Chapter 10
“I want you to keep this,” I said. I held out the volume to Claire. She didn’t take it. Neither did Miles or Olive when I shifted toward them. “Please.”
“This is quite a change in attitude from yesterday, Ziakas,” Olive said, addressing me by my last name. She crossed her arms over her chest. “Weren’t you determined to sort the situation yourself?”
Miles shot her a chastising glance. “Tell us about meeting Eloise. How did that come about?”
“She knocked on my door,” I said. “After I was terrorized by a single-minded raven who would not get off my porch—I swear it was watching me—”
Jasper broke into a fit of coughing, and I paused, waiting for him to be okay before I continued.
“Anyway, when I finally shooed the bird away, there was a thump on the porch, and I opened my door to find Eloise standing there.”
Claire took my arm and led me back to the love seat.
Olive and Miles resumed their seats in the armchairs, and Jasper took the chair Tariq had vacated.
I felt them all watching me expectantly, so I told them everything I’d learned from Eloise the prior evening, from Mamie being the one who had brought Eloise back from the dead to Eloise’s belief that Mamie had been murdered. That was where I paused.
“What else, Zoe?” Claire prodded gently. “What else did Eloise tell you?”
I took a deep breath. I could feel their scrutiny and I wondered if they would think I’d gone mad.
I glanced down at the book in my hands. I hadn’t opened it since my visit yesterday.
Perhaps it was my overactive imagination or maybe it was everything I’d learned about the book, but I could swear I felt it thrum low and deep in my hands.
Like a cat sitting on the lap of its chosen person, the grimoire had a strange sort of contentment emanating from it.
I hastily put it on the table in front of me, wanting to put some distance between me and it.
I spoke slowly, forcing out the words I didn’t want to speak.
“Eloise said that my mother murdered my grandmother and stole the book and that someone then murdered my mother for the same reason.” My throat was tight, my voice rough.
I rejected this narrative with every bit of my soul and I knew my voice conveyed as much.
“It’s not true. My mother didn’t murder my grandmother. ”
“That must have been a lot for you to take in.” Claire’s voice was kind and I felt my clenched shoulders ease in response to her empathy.
“And now Eloise wants you to send her on,” Miles said.
“Yes, but I can’t. I can’t decipher the book.
I have no idea where to begin. Also, I’m not cut out for whatever all this is.
Frankly, I don’t want to have anything to do with it.
” I pushed the grimoire across the table.
I don’t think I imagined that it resisted me like a child digging in its heels, refusing to leave the playground.
I stopped pushing and it sat in the center, its silver hexagon and engraved band catching the light against its dark matte cover.
“Forgive me, Zoe.” Jasper glanced at me apologetically. “But it seems to me that if Eloise found you, then whoever potentially murdered your mother—assuming that’s true—will come looking for you and that grimoire. And I don’t think they’re going to ask for it nicely.”
I glared at him. I decided I didn’t like this ridiculously good-looking man with all his well-reasoned arguments.
“Jasper’s right,” Claire said. “You could be in danger whether you have the book in your possession or not.”
I stared at the grimoire. What was I supposed to do?
Eloise and the grimoire were tapping into memories and emotions from my childhood that I had tucked away in the Things Never to Be Dealt With file and I resented them mightily for it.
I stood and backed away from the table until I was standing in between Miles’s and Jasper’s chairs.
I wanted out of there. I wanted to go home, back to my quiet life.
“Please take the book,” I pleaded. My voice was low, just above a whisper, when I added, “Burn it, lock it up, put it through a paper shredder. I don’t care. I never want to see it again.”
I should have been prepared. I wasn’t. The headache, when it came, was so swift and fierce it felt as if someone had split my cranium in two. I cried out and clapped my hands to my head. I managed to stagger two steps back before I heard a shout and crumpled into someone’s arms.
· · ·
When I awoke on the couch, I found Tariq seated in the chair beside me with his magical diffuser puffing its aromatic mist over me. His smile widened when I blinked awake, and he said, “We must stop meeting like this, Zoe.”
I forced my lips to curve up, but it was an effort.
“How’s your headache?” His smile vanished, wiped away by an expression of concern.
“It’s better,” I said. It was. Lingering stabs darted across my skull, but I could manage them.
I glanced past him at the table. The book was exactly where I’d left it.
Surprisingly, I didn’t feel any malevolence coming from the tome; rather it felt more like reproach.
I glanced away. Despite my love of books, I had never considered them sentient beings, but the bizarre events of the past few days were causing me to rethink that.
I swung my legs off the couch and Tariq helped me sit up.
I glanced over my shoulder to see Miles and Olive in the corner in conversation with Eloise while Claire and Jasper hovered nearby, looking as if they’d been watching me.
I felt my face get warm. I’d blacked out twice in front of the museum director.
In front of a professional woman I admired. It was straight-up humiliating.
“How are you feeling, Zoe?” Claire joined us.
“Mortified.” I blew out a breath. “I know I fell on someone and I’m so sorry.”
“Not at all,” Jasper assured me.
“It was you.” Of course it had been Jasper I’d landed on.
Why swooning into the arms of a hot British guy was worse than face-planting on Olive, I couldn’t say.
It just was. I stood on shaky legs, wishing I could flee the scene, but a wary glance at the book had me reconsidering.
“I swear I’ve never fainted in my life until yesterday. And now today. I’m so embarrassed.”
“There’s no need.” Jasper shook his head. “I’m just glad I was there to break your fall.” He glanced from me to the table, his pale blue eyes contemplative. “Clearly, the book has already formed an attachment to you.”
I would have scoffed and called that preposterous, but the evidence was damning.
Any time I tried to part company with the book, I was hit with a scorching headache and I blacked out.
I wondered if my grimoire was going to sprout a tail, eyes, and ears like the Freya book in the BODO.
That would certainly make it easier for me to bond with it.
“Zoe, Jasper was right when he said whoever is after that book will come for you,” Claire said. “I genuinely believe you’re in danger.”
I probably should have been scared, but all I felt was irritated. Annoyed that someone was messing with my very calm, very controlled, very orderly life.
“I want to help you.” Claire put her hand on my forearm and gave it a gentle squeeze before she let go. “We have several safe places in the city where you can stay until we determine who might come after you and the book.”
My eyes went wide. Leave my home in Wessex?
My job? My life? Nope. Nuh-uh. I was not doing that.
I didn’t care who came after me. “There’s no need,” I said.
“If someone comes for the grimoire, I’ll—” I stopped talking.
I had been about to say that I’d give it to them gladly, but I caught myself.
I didn’t want to suffer from another brain-crushing headache and I didn’t want to faint.
“You’ll what?” Jasper raised one arching black brow in question. I suspected he knew what I’d been about to say.
“I’ll deal with it,” I said. It sounded lame even to me, but really, what else could I say?
I was not giving up the peaceful life I loved.
No way, no how. Desperately wanting to change the subject, I glanced at Tariq and caught his gaze, then I jutted my chin in the direction of Eloise. “What did you find out?”
I wanted him to say, She’s a fraud. She’s as alive as you and me. But he didn’t.
“She is exactly what she says she is.” Tariq stood and walked toward us with his mouth set in a grim line. “She’s dead—very, very dead. Or undead—very, very undead. However you want to look at it.”
I shook my head. “How is that possible?”
“Magic,” Claire said.
She, Tariq, and Jasper surveyed me with varying degrees of sympathy.
They had expected this outcome. I was the only one who’d been holding out hope for a different answer.
I felt a surge of anger rise up inside me and I knew, like most anger, it came from a place of fear.
I didn’t want to betray the promise I’d made to my mother and I resented that I was being forced to do just that.
Frankly, I was terrified of magic and witchcraft and the heartache it had caused in my life.
I’d been clinging to the promise I’d made my mother, because it had kept me safe from myself all these years.
“Eloise, tell me the truth,” I demanded.
“I have.” She held her hands wide as if to show her innocence.
“No, you haven’t,” I argued. “Why me? Why do I have to help you? Why can’t you just die again?”
“Because her vessel is bound by magic,” Olive said. “She can’t die again. I thought we covered this. Just because you don’t like something doesn’t mean you can deny it out of existence.”
“Can’t I?” I cried. I noted that both Tariq and Miles looked nervous, but Olive looked even more bored, which was a much bigger insult than if she’d gotten angry.