Garden of Serpents (The Demon Queen Trials #3)(50)

“Blueprints for the Noyes Mansion,” Kas declared. “Now owned by the Corwin family.”

“It was built in secret by a creepy religious fanatic named Reverend Nicholas Noyes in 1690,” Shai said. “He used to operate a grist mill nearby. The demon hunters built their headquarters near the site of a battle the English lost to the Wampanoag. It’s a sacred place to them. Something about the blood of the righteous feeding the soil.”

My ears perked up. “Reverend Nicholas Noyes from the Salem Witch Trials? He’s the guy one of the victims cursed with, ‘God will give you blood to drink.’” A shudder rippled over me. “I’m pretty sure he hanged me in the underworld.”

Silence fell over the room, as no one knew exactly how to respond to that.

I waved a hand. “Okay. Never mind. Back to the blueprints.”

“Our American demon hunters come from a long tradition of English witchfinders,” said Kas.

“The Malleus Maleficarum,” added Shai. “Hammer of the Witches. They published their manual by the same name in the late fifteenth century. And the demon-specific sect is the Malleus Daemoniorum.”

“Of course, what they never admitted in their texts,” Kas went on, “was that they also used magic. They realized they were no match for demons or witches without the use of spellcraft.”

I stared at the mansion’s blueprint before us. “Where did you get this?”

Kas’s cheeks dimpled as he smiled. “Mortal librarians are truly amazing. I just had to flirt with a young woman at the library in Lexington. She showed me to a locked room where they’d collected historical documents about the Malleus Daemoniorum. As soon as she left us alone, we hunted through every document until we found a locked safe.”

My eyebrows crept up. “You stole it from a locked safe. Any chance the demon hunters are aware we’re coming?”

Kas glanced at Shai. “Shai helped with that.”

“I learned a spell for erasing memories,” she said.

My jaw dropped open. “Holy shit. You can do that?”

“I can now.” Her smile faded, and her dark eyes bored into me. “But don’t you think it’s weird that Orion would tell you where the book is held if the trial rules don’t require it? Is there any chance this is a trap?”

I shook my head. “I believe him. I can’t really explain why, but I just do.” I breathed in deeply. “I think he’s more invested in finding the grimoire than he is in being king. He views it as crucial to keeping the demons safe. That’s always been his main goal: protecting demons in some ongoing war with the mortals.”

Legion scrubbed a hand over his jaw. “And he’s not wrong. Mortal warfare isn’t the same as it was centuries ago.”

I stared at the blueprint—a stately building with three separate wings, forming a sort of angular U shape.

Legion pointed at a room labelled chancery. “In old buildings, this is where official documents would be kept and handwritten. I already identified this as the most likely location for the grimoire.”

I leaned back in my chair, narrowing my eyes at Legion. “What if…” I lifted a finger to my lips. “What if you did a trial run? Tomorrow? Go invisible, sneak past the magical defenses. Get into the building and search the chancery. You can find out if the book is actually in that safe before I go in. Do you know a spell for unlocking safes?”

Shai pointed at the map. “That’s how we got this blueprint. Which, by the way, is like three hundred years old, so maybe we shouldn’t be getting garlic pasta all over it?”

Legion nodded. “I can do that. But you should all be there, hiding, in case I need your help. I’ll find a spell that will allow me to communicate with you, even when we’re separated.”

I stared at him. “Sweetie, that’s what cell phones are for.”

He glanced at Shai. “Right.”

“Shai can teach you how to text,” I said. “Like, this is a really important skill.”

No matter how emphatically Kas had said not to trust anyone, trust was an element of nearly everything I was doing here. It was quite simply part of working with other people.





28





ROWAN





Day of the second trial.

I awoke in Orion’s arms again, my legs wrapped tightly around him. I could tell I’d been moving against him in my sleep and that he’d liked it.

For the past three nights, I’d been fighting the sexual torment of being in bed with him but unable to kiss him.

But wrapping my arms around his abs—that was allowed.

We hadn’t spoken about the trial, even if it hung over us like a shadow. This morning, however, there was no way to ignore it.

He turned to me and brushed the hair from my eyes. “Today’s the day we set the city free.”

“We’ll see about that.” My heart kicked up a notch. Over the past few days, I’d done an amazing job of staying focused and compartmentalizing, but now that we were out of time, a million new worries spiraled through my brain. After all, I was Rowan Morgenstern, and whether I was mortal or demon, my brain would offer up the worst-case scenarios on a platter. Without fail.

I looked up at him. “Orion, what if somehow, we fuck this up and lose our chance to get the grimoire? Or what if the demon hunters report us to the federal government, and the feds just bomb the City of Thorns before we get a chance to unlock the spell?” I swallowed hard. “What if our actions kill all the demons? And aren’t you worried I’m going to fuck it all up, and you’ll miss your chance at getting the book?”