Total pages in book: 177
Estimated words: 171450 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 857(@200wpm)___ 686(@250wpm)___ 572(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 171450 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 857(@200wpm)___ 686(@250wpm)___ 572(@300wpm)
Graves ran New York. Imani ran Chicago. Kingston had London. Estelle had Paris. They were all formidable and generally terrifying in their own right. Kierse hoped that she wouldn’t run into Archie this time. Meeting other warlocks didn’t tend to go well for her.
The lock clicked.
“I’m inside,” she said.
There were no wards on the iron door as she pushed into the blocked-off tunnel system. Her fingers smarted against the iron, but the pain was quickly replaced by the smell, which was nearly enough to knock her off her feet. She was used to the New York City subway, but this was ancient and ugly. No wonder this wasn’t on the tour. She pushed aside that increasingly annoying buzzing sensation as she plugged her nose and continued forward.
She’d memorized the blueprints of the vaults from when they had first been created and knew the way to Archie’s house off Blair Street. His vaults were kept private from the other one hundred and twenty, which had originally been used for storage, but they had been improperly sealed and after only a few years were abandoned. Humans rediscovered them years later.
Though the true story was that they had been taken over by monsters, and only the most desperate humans lived amongst them until they came into the light.
A stark difference to Kierse’s home of New York City, which resulted in mass murder when the monsters took over and a decade-long war for control of the city. Only through the Monster Treaty had it all calmed down.
And now in a month’s time, the treaty was going to be renegotiated. A problem for another day.
“Going to the door,” Graves said.
She heard the knock on the front door through her earpiece as she navigated the disgusting tunnels. She hadn’t been sure that she even believed in ghosts until she’d come to Edinburgh. A few days inside the vaults and their old cemetery had made her a believer.
“No one is answering,” Graves ground out. He knocked again.
They knew that Archie was home. In their stakeout, they had figured out his schedule. Every morning, he ate the same breakfast at a tiny shop on the mile, took a walk up Arthur’s Seat, had lunch with a variety of monsters, an afternoon nap, and then a pint alone at a tavern walking distance from his house. Everything he did was walking distance. They’d seen him walk into his home earlier that evening, and once he made it home, he never left. It wasn’t late enough that he’d be asleep. Where was he?
“I’m almost there,” Kierse told him. “Will still need to break through the second vault door.”
“Don’t go inside without me,” Graves commanded.
“Understood.”
The buzzing was getting louder and she ground her teeth together as she focused on the task at hand. The entrance to Archie’s vaults were through another door, down one more tunnel, and behind another locked door. She opened it, hissing at the touch of iron, and pushed forward into the last tunnel.
It was night and day.
Where the previous tunnels were dark, dank, and disturbing, the hiss of the paranormal pressing against her had been oppressive. This area was clean, the air almost fresh. She’d made it to Archie’s section of the South Bridge vaults.
And before her was another giant iron door.
She blinked furiously when she looked at it, seeing a crisscross of magic and recognizing it all immediately as warlock wardings. Before she’d received her magical intuition, she wouldn’t have known that the door was warded until she touched it. She might have gotten a scent of some magic use or seen the thistle carvings—Archie’s symbol—glimmering in iridescence in a language she almost understood.
Now, she could read that language. She knew exactly what warding was put over this door, that it came from a warlock, and how powerful he was.
The gold gleam of his powers and the scent of peat mixed with the coconut-scent of gorse was nearly overwhelming. With her experience now, it was almost a joke that she struggled so hard last year to discern that Graves’s magic wasn’t just books. Now she could say distinctly that his magic was the leather of lambskin, the old parchment they used to hand cure in his youth in Ireland, and a new scent—an old resin ink. She could have taken apart each individual Irish wildflower that comprised her magic.
She retrieved her picks again, pushing that magical buzzing down deep in her gut as she worked on the lock, which was arguably more advanced than the last one. He clearly had invested more in his own private vault than the South Bridge vaults at large.
“Fuck,” Graves muttered.
She paused. “What?”
His voice grated as he said, “The wards are down.” He cursed under his breath. “I connected with the house and they’re down.” She heard a door creak open.
“The vault door is still secure.”