15 | Zeph
“All right then, hit me with it,” Silver says to her sister. Hanna squares her shoulders and I stifle a sigh at the two of them.
Silver decided that before we risk visiting the Forbidden Archives or starting her network of ghost informants, she needs to test out her latest power—the one absorbed from the Dead Zone. Apparently, the best way for Silver to test it out is to have us attack her with our magic and see if she can null its effects.
I fucking hate this plan, but Silver insisted and so here we are.
We’re in the vamp’s apartment above Second Circle and he’s sitting in the corner, busying himself with a book and not paying the slightest bit of attention to the madness going on in front of him.
“Holy shit, it’s working.” Hanna’s eyebrows shoot up as a blast of fire leaves her hands, only to die a moment later.
Silver nods, seeming satisfied. “Okay, let’s try something else. Zeph?”
I shake my head. There’s no fucking way I’m shooting a bolt of lightning at her. “Too dangerous,” I reply.
“How about a bit of rain? Drizzle? Come on, please?” Her eyes widen as she beseeches me to fire my magic at her.
Crazy witch.
“Fine.” I summon a downpour into the middle of the room and try not to smirk when the vamp finally glances up with an unimpressed frown as I soak his carpets.
But then the drizzle disappears and even though I can feel my magic still coursing out of me, it has no effect.
“You’ve nulled it,” I say, impressed as hell.
She beams at me, and I feel my heart pounding in my chest. Fuck, it’s like one look from her and I’m about to have a heart attack.
“All right then, Dante. I need you to use your compulsion magic.”
He glances up at her and puts down his book before slowly getting to his feet. “How is this going to work?” he asks. “My compulsion hasn’t ever worked on you before.”
Silver nods a few times and my stomach turns as memories I’ve tried to kill bob up to the surface and threaten to take me under with them. If this fucker thinks he’s gonna come—
“Hanna?” Dante’s voice is low and I can practically hear the power in it. “Stand and walk into the middle of the room.”
... nothing happens. Hanna just looks at him before turning her attention to Silver, who is grinning.
Dante rubs his chest absentmindedly. “Strange. I don’t think he’ll be able to tell that you’re blocking his magic. It felt to me as though it was working, but clearly it did nothing.”
“That’s perfect,” Silver says. “So now we can get to work.”
The ghost network turns out to be surprisingly easy to put together. Silver somehow seems to find ghosts everywhere she goes. Seriously, it’s nuts. There are four she stops to have a chat with before we even get to the damn Archives. I’m not sure if she’s got some part of her necromancy unleashed, which was hidden before, but it’s like the ghosts flock to her.
And it turns out she was right about them being bored as hell. Seems they’re more than happy to have something to do with themselves. Or that’s what she says, anyway. Dante and I can”t see or hear them, so we stand around with our thumbs up our asses while she chats away to the thin air. Good job, I think the sun shines out of her ass, or I’d be thinking she was crazy right about now.
And then we reach the library and within half an hour I’m up to my eyeballs in vamps.
We’re sequestered away in the Forbidden Archives, where the shelves and shelves of books apparently all relate to the blood-sucking pricks. If that wasn’t enough already, the three of us are crammed together in a corner around the only desk. I’m practically bumping knees with the vamp, and it’s seriously testing my nerves.
After flicking through a bunch of books with debatable covers and a seriously musty smell, Silver pops up to fetch another armful. And I take the opportunity to tell the vamp he’s not needed.
“You can go,” I tell him. “You got us down here, which was handy. But I’ll take it from here.”
He glances up from the page he’s staring at and gives me that condescending look, like I’m a toddler throwing mashed potato about.
“I’ll stay, thanks.”
“I’d rather you didn’t,” I reply, trying to keep my temper in check and failing. “I know that Silver’s blind when it comes to you. She trusts you for some weird fucking reason. But I find it hard to believe you’re gonna help us find the key to your own demise and hand it right over.”
That earns me a raised eyebrow. “I don’t want Simpson ruling the city any more than you do.”
And the asshole just turns back to his book and acts like I didn’t even say anything.
I huff out a frustrated breath. Then realize that I’m acting like an asshole, especially when I spot the hopeful expression on Silver’s face as she makes her way back to our cramped and dusty corner.
Fuck, I don’t want to be here. The last thing I want to be spending my time doing is reading all about vamps and their sick tendencies. But I’m not gonna leave Silver here alone with the vamp. And since Fabian’s about to pop off with all the stress he’s under, and this wouldn’t be Ro’s bag at all, even if he was at a hundred percent, I’m the only one up to the job.
We spend hour after hour, day after day, scouring the shelves and searching for answers. My chest feels tight thanks to all the dust, and it’s like whenever I close my eyes, all I see is the fucking creepy images that litter these books.
Most of them are written for vampires, by vampires, and they’re like a journal of the blood-soaked glory days.
I spend most of the time feeling sick to my stomach. But I won’t give in and quit. Not until we find some answers.
Too bad that the situation turns me into even more of an asshole than usual. At least Dante’s quiet, so he just kind of gets on with things. He can also read freakishly fast, which pisses me off when I’m having to squint my eyes at the stupid fucking font they pick for the older books.
I’m snippy. Rude as hell, most of the time. But he never snaps back. And I quickly realize that I’m not doing myself any favors.
Silver isn’t a fan of the tension between the two of us. So I’m sucking up all the bile that I’m tempted to spit at him, and I keep my damn mouth shut.
Who knew I had this much impulse control with asshole vamps? Not me. Seems like the little witch has warped my brain. Calmed the damn storm inside me enough that I’m not lashing out every five minutes.
We’re on day three and we’ve been at it for hours again when she lets out a tired groan and adds yet another book to the reject pile.
“Be right back.” She stomps off and my eyes follow her like a moth to a flame.
“She looks like shit,” I mutter. It’s true, despite the tasty outfit she’s got going on, her face is paler than normal and her eyes look strained.
“Keep that comment to yourself,” Dante replies, playing idly with his shirt cuffs before cracking his neck from side to side.
“She looks tired, though, right? This whole mental wall thing must be taking a ton of energy to keep up all day long. I dunno how long she’ll be able to keep it up.”
He lets out a soft sigh. “I don’t disagree. However, I might not be an expert on women, but I’d caution against telling her how awful you think she looks.”
“Maybe we should practice sawing you in half, or drowning you in a bathtub, see if either of those things stick.”
Yeah, I’m being an ass. I can feel it as the words come out, but I can’t seem to hold my tongue.
“No thanks,” he replies crisply, not bothered in the slightest by my hollow threats. “Look, Silver seems to see this as a bonding activity. That’s the only reason I can see for us both needing to be here like this,” he replies.
Shit. He’s right.
That and the whole safety in numbers thing.
“Are you two chatterboxes done?” Silver asks, appearing in front of us with a beaming grin on her face.
“We weren’t chatting,” I grunt. “You make it sound like we’re two teenage girls.”
She pats my arm in condescension but doesn’t say a word.
What the fuck is happening if I’m finding it weirdly easy to chat with this vamp?
“Seriously, Little Witch, you can shove us together as much as you want. It’s not gonna make me quit imagining what he’d look like with his head lopped off.”
Silver sucks in a little gasp and I feel like a dick. Should have definitely kept that little nugget to myself.
It’s not even fucking true, either. But here I am, threatening the limbs of anyone that might upset her, and I’m the damn idiot who”s got her upset.
Considering my track record of spouting nasty shit in front of her, I better watch myself.
“Sorry, man, didn’t mean to sound like such a prick,” I say.
Silver’s eyes go massive and she gives me this little sincere smile that has my chest going weirdly tight.
Damn.
This is a damn bonding activity.
“Anyway, while you two were having a tea party,” Silver says with a cheeky grin. “I was having an enlightening conversation with the ghost librarian. Apparently, she’s been overseeing a bunch of new shipments upstairs or she’d have been by sooner.”
“Ghost... librarian,” Dante repeats, sharing my absolute fucking confusion.
“Are you saying there’s a ghost in here right now?” I ask. My neck prickles as I glance around the room. It’s creepy enough being down here without adding dead librarians to the mix.
“Sure. She was helpful last time, too, when Roscoe and I were looking for the way down here while we were trying to find the cure for Fabian’s curse.”
Dante hums under his breath. “I wondered how you managed it.”
“I have friends all around the city.” Silver grins.
“Dead friends,” I mutter, causing her to dig her sharp little elbow into my ribs.
“Anyway, my ghost librarian friend was saying this isn’t the entire collection of vampire literature.”
I raise an eyebrow. “Why, are there some smutty books sequestered away somewhere?”
Dante ignores me completely as he replies with a frown. “There shouldn’t be. The idea is that it’s safely in one place. All the key literature should be down here.”
“Well, it isn’t. And she said that a bunch of super old, super rare texts were taken out of here a few months back.”
Letting out a groan as my stomach drops, I lean back in the shitty wooden chair I’m sitting in. It cracks ominously and I shift more gingerly, not wanting to fall on my ass. “It wasn’t Simpson, was it?”
Silver shakes her head. “Nope. Thank all that’s good and holy. It was an old vamp dude. She said he was dressed in the ugliest shirt she’d ever seen. It was covered in flamingoes and he was wearing board shorts and sunglasses in the middle of winter.” She turns to Dante. “Ring any bells.”
He groans softly. “Unbelievably, yes. I know exactly who that was.”
“Care to share?”
“One of the vampire elders. Luckily, not the one that’s a recluse, so that’s something.”
Silver has a dangerous glint in her eyes as she breaks into another grin. “Since we’re all going stir crazy in here, do you both fancy a change of scenery?”
“What are you thinking, Little Witch?”
“I’m thinking we take a field trip to rob an old man.” Her grin widens. “See if there’s a reason he’s decided to hide them away.”