Raven Chapter 30 Hangovers and Histories 370 #3
He leans forward, snatches the cord from Kieran's phone, and holds up the knife when Ki-ki makes a grab for it. Then he tucks the knife between his teeth—because of course he does—before reaching into his pocket and pulling out his own phone.
He unplugs Ki-ki’s, tosses it back to him, then moves both the cord and his dinosaur phone into a single hand.
“Civilization,” Em says, settling back, his runes flaring to life on his hands.
Kieran looks horrified. “This is older than Henny.”
Dre’s voice floats up from behind me. “Excuse you, I’m medieval.”
I want to spin and gape at Dre— medieval is a lot older than I’d guessed—but the music hijacks my senses.
It sounds like the world turned inside out.
The piano feels like a bone being cracked open, laughter spilling out of it. The trumpet sounds like it’s trying to imitate a man arguing with the gods and totally winning. The saxophone is smoke if it had a voice, and it’s spilling every bit of tea I didn’t know I wanted to hear.
This isn’t music. It’s a beautiful, chaotic argument where everyone wins. Organized rebellion. The audio version of my wardrobe: taking broken, mismatched pieces and making something hot.
And for some inexplicable reason… it feels wrong in color. This sound only makes sense in black and white.
“The jazz of the twenties and thirties has always been superior to any other era,” Forrest states, giving Emerson a nod of approval.
“Jazz,” I mumble to myself, letting the word vibrate through me in time with the trumpet.
I'd always thought jazz was elevator music. This is a revelation. Maybe—I hate to admit it—Forrest is onto something. The twenties and thirties? Superior.
My eyes drift to the Nokia brick in Emerson’s hand.
He hasn’t plugged it in. Too old probably, or he sees the car as a data breach.
But what entrances me—as much as the music—is the magic.
A tiny zap, and the runes on his fingers glow as they connect the cord and the phone in a way that otherwise wouldn’t be possible.
I’ve seen it a dozen times. With ghost eyes and real ones. It never gets old. Partly because I have a thing about his hands. Mostly because magic.
I trace the runes from his long fingers up to where they vanish under his sleeves. Then higher, to his eyes. And then I'm trapped there.
This isn’t his usual observation. A switch has been flipped. For one blissful moment, I see straight into that glorious brain: he would burn every other song in existence to ash if it meant this one played for me forever.
I should be scared by that level of fixation. It’s less admiration, more worship with a side of potential arson.
But I’m not. Never with him.
I feel seen.
A smile stretches my lips, mirroring the saxophone’s wild joy. His eyes track every shift, every detail.
“You’re totally winning the new experience category right now,” I tell him.
The car stops. The music cuts. The mood in the cabin shifts, hardening into something dangerous.
Before they can default to guns-blazing-macho-protective mode, I raise my hand.
“Ye don’t need to raise yer hand, wisp,” Kieran says, fighting a smile. “Just spit it out.”
“Before we go in all toxic-masculinity style,” I say, “can we please consider knocking?”
A sharp intake of breath. My head snaps toward Forrest so fast the world spins.
“ Shhh . I’m not done.” I channel every ounce of Miriam’s don’t-fuck-with-me energy.
“No one knows what is inside. For all we know, the book is buried 20 feet underground. What if there’s like, a homeless encampment in there or something?
People just trying to stay out of the cold?
We’re just going to go in there and beat them up? ”
I sigh, scrambling for logic he’ll accept. “You have two teams on standby, right?” He gives a single, curt nod. “So why not try diplomacy first? If we go in hot and there are people inside, we burn any chance of a decent relationship from the start.”
Forrest eyes me, and I watch him visibly swallow before he responds. “And you aren’t just saying this because you don’t want to face your past?”
I flinch. He’s not wrong. And why don’t you replace that stick up your ass with a basilisk fang, Ro-Ro?
I hear a muffled bark of laughter that has Forrest side-eyeing the space behind me. Then a throat clears and I turn my attention to focus on Dre.
“I agree with her.” He says, which quells my annoyance a little. “Did the Alpha teams get any intel on the interior this morning?”
I see where he's going and respect it. But I'm also making a damn good point. I take a deep breath. Forrest probably isn't trying to be an asshole. Just asking the hard questions. Someone has to.
The breath stills the ringing in my ears—just in time to calmly turn back to Ro-ro.
Forrest gives a stiff, reluctant shake of his head. “No. The grounds are too heavily fortified with runes.”
“It’s decided then.”
I turn, throw my door open, and launch myself from the vehicle.
A chorus of curses and scrambling limbs erupts behind me as they angrily try to get free of their seat belts and out of the car... All except Em. He never bothers with them, and is already falling into step beside me. And I’m okay with that because he’s the only one who won’t try to stop me.
I stride right up to the weathered door and knock. The sound of pounding footsteps hurrying after me is almost as satisfying as the thud of my fist on the wood.
A hand closes around my upper arm, and a body slides between me and the door. Forrest. The scent of baked stone and cedar fills the space in front of my face.
It's the only reason I lean forward, nuzzling my cheek against his back. Well, that and the stubborn, sweet principle of it—planting himself as a human shield, rigid and ready for a blow meant for me. He's done it for his brothers a hundred times. Now he's doing it for me .
My body doesn't know what to do with that information, so it does what it's been doing a lot today: shoves all that emotion into the space behind my eyeballs.
Game face on, Raven. Now is not the time to tear up at bare fucking minimum.
As I pull back, Kieran materializes on my other side, his usual levity gone. His body is a coiled spring, the air around him shimmering with a chaotic, dangerous energy.
Anik and Dre take up flanking positions behind us, backs turned, but I can feel their gaze sweeping the overgrown yard and the crumbling border wall.
The door takes that moment to very slowly creak inward on rusty hinges.
Well, that’s not creepy at all.
I give Forrest’s back a little push, and we’re moving.
I can’t see much, currently cosplaying a lucky sardine in a very attractive tin of men.
But from what I can see, the inside is nothing like the outside.
It’s beautiful. Pristine. Above us, massive arched ceilings are painted with scenes from a dozen different mythologies, all woven together.
The wall of man-meat halts. A feminine voice cuts through the silence. “Well, none of you are missing limbs, so I’m going to assume you have a high priestess tucked in there somewhere?”
“Who are you? Why are you here?” Forrest snaps.
Good to know he treats every unexpected woman that crops up this way. Makes me feel a lot better about the whole newly corporeal interrogation he put me through.
I maneuver until I can see through the sliver of space between Kieran and Forrest. My gaze lands on the woman, and I suck in a breath. Images bombard me—a chaotic reel of flashes I’ve clawed from my own subconscious. Her face is in them. I know her.
The recognition comes with a slice of pain, sharp and quick, like the universe throwing in a really fucked-up BOGO deal. Buy one memory, get one free headache. It fades fast, leaving behind a dull ache and a craving for something salty. French fries. I still need to try french fries.
I slap at the guys. “Move. I know her. Old-me did, anyway.”
They don’t budge. If anything, they close ranks. I turn to Em, raising a brow. He gives a single nod and steps aside, creating an exit. I slip through.
“Who are you?” I ask, far nicer than Forrest. “I know you from somewhere.”
She smiles. “You don’t know me, but you did know my great-great-grandmother.”
Another flash, another slice. A woman with the same steady hands, the same patient eyes. The pain this time is sharper—not unbearable, but enough to remind me that there's apparently a price for every scrap of who I used to be.
French fries , I remind myself. Focus on the fries.
I cock my head. “Okay, so. I was essentially born four weeks ago.
Fully grown, which was a trip. Brain came pre-loaded with fifty years of straight vibes—pop culture, eight hundred seasons of other people's drama, and whatever supernatural factoids my feral raccoon brain grabbed onto at 2 AM out of sheer boredom.”
I can tell I’m losing her, so I explain, “I know how kelpies mate but have zero clue how taxes work. I can quote thirty movies I’ve never seen but couldn’t tell you my own last name. Em’s documentaries are the only thing holding up the fort on non-sexual adult knowledge.”
Seeing that the last part didn’t help even a little, I quickly summarize, "Essentially, my brain is a Wikipedia rabbit hole that someone set on fire. So maybe just pretend I'm five and use small words?"
She just blinks owlishly at me a few times before snapping her fingers. A book flies into her hands. It's simple, bound in stained leather, the pages yellowed but intact. It looks far too good for its supposed age.
What draws my eye is the lock wrapping around its edge.
It’s made of the same crystal as my pendant.
The one I’m not wearing because Silas insisted on “further experimentation,” and the guys backed him, saying they needed to know everything about it.
Considering I live in their house, eat their food, and was about to embark on a journey via sky sausage… I’d eventually agreed.