Total pages in book: 194
Estimated words: 187021 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 935(@200wpm)___ 748(@250wpm)___ 623(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 187021 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 935(@200wpm)___ 748(@250wpm)___ 623(@300wpm)
“I love you,” Mum said as she stroked her hair.
Kierse let her absorption drop again. Her head hurt like someone had driven a knife through her temple. Her magic was considerably more drained than she’d expected.
“What the fuck, Graves?”
Graves stood, striding across the room and returning with a box of tissues. “Here.” She stared at it in confusion. He gestured to his nose. “You have a nosebleed.”
Kierse ripped a tissue out and touched it to her nostril. It was a slow drip, but she wasn’t susceptible to them.
“Why is this happening?”
“It could be because of me. It’s happened before,” he admitted. “Though I’m not sure if it’s me or you.”
“Me? How could it be me?”
“Mafi did say that trauma could block the memories from resurfacing.”
Kierse bit her lip. “But they were working before. It’s just this one room.”
“Then it could be whatever is behind that door is too traumatic for you to witness.”
She shook her head. “No. It doesn’t feel like trauma. It feels like…” She wiped at her bloody nose. “I don’t know. Like the spell is still there.”
“The spell was broken.”
“It feels like there’s still something there. Some kind of block.”
He shrugged one shoulder. “It does feel like we hit something when we almost get to that room in Tribeca.”
“Tribeca? Is that where we were?”
“Yes, I recall the building,” he said.
“Could we go there?”
“It was twenty years ago. And it was destroyed in the war,” Graves said with a sigh. “No luck there, I’m afraid.”
She swallowed her disappointment. “It was a long shot, anyway.” She rolled her shoulders back. “Let’s go again.”
“Try to think of the magical signature you sensed in Sansara. We’ll see if that breaks through the block.”
Kierse took a deep breath. “I can do it.”
Her absorption dropped away. Graves’s hand was on her, his voice in her ears. “Take us back to the hallway.”
Kierse focused and let the hallway reappear before her. She’d time looped through it twice now. She knew the moment when the door opened and the woman spat something in Spanish. The fear across her mother’s face. The steel in her father’s. They were ready to fight if this went down.
“7016.” Her hand came down onto Kierse’s head.
“Pine and lemon,” Graves breathed so softly that for a second she could smell it again.
“7018.” Mum looked backward with alarm.
Kierse focused here. Let her wisp senses stretch. What had she detected in that hallway? What had she known even without knowing it? She wasn’t blunted yet. She didn’t have the spell on her. There was something under the fear.
“Next one.”
There.
The next door.
She could see it ahead. The 7020 on a little plaque on the front door. A little glow of magic around the frame. Warding, just like Mum could do. Just like in the library from the night before. And a smell…
Pine and lemon.
Just like in Sansara.
She was ripped away from the scent of that magic, as if she wasn’t supposed to have remembered that part. She landed on the streets of New York. She’d just pickpocketed an unsuspecting tourist for money for lunch. She was six and starving. Her mum had died in childbirth. Her daddy had abandoned her without a word. She had to survive. She couldn’t die. She touched the wren necklace against her chest, the only thing she had left of them. It had been her mum’s. That was all she knew.
Survival was what mattered.
“Hey, kid,” a voice called. “Neat trick.”
Kierse whipped around as fear pierced through her. A man was smiling down at her. He had dark features—dark hair and eyes—with an angular face and a kind look about him. His hair was groomed, beard shaved clean, and he was dressed in nice clothes. Nothing fancy, but cared for. Nicer than anyone living on the streets would wear, but not like the clothes of the people she stole from. Nondescript.
“What do you want?” she asked, mimicking a cool, adult voice.
“I can show you how to get better at that,” he said with a dark grin.
Jason.
Kierse dropped the connection. More blood trickled out of her nose. Enough that Graves passed her a second tissue with a concerned look on his face.
“It was him,” Kierse said. “Cillian Ryan. I smelled it.”
“We should stop there for today.”
“I can keep going,” she whispered.
“I don’t think so.” He handed her another drink. “We pushed too hard.”
Her head was pounding a quiet rhythm against her skull. She needed a break, and yet she couldn’t stop.
“Not hard enough,” she gasped as she downed the water. “We still didn’t see him.”
“We may not see him, Wren.”
She closed her eyes, unable to believe that. She had to see him. He was there in her memories. And yes, she had the confirmation she’d needed that the person who put the spell on her was also the person running the tree cult. Which meant he was the Curator and he would be at Monster Con.