The Wren in the Holly Library

Chapter Thirty-Six

Kierse followed Graves out of the house. The streets were empty as they navigated down 75th Street toward Amsterdam. Instead of fear, excitement pricked her. This was her favorite time of day.

“We should take witching-hour strolls more often.” She stuffed her hands into the pockets of his jacket, glad that she hadn’t given it back to him.

He quirked an eyebrow. “Witching hour? At least I know you’re reading the assigned books.”

“They’re good,” she admitted. “I love the stories in them.”

“What story are you reading right now?”

She considered what she’d last read. “The gods, the Tuatha Dé Danann.”

A smile cracked his features. “It’s pronounced Tew-ha day dahn-en.”

“Oh. Well, have you ever tried to pronounce Irish words out loud? There are a lot of vowels.”

“Gaelic was my second language,” he said smugly.

“Of course it was,” she said with a pointed eye roll. “Anyway, I like The Morrigan.”

He directed her into an underground parking garage. “I should have known.”

“What woman in a modern world wouldn’t want to have the amount of power The Morrigan had? She was a ruler, a goddess of war, and foretold the future. Granted, it was mostly doom, but still.”

“Indeed.” They took the stairs.

“Plus, she’s depicted as three sisters. I kind of like the idea that one person can also be a trio. Like Gen, Ethan, and I are stronger together.”

“That’s an astute observation. Three is sacred to the Irish—life, death, and rebirth.”

“All the better.”

Two levels down, he patted a slick black car. “Here we are.”

“Why do you have a car in a parking garage when you have your own underground garage?”

“For emergencies.”

She didn’t even question it. Why bother? It was Graves.

He revved the engine, and they were off, zipping out of the garage and through the empty NYC streets. Graves handled himself behind the wheel with the confidence that he did everything else in life.

“Is that all that you got out of the last book?” Graves asked once they were heading toward Queens. “There was a lot more than the gods in there.”

“I read about the Druids.”

Graves’s fingers flexed on the steering wheel. “Oh yeah?”

“They have magic, too.”

“They are the warlocks of their people,” he said with a shrug.

“But like actual priests,” she said. “And there are some stories of them being healers and prophets.”

“Sure,” he said easily. “Who told those stories?”

“I don’t know. You’re the one who assigned me the book.”

“Well, as with most things,” he said gravely, “history is told by the victors.”

She knew that to be true. They were still writing the history of the Monster War, and already some people forgot how bad it had gotten. She couldn’t imagine what it would say in books thousands of years from now.

“The rest of the book was pretty dense. Lots of history. Names and dates and stuff really go over my head.”

“Nothing jumped out at you?”

“Well,” she said softly, “I was interested in the festival days.”

He snorted. “Why does this not surprise me?”

“I mean, it sounded like a good time,” she said with a smirk. “Sounds a lot like Imani’s parties.”

“Indeed.” Graves’s eyes flicked to hers. Heat traveled through her. She’d had one taste. That should have satisfied her. And yet, she couldn’t help but admit that she wanted more.

She cleared her throat and glanced away. “But otherwise it was a lot of this deity here and that deity there. Oh, and fairies. Can’t forget the fairies.”

“Sídhe,” Graves corrected again. “Or just Fae.”

“And four magical artifacts. A sword of something, a cauldron, the Spear of Lug...”

“Lugh,” Graves corrected, looking at her sideways. “Like the name Hugh.”

“Right, okay. Definitely was pronouncing that wrong.” She squinted, trying to remember the last.

“The Stone of Fal,” Graves supplied. “The four treasures of the Tuatha Dé Danann.”

“That,” Kierse said. Then she froze. “Wait, a spear.” She pointed at Graves. “You said all this shit is real.”

“I did.”

“Okay,” she whispered, sobering. “So, are the magical objects, fairies—sorry, sídhe—and gods real, too?”

“All the tales come from somewhere.”

Which meant yes.

She ruminated on that as they breezed through Queens and to the back entrance of The Covenant. The building was dark. It was way past its hours of operation. But Graves had said they had to make their window.

Graves cocked his head to the side, and they entered The Covenant. He directed her down a hallway until they reached a lab. Dr. Mafi was seated at a computer, typing furiously. Tonight, she wore a mustard-yellow hijab, but it looked hastily thrown up rather than perfectly put together like last time. Bags hung heavy under her eyes, and her brown skin was sallow as if she had been working sunup to sundown. She didn’t even notice them enter.

“Emmaline,” Graves said.

Dr. Mafi startled. She closed out of whatever she was working on. “Graves, you made it.”

“We did,” Graves said.

She looked Kierse up and down. “Nice jacket.”

Kierse met her steely gaze with one of her own. “Hello, Dr. Mafi.”

“I see you don’t take advice well.”

Graves cleared his throat. “Emmaline, you were vague on the phone.” His eyes shot momentarily to Kierse, and she saw something like concern flicker through their depths before they returned to Mafi. “You need another sample?”

Dr. Mafi stood, brushing imaginary lint from her clothes. “Yes. Come sit over here, Kierse.”

Kierse looked to Graves, and he nodded. Mafi seemed... rattled. As if something had scared her. Kierse did as she was told, and Mafi quickly went to work hooking her up and drawing more blood from her arm.

“What’s going on, Emmaline?” Graves asked. He crossed his arms, his face stern. “I can read you. Something is off.”

“Don’t read me,” she bit out.

“It’s all over your face.”

Dr. Mafi settled at that. “Yes. I suppose it is. I’m just...” She looked down at Kierse. “I’m not sure what to make of the samples she gave me. I have some answers, but I need more time to analyze what is going on. I’ve never seen it before.”

“Explain,” Graves commanded.

She ground her teeth together. “Well, she’s not a warlock.”

Kierse nearly jumped out of her seat. Her eyes went wide, and her jaw dropped. “What? But I have magic!”

Graves didn’t look surprised. Or at least it didn’t show on his face.

“I have magic, and I’m not a warlock,” Dr. Mafi said.

“So I’m a witch?” Kierse asked, sitting back in the chair in defeat.

“No.” Dr. Mafi hurried to her desk and retrieved a piece of paper. She passed it to Graves and pointed at something on it. “That is warlock DNA sequencing. The few that have been mapped. That is the gene that has been isolated that is attributed to your abilities. There are a few other protein variations. A DNA and RNA combination difference, but this is what it should look like. You don’t have to sequence for everything else if you find this.”

“Okay,” Graves said.

Dr. Mafi settled another piece of paper onto the first. “This is what a human genome looks like.” Then another paper. “And this is what hers looks like.”

Graves frowned, his eyes zipping across the page. “So, she’s not human, either.”

Emmaline shrugged. “No. Which we already guessed, but she’s not any of the other known monsters I’ve mapped.” She looked to Kierse apologetically. “Sorry. I’m not sure what she is.”

“I don’t understand,” Kierse said.

“You look pale. Hold on.” Dr. Mafi reached into a nearby refrigerator and brought her a juice box. “Drink this.”

Kierse dutifully put it to her lips, sucking down the grape juice.

“What did you learn from the other samples?” Graves asked.

“Not much,” she admitted. “For almost all metrics, she looks human. I mean, look at her. She looks human.”

“So do you,” Graves pointed out. “So do I.”

“Right. Yeah. I mean... besides her DNA, nothing really looked different except one other metric.” Dr. Mafi retrieved one last piece of paper. “It probably won’t make sense. It doesn’t make sense to me.”

Graves looked at the paper. Kierse craned her neck, hoping to catch a glimpse of it. Dr. Mafi was showing all of this to Graves and not to her, after being all cryptic about her privacy. She must have been really flustered.

“What am I looking at?”

“Elevated white blood cell counts,” Dr. Mafi said, pointing at a number.

“So, she’s fighting off an infection?”

“I’m not sick,” Kierse told them.

“No, you’re not,” Dr. Mafi agreed. “In fact, you’re one of the most fit people I have ever seen in my lab. Have you ever been sick?”

She nodded. “I got the flu once. Right after the collapse.”

“Were you tested positive for influenza? Do you know the strain?”

“Well, no. I was young. No one could afford to go to the doctor, but I had all the symptoms. I was working with my mentor on a big job. It was a few days away, and I couldn’t back out. So I did it anyway, and then, I don’t know, I was in bed for like three weeks.”

“But what did the flu look like?”

Kierse shrugged. “The flu. I had an outrageously high fever. So high that I was seeing things, hallucinating. Then I blacked out in the middle of a recon mission. Once I finished the job, I was so weak. Weaker than I’d ever been. As weak as... Wait.”

Something like realization flickered onto his face. “As weak as you were after the powder?”

She nodded. The whole thing was dawning on her. “Yeah. Just like that, actually.”

He turned to face Dr. Mafi. “You have an explanation?”

“Her body eats magic,” Dr. Mafi said.

“Excuse me?” Kierse blurted.

“Eats magic?” Graves asked in disbelief. She’d never seen him look so confused. “Explain what you mean by that.”

“This is a supernatural facility. It’s common practice to use magic to make things easier or to make them faster. I was using some of those techniques on the blood while I was testing it, and it gobbled the magic right up. The white blood cell count is higher because it’s breaking it down in some way. I didn’t have enough blood. I’m still figuring it out.”

“I don’t eat magic,” Kierse muttered. “Wouldn’t I know if I was doing that?”

“Her body’s not eating it,” Graves said slowly. He tapped a gloved finger to his lips. Then, when he looked back up at her, a light was in his eyes. He knew. He’d figured it out. “It’s absorption.”

“Absorption. You’ve heard of this before?” Dr. Mafi asked in awe.

“I’ve heard of someone who had this ability. The magic doesn’t go up against a barrier. It absorbs into the body.”

Dr. Mafi tapped her fingers together. “Huh. Yeah. Yes, okay, that’s a great thought, Graves.” She immediately went back to her computer and began typing away. “I’ll analyze what we have here and get back to you if I see anything else.”

Then she strode back over and unhooked Kierse. She removed the bag of blood and transferred it to a cooler.

“Have you told anyone else about this?” Graves asked immediately, his voice suspicious.

Dr. Mafi looked affronted. “No. Of course not.”

Graves glowered at her, and she stared resolutely back. Kierse didn’t know if she believed her. It was a big hospital. Anyone could have seen what Dr. Mafi was doing. Not that she had any idea what it would be if she could absorb magic. But if she was valuable enough for her immunity, she couldn’t imagine what it would mean if she could draw other people’s magic into her body.

“Emmaline,” he said, his voice on the verge of threatening. “No one can know about her.”

“Patient confidentiality, Graves,” she reminded him.

Graves’s eyes cast back to Kierse with something like worry in them. No, it was definitely worry. She was starting to recognize the stoic looks he cast her way. And he didn’t like that she was something unexplained. More importantly, he didn’t like that Dr. Mafi knew about it, either.

“She’s not going to tell anyone,” Kierse told him. She looked to Dr. Mafi. “Right?”

Dr. Mafi glanced between them in surprise. As if Kierse and Graves were windows and she was peering through to whatever feelings were growing beneath. But all she said was, “Right.”

“Keep it that way,” Graves said. “I’ll call in a few days, and I expect an update.”

She nodded, her hands shaking slightly. “I’ll work on it. Thanks for coming in.”

Graves tipped his head at her, tucking the papers under his arm, and gestured for Kierse to precede him out.

“I can’t believe this,” Kierse said, her voice trembling. “What does this mean for me?”

“Nothing changes,” he said at once. He put a steadying hand on her back, and she leaned into it. “You’re not a warlock, but you have magic. Magic has laws and rules. You would still be ruled by them, and we’ll train you like you are.”

“Does this mean I’m something new?” she asked softly.

He was silent a moment before saying, “Or something very old.”