Chapter 15
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Ileaned my head against the cold glass of the locked front door and focused on my breathing while tamping the panic zinging through my veins. The burn from whatever Harold had done had dissipated, leaving behind a bone-wearying weakness and clouds drifting through my head.
We’d gotten here through the basement of the Marina building, and that’s where we had to get back to. But if Harold had left by the front door, we’d have noticed.
Ranth was trying to open the upper cabinet with the books. “It’s locked with some warding,” he said as I approached.
“Maybe there’s a door behind the bookcase,” I suggested.
Like a toddler, I cruised around the tables and counters, but the book Harold had used called out to me.
I tentatively touched the brittle paper, the pages flexing under my fingers.
Searching for answers to what Harold had done, I turned the pages, mesmerized by a handwritten mix of poetry and enlightened instruction.
No spell words or even spells. No diagrams and no lists of ingredients.
When I tried to pick the book up, it was stuck. The binding appeared to be glued to the wood table.
I yanked my phone out, breathing relief when the screen turned on. Having no signal was expected. Gleefully, I snapped pictures of all twenty-seven pages. The last one glimmered, and as I paged backwards, the ink disappeared. Now the entire book was blank.
Foxgloves.
Expecting the worst, I checked my phone, but the photos were there. Sometimes tech beats magic, and this was a total win. I looked up. I had no idea how long I’d been working with the book.
Ranth leaned against the bookcase with crossed arms, watching me.
“Why didn’t you say something?” I asked.
“About?”
“The book? Time?”
“You looked busy. I didn’t want to interrupt you.” He grinned.
“Why aren’t you more concerned? We could be trapped here, wherever this is.” I waved at the room. The reality of that biting into me.
“I’ve been trapped for a long time. That doesn’t concern me. Dying here does. But we aren’t trapped.” He tilted his head as if he were waiting for me to answer my question.
“So, you know how to get out of here?”
“Harold left by the door.” Ranth nodded at the mosaic on the floor. It depicted two cherubs bringing in the harvest to Bacchus.
“What does that have to do with anything? That door is locked from the inside.” I pointed at the way we’d come in.
Ranth uncrossed his arms and walked over to the edge of the mosaic like a leopard padding around an interesting bush. “You really can’t see it?”
“See what?” I hadn’t meant to shriek, but being trapped and Ranth being maddeningly vague irked me. “You mean the piece of art embedded in the floor?”
He nodded, his lips curling up on one side like he was holding back a secret. “And what else do you see?”
“It’s attractive, made of stones of varying colors.”
“There.” He pointed at the ribbons swirling between the cherubs.
“There, what? I don’t understand.”
“Hmm, interesting. You really can’t see it, then?” He knelt down by it.
“See what!”
“The golden net is what the Ahknim call it. The stones energize them. They are magical doors.”
“I see nothing golden at all.”
“Maybe because you weren’t trained…” He looked up at me, and I glared back at him.
“Look, show me the door, or whatever will get us out of here.” I walked around a perforated copper bin and teetered.
“My pleasure,” he replied, darting to me but sending me off-balance. I landed against his chest.
His arms banded around me, steadying me in a cloud of powdered amber and his woody, smoky musk.
The air electrified. My skirt brushed against my ankles, whispering anticipation as he walked me backward to lean against the bookcase.
Desire for him roared through my blood. His arms were iron and silk.
Power and softness. His eyes locked with mine; lightning sizzling behind them.
His head dipped, and I stopped breathing.
I grazed my lips over his. Petal soft, glazed with sweetness. I ached to taste him. His lips parted, and we crashed together, the kiss fast and deep. His hands slid down my hips, and I brushed the satiny skin where his cropped shirt exposed his stomach, curling fingers into his waist band…
With a moan into my mouth, he broke the kiss and staggered back.
I gasped as clarity replaced the broken heat.
Ranth was sucking in breaths as if the effort of moving away from me was like climbing a mountain. We stared at each other, in awe of something precious not to be disturbed or something monstrous that we had barely controlled. It was both.
He looked down, tracing the new dark-purple symbols on his arm. “This place, it’s affecting us. We need to leave. You’ve gone through a portal before, right?” he asked, nodding at the mosaic.
What had we done? I licked my lips, savoring the kiss. His scent was different now, blended.
Our scent.
His words seeped in. I looked down at the stones under my boots.
“This is a portal?” I was standing on what demons came through. “Then you are a demon,” I whispered, stepping off the mosaic and steadying myself with the shelf behind me.
“I’m a wizard, and all wizards should understand portals.” He reached for me, and I let him tug me toward the mosaic, the feel of his skin against mine the rightest feeling. Like biting into a June peach. Sweet and real.
I had no will to fight him, even if I wanted to. I wanted to leave this place, but I also wanted his hands on me.
“I suggest you hang on to me, just in case.” His jaw was clamped, like it was hurting him to touch me.
The air wobbled around us. “In case of what?” Fighting against the terror clawing my insides, I gripped his upper arms as the air turned syrupy.
The room blurred in a blue mist, and I leaned into him as the edges of my vision slicked with rainbows. Then, for a heart-racing second, I completely blanked out. Not blacked out—I was entirely conscious—but it felt like my brain couldn’t process the blur of color and light.
I sank to my knees, gasping for air and trying not to throw up. We were outside the bank vault door where we’d started. Ranth slid to the floor beside me. His arms gathered me like fallen flowers.
“Sorrel, are you okay?” he rasped into my hair.
“Let’s go with no. I went through a demon’s portal without a ground element.
It was… unpleasant. How did you know it was a portal?
” I brushed him off. Now in the real world again, his touch was odd.
Like whatever had happened to us in the other place had been a fantasy or a dream or both.
Still, thinking of the kiss was like a match to oil. The flames of the memory engulfed me.
“Doors like these are not unusual to me. I have experience with them.” He fiddled with the string on his pants, not meeting my eyes.
What he said sank in, throwing water over me. “Then you can make a portal?” The world stopped. If he could open a portal, I might be able to get to my mom.
I could bring her back.
“With help and the necessary elements.”
I gazed up at him. Mom’s words echoed.
When you meet a sage, you sit beside them and you listen.
My unschooled education had taught me the one essential thing: Knowledge isn’t something you acquire, it’s an adventure of self-exploration. If I could get over myself, I could learn from him.
“Then let’s get out of here.” I clambered up, using the wall to steady me. I glanced up the flight of stairs and wondered if Harold was back in his office. I reached the landing and started up the next flight, happy that the nausea had passed.
“Where are you going?” Ranth called up.
“Upstairs, obviously.”
“I mean after that.”
“To find Harold.”
“Not a good idea. At least, not right now.”
“Why the foxgloves, not?”
“Because the Eharnin who did this is more powerful than either of us.”
I stopped and leaned over the banister. “The what?”
“Eharnin. A wizard who has a pact with a demon. Usually it’s a group, but occasionally a single wizard will get enough power and knowledge. I assume that is what Harold is.”
“It’s clear you have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about. There’s only a glimmer of a chance that a wizard could call a demon, but I can assure you there are no wizards in San Francisco strong enough to make pacts with them.”
But that was only true if Harold was human—and that was still to be proven. If he could create portals, it did make him closer to demon than human—or a type of unknown wizard like Ranth.
“There is more to the world than San Francisco,” Ranth replied.
He was right, but that didn’t give me a better answer. Either Harold was what Ranth said he was—or something else. Harold had done what we’d asked him to—so Rose had been right about him. I swung off the last landing and onto the last set of stairs. Something was taped to the door at the top.
You owe me one Essifer fore-bone.
Deliver by next Friday.
Harold.
“What’s an Essifer fore-bone?” I asked, pulling off the paper. Sandals slapped up the stairs behind me. I turned to look at Ranth, and he ripped the note out of my hand.
“Hopefully, something you don’t ever need to know about.”
I snatched the note back. “I’ll make that decision.”
He crossed his arms and studied me. “Essifer can extend a protrusion from their abdomen that can spear their prey. It’s expandable and weaponizes the beast if the jaw attack isn’t enough to kill, which it should be.
The only way you could get one would be to kill an Essifer, and that’s not happening. ”
“Didn’t you say they were hunting you? It should be easy to get one.”
“That’s exactly the thing. Now, thanks to your friend Harold, I can die and so can you. We’re not getting anywhere near an Essifer.”
“You’re suggesting I shouldn’t keep my end of the bargain?”
“Sorrel, you didn’t make a bargain or a promise. Harold expected you to do this because you are a good person. He’s trying to take advantage of your…”