Grave Dance (Alex Craft, #2)(52)

Why don’t we have some breakfast and swap notes.

Maybe we can work together.”

If we didn’t throttle each other first.

“Alex, an oatmeal creme pie doesn’t count as breakfast,”

Falin said, staring at the prepackaged sweet as if it had offended him.

I shrugged. “Don’t knock it,” I said. I perched in the one chair I owned and opened my laptop. I’d put fresh sheets on the bed and I hoped Falin would get a little more rest. He might have some super-fae healing powers, but the glimpses I’d caught of him unglamoured proved he stil needed some recuperation time.

“So, did I draw the queen’s attention with the tear or the castle?”

“Castle?” Falin’s eyebrow lifted, and while he might have been faking ignorance, he sounded genuinely confused.

I shook my head, dismissing the question. “Okay, so I’m I shook my head, dismissing the question. “Okay, so I’m guessing this has something to do with the tear.”

“Something? This has everything to do with the tear.

What were you thinking, merging realities in the middle of a crowded street?”

“Uh, I was thinking Hol y was about to get shredded,” I said as I dug through my purse in search of the charmed disk. “What kind of fal out am I looking at?”

“Wel , you drew the attention of at least two faerie courts.

They are asking questions.”

“I’m guessing their curiosity would be bad for my health?”

Falin set the untouched oatmeal creme pie aside. Then he propped my pil ows against the wal and reclined against them, his hands behind his head. “If not your health, then definitely your freedom. If the courts realize what you can do, you’l likely end up sequestered in Faerie.”

Sequestered? I was not a fan of that outcome. I retrieved the disk and set my purse aside.

“Fred said, ‘They come.’ Think that’s about the courts?”

Falin opened his eyes, which had drifted closed while we spoke. “Who’s Fred?”

“Oh, uh, the gargoyle?” I shrugged. “I sort of named it.”

He stared at me, and then burst out laughing. “The winged one with the cat face?” At my nod he laughed harder, which made him wince and grasp his injured side.

“You realize that particular gargoyle is female and holds a position among gargoyles similar to that of a high priestess or a grand oracle?”

“Oh.” I guess that explained why she’d seemed so amused when I’d named her. But she’d refused to give me a name to cal her, and it was hard to converse with someone who didn’t have a name—even if that someone happened to be made of stone. “Anyway,” I said, “just before I found you last night, she told me, ‘They come.’”

“That’s a fairly vague warning.”

“Tel me about it.”

But he didn’t because his eyes had drifted closed again. I But he didn’t because his eyes had drifted closed again. I let him rest and turned my attention to the charmed disk.

The spel s in it were inert now that the glamour and soul had been separated from the magic, but somewhere in the tangle of residual magic, there had to be a hint of what spel infected my friends. If I could find the spel , I’d be that much closer to finding the counterspel . And hopeful y to finding the witch behind the spel as wel .

I copied the runes from the disk onto a blank sheet of paper, making sure to leave each one incomplete in case it could be invoked without knowing what it was or did. I had to dig out a magnifying glass to make sure I copied them al correctly—the disk’s design was intricate. And there had been over thirty of those ravens. Someone had way too much time on their hands.

Once I’d copied not only the runes but also the design they made on the disk, I flipped the disk over and broke the seal of wax. The wax covered a thin strip of paper, and I unfolded it, glancing over the heavy block-printed letters.

The paper contained two words. A name. Mine.

Well, now there’s no question as to whether the attacks are targeted.

I dug through the trunk at the edge of my bed until I found a smal enchanted box that one of my teachers gave me when

I

graduated

academy.

Like

the ABMU’s

magicaldampening evidence bags, the box locked magic safely away inside itself. It was one of my spel casting instructors who’d given me the box, and I think she assumed I would eventual y botch a charm so badly that it would have to be contained. I’d never used it before, but now I dumped the disk, paper, and wax inside and flipped the latch. The prickly tingle of dark magic that had been nibbling at my senses for the last hour cut off and I sighed from the sudden relief.

PC, who’d curled up beside Falin on the bed, lifted his head to see why I was making so much noise. He must have judged my activities uninteresting because after a have judged my activities uninteresting because after a single glance, he laid his head on Falin’s calf and closed his eyes again. I shook my head and settled in front of my computer.

Out of the sixteen runes from the disk, I thought that one looked similar to the rune for health—though it would have to be an archaic form of the rune—and that another looked like something I’d seen in academy, but couldn’t quite remember. The other fourteen were complete mysteries.