Chapter 9
CHAPTER NINE
Kit
“Hold up,” I called after Sorensen, turning to gesture at Lienna. “First you need to—oh.”
Lienna was no longer engulfed in the golden glow of the holding spell. She was standing directly behind me, ready to push me out of her way if I didn’t get moving. Right. It took more than a basic holding spell to stop her.
Facing forward, I crossed the entryway rug, broken bits of stone crunching underneath it, and that warm spot in my skull dimmed as half of my psychic senses were snuffed out.
No wonder my clairsentience hadn’t registered the old grouch’s presence.
There was more abjuration going on here than just the spells on the front door.
Cautiously, I continued onward. The temperature inside was marginally cooler than outside, and I was sweating in my lightweight T-shirt, my backpack stiflingly hot against my shoulder blades.
I surveyed the long hallway in front of me. On the left were windows with carved wooden shutters, lines of bright sunlight leaking around the gaps between the wood and the mud-brick walls. On the right were several arched doorways. Sorensen, I assumed, had disappeared through one of them.
“First room!” he called from somewhere deeper in the house. “And lock the front door!”
As a heavy bolt clacked behind me, I ventured into a spacious room lit by two floor lamps.
Glass-fronted cabinets covered one wall, each one filled with books—fat leather-bound tomes, journals, even some yellowed scrolls.
And unless I was seeing things, there were faint Arcana etchings on the glass.
Protection or anti-theft spells, perhaps?
Along the opposite wall, a row of plush cushions in bright red and blue fabrics formed a comfy seating area, and an intricately patterned rug covered the sand-colored floor in the open center of the room.
With the toe of my shoe, I lifted the edge of the rug.
Beneath it was the curved perimeter of a sorcery array that likely spanned the entire floor.
Who wanted to bet that was the cause of my psychic abatement?
“So this guy is an abjuration sorcerer?” I asked Lienna in a low voice as she joined me.
“A famous one,” she confirmed, peering through the glass of the nearest cabinet. “In mythic archaeological circles, at least.”
I crouched beside the cushions. Next to them was a wooden crate acting as a makeshift end table. A mug, a notepad, and a framed picture sat on it. I picked up the photograph. A short message had been scrawled across it in red marker.
Proof that an old grouch can make new friends.
-M
In the photo, a tired and dusty group stood in front of an ancient cobblestone road lined with crumbling pillars.
Sorensen wore a smile that sat awkwardly among his deep, scowl-shaped wrinkles.
The four people surrounding him were grinning, including a dark-haired woman who had an arm thrown over his shoulders and a mischievous tilt to her smile.
“Put that down!”
I started at the command. As the archaeologist entered the room carrying yet another book, I set the frame back in its spot and rose to my full height.
“Before we begin,” he said with a fraction less hostility than when he attacked us, “how did you find me? Did you use a clairvoyant? How did they link to me?”
“No psychics,” Lienna said. “Just investigative work.”
Sorensen scoffed. “The circle of people who know my whereabouts is exceptionally small.”
“We know,” I said. “It was a lot of investigative work.”
And it had all started with blowing up a few boats in Vlieland, but I kept that part to myself.
“Fine.” He flipped open his book—a grimoire—and poised his pencil over a blank page. “What is your name?”
“Let me introduce my partner first.” I gestured grandly to Lienna. I didn’t need to give him our real names, but it was obvious this fossil had missed all the news about my record-breaking bounty. There was no way he’d seen hers. “Lienna Shen, abjuration sorceress. Abjuration prodigy, in fact.”
She offered her hand. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Dr. Sorensen.”
With a doubtful look at the “prodigy” part, he gave her hand a quick, unenthusiastic shake before turning to me. “Now, you—”
“Call me Kit,” I said brightly, grasping his hand and shaking it. “Can I call you Teddy?”
“If you must.” He retracted his hand. “Your full name, please.”
I’d been hoping he wouldn’t insist on that. “Kit Morris. Have you heard of me?”
“Why would I have heard of you?” He jotted my name down. “Though in light of this discovery, I certainly wish I had.”
Discovery? What was he talking about?
“Dr. Sorensen,” Lienna began, “we have some questions about a tomb you discovered.”
He scoffed. “You’ll need to be more specific.”
“Bodil’s tomb,” I clarified. “The Viking queen.”
“Ah, yes, I imagine you’d be very interested in Bodil.” He stepped around me, analyzing every inch of me like he wanted to examine my molecules under a microscope. “How old are you, Mr. Morris? A precise birthdate, preferably.”
“You opened Bodil’s sarcophagus,” I prompted, ignoring his bizarre query. “There was an artifact in it. A weird round amulet thing.”
He poked my bicep with the eraser end of his pencil. “Above average physical condition. Athletic musculature.”
Did he treat all his guests like this? His status as a recluse was making more sense with every passing moment.
He jotted another note in his grimoire and continued his circular trajectory. I turned, preventing him from walking behind me.
Lienna moved with us in a weird three-person dance. “Did you get a chance to study the artifact before it was stolen? Do you know what it does?”
If her questions registered in the hermit’s brain, he didn’t let on. Instead, he stared at my eyeballs so intently that he might as well have been inspecting my irises for imperfections. “You look tired. How does fatigue affect the efficacy of your abilities?”
I leaned away from his inquisitive gaze. “Why do you care about my abilities?”
“You demonstrated both levitation and telekinesis—two incompatible forms of Psychica.” He reached up to jab me in the left temple with his pencil, but I stepped out of his reach. “As well as two Elementaria affinities rarely wielded by a single mage. What else can you do?”
He looked back down at his notes, pencil scratching more thoughts onto the page.
I grimaced. I shouldn’t have revealed so many of my extra-special magical capabilities.
Aside from severely distracting Teddy, I was strongly opposed to being treated like a scientific anomaly pinned to a laboratory wall.
With a telekinetic tug, I removed the writing implement from his grip and hovered it between us. “We’re not here to discuss my abilities, Teddy. We’re here about Bodil’s artifact. Can you tell us what you know?”
He looked at the floating pencil with academic interest, then glanced at the rug—or more likely, at the abjuration array hidden underneath. “Telekinesis is unaffected, as expected. What about your other psychic abilities? Is your telepathy functioning?”
“No, Teddy, it isn’t. Your array took care of—wait. How do you know—”
The archaeologist plucked his pencil out of the air and resumed writing with it. “Division of abilities conforms to classical boundaries despite the unified source.”
“The artifact,” Lienna reiterated, inserting herself between Teddy and me and forcing him to step back as though she were attempting to physically intercept his bizarre interrogation. “What does it do? What kind of weapon is it? Can you—”
“Weapon?” he scoffed. “It’s not a weapon.”
I rocked back on my heels. That didn’t make any sense.
Of course the artifact was a weapon. Everything we knew pointed to that fact.
Why the hell else would the Consilium shell out thirty million bucks for it, especially when they had a proven track record of hoarding massively destructive and horrifyingly illegal artifacts?
“Are you sure?” I squinted suspiciously at Teddy over Lienna’s shoulder. “Didn’t Bodil use it to slaughter an army of ten thousand Vikings or whatever? It gave her superpowers.”
Teddy emitted another acerbic scoff—it seemed to be his standard reaction. “Bodil had no need of an artifact to accomplish that.”
“What about all the fire tornadoes?” I demanded. “The thunderstorms and earthquakes? Was all the stuff written on her tomb walls a bunch of bullshit?”
“Many renditions of historical events suffer from a certain amount of exaggeration, but I have no doubt she single-handedly vanquished small human armies.”
“How?” I asked.
“You of all people should understand how.”
Me? Why me?
I stared at Teddy’s pencil as it whizzed across a page of his grimoire, and a staggering blip of realization seeped into my consciousness. Questions that had been clinging for months to the deepest caverns of my soul trembled like stalactites threatening to break free.
“Your notes in Bodil’s tomb said you didn’t get to fully examine the artifact before it was stolen,” Lienna said, her focus on the archaeologist and our mission. “Why are you so convinced it’s not a weapon?”
“Because I knew what it was before setting foot in that tomb. It’s part of the reason I was searching for her tomb in the first place.” Teddy tapped his pencil against the paper. “Mr. Morris, what is your place of birth? The specific hospital.”
“Alberta,” I told him. “I don’t know the hospital.”
Lienna shot me a sharp look.
“I’m sure we can find the records,” Teddy muttered. “I will need to get some measurements from you. Height, weight, and so on. What magic class are you registered as? Psychica, I assume.”
“Yes.”
“We didn’t come here to dictate Kit’s autobiography to you,” Lienna jumped in, lightly prodding me with her elbow. “How did you know about the artifact before it was discovered?”