Chapter 6 #2
“Isn’t magic mostly genetics?” Griffin looked me over.
“Yes.” I wasn’t sure what else to say, because I’d heard it all before. The whispers that I wasn’t my father’s son, the rumors that I was the personal trainer’s son, or that my father had a bastard and made my mother raise me.
Then there were the worst ones, accepting that I was my parents’ child, but I was just a failure. A flop. The trial run before my sister Elaine had come along with her perfect magic and winning temperament. No awkward trailing off for Elaine.
“Hmmm, well, at least your parents love you.” Griffin seemed startled by his own words, and he picked up his mug of tea again, examining the university logo on it.
“They do,” I said. And that was the crux of it, the most terrible part.
My parents loved me so much that they would bend over backwards and spend half the family fortune making my life as easy as possible, if I let them.
It was a terrible thing to know that your life was so pitiable your parents would rather spend half a billion dollars on you than accept you as you were.
Griffin seemed to read it on my face, though, and something softened on his own expression. “So. What’s up with this book that you had to hit a guy with a chair, and we nearly caused some club kid to get trampled just so we could get it?”
I looked down at the leather-bound volume sitting on the table.
“JA Williams approached me with a job offer. He’s known in magical research circles for funding projects that might not otherwise be able to find funding sources.
I thought—foolishly, perhaps—I thought that I had found a kindred spirit.
Someone who also was interested in the historical record of the Hive. ”
“How did he approach you?” Griffin asked, and I looked over in surprise. I knew he was skeptical of the Hive. Everyone was, but he’d kept his tone neutral and avoided the landmine of whether the Hive were more or less fictional than the latest superhero movie.
“Email. He said that he knew I was an expert, and he wanted me to verify a manuscript he’d bought at auction.
This manuscript.” I pulled out my phone, finding the email chain, and passed it over.
As I did, my fingers dragged over Griffin’s, and my skin prickled.
I blushed hot and refocused on the book.
Standing, I went into the kitchen, using the excuse to refill my mug of tea. Then I considered and washed my hands in the sink, scrubbing and drying carefully as though I were about to go into surgery. When I finished, I went back and sat down, opening the book cautiously.
“This says he was considering it for resale and needed an authentication note.” Griffin put my phone on the table next to the book and leaned forward. He examined the first page. “So, what is this?”
“Can you get me a notepad?” I asked, distracted already by the tome. “There should be several on the dining table.”
Griffin rose, retrieving one of the yellow notepads scattered among the piles of books and papers.
I was hyperaware of how close he sat when he returned and shook off the feeling, smiling politely and taking the pen offered.
He stayed there, pulling out his phone occasionally but mostly focusing on the notes I was taking.
I tried not to be self-conscious, and eventually I forced him out of my awareness until he pressed something into my hand. Toast. Shaking my head, I leaned back, examining the notes I’d taken. A shaft of sunlight crossed the living room, and I shaded my eyes.
“What—?” I blinked at him.
“Yeah, you’ve been… focused. It’s seven in the morning. Any clues?” He offered over a plate of eggs, and I began eating as though I was starving and this was the only food I’d ever tasted. He would be worth the thousand a day alone if he could get me to eat when I went down a research hole.
Usually when I was busy with a paper, Elaine would have to come pry me out of the library and feed me. No one else had ever noticed that I was hungry or hadn’t drunk water. Until Griffin.
“No. This tome has a detailed history of a particular strand of the Hive. Some of the text has been damaged, and I need to double-check some of my translations against known sources.” I tapped the tines of the fork against the plate.
“I can tell you it’s an undiscovered text.
Never before seen. He didn’t pick this up at Sotheby’s.
It’s fairly esoteric. I might be the only one on this coast even remotely interested in it.
And I have no idea what he’s planning, but after what happened when I started reading the document out loud, and after what happened with the MEA, I know it can’t be good.
And no one else will listen, so I need to stop him. ”
“Huh.” Griffin reached over, picking up the book and thumbing through the text. “No helpful notes. No big targets with the words: END GOAL.”
Something fell out of the back, and I winced. Likely a loose page or a piece of the binding. I was shocked that a book as old as this had even lasted through the rough treatment of a backroom brawl and running for our lives.
Griffin put the book aside and picked up the paper that had fallen. His eyebrows shot up, and he winced.
“What?” I asked, then looked closely at what I could tell now was a picture. “Oh.”
It was a photo taken from a distance, based on the high pixelization of the image. A man in an oversized jacket pushed a shopping cart filled with who knew what odds and ends. He didn’t seem aware of the camera.
“Of course. If there’s a magical disturbance of this size, there’s only one group of people in the city who might know anything.” I offered over the photo. “And it looks like Williams wants to keep a close eye on them.”
“Don’t say it,” Griffin said, his face scrunched in distaste.
“We need to see the oracles,” I said.