“When the book is sealed with magic, it is born into the world. It becomes immortal, absorbing light and altering fates. It gives life, and it takes it away. It is the beginning and the end. It is the divine and the underworld. Those who use it curse themselves,” she roughly translated, “for all gifts have a price.”
Gem clutched the book in her hands and stood up. When she hurried to the door, her entire leg—still asleep—dragged behind her.
Standing behind the cash register, Cosmo craned his neck to see what she held. “What have you got there?”