Ancient Magic (Dragon's Gift: The Huntress #1)(14)

I choked on my pasty. Names and descriptions? Past and present?

That meant me.





CHAPTER FOUR





Aidan passed me a glass of water as I coughed, trying to clear the pasty from my throat.

Okay, this had suddenly gotten a hell of a lot worse. My mind raced like a hamster in a wheel. The scroll might not actually exist. Or it might not have the information he said it had.

But if it did, it would include my name under the heading FireSoul, subheading To Be Killed On Sight. Or, alternate, To Be Imprisoned For Life.

Oh, this was bad.

“Are you all right?” Aidan asked, concern in his dark eyes.

“Fine, totally fine. Just swallowed wrong.” I nodded, trying to look normal and knowing I’d failed. Was there any way I could do this job without him? Steal it and destroy it before he saw it?

Unless he told me some really key details about the scroll, no. I didn’t have enough to go on. For my tracking ability to work, I needed a couple things. First, somebody needed to really want whatever I was looking for. My dragon sense was based on covetousness. That was no problem. I wanted that scroll. Bad.

But I also needed to know at least one or two intimate details about the object or person I sought. More was better. Images were the best, but knowledge of who made it or something like that would help. Just enough for my magic to latch on and take me there.

He’d have to give me that information. Then I’d get it and have Nix make a copy that omitted our information.

“So, this scroll sounds pretty interesting,” I said. “I’ll take the job. Half price because I broke into your tomb.” I’d do it for free, but I didn’t want him thinking I was too eager.

“Excellent. We’ll leave tomorrow.”

What the heck? That wasn’t part of my plan. “We? I work alone.”

“I’ll help you. It could be dangerous.”

“Dangerous is my day job,” I said. I winced, realizing I sounded like a jacked-up meathead from an action movie. But for magic’s sake, I walked around with daggers strapped to my thighs. You’d think it’d be obvious that I could handle myself. “I’ll take care of it. You don’t need to worry.”

“I know you can take care of yourself,” he said, his dark eyes serious. “But I want this scroll. Badly. And I don’t trust anyone else with it. I’ll come along.”

Damn. I waffled, but he looked determined. “All right. Tomorrow. Can you tell me a little more about the scroll?” Maybe if he told me enough, I could find it tonight.

He nodded and leaned back in his chair, long and lean muscles stretching out. I sagged a bit, grateful he didn’t suspect me.

“The scroll was written over a thousand years ago by monks who lived on an island off the coast of Ireland,” he said.

Nerves prickled along my skin. That was the third time today that Ireland had come up. First I raided a tomb there, then Aidan, who owned an estate there, showed up, and now these monks. I didn’t like it. I worked all over the world. Today was my first job in Ireland in years. And it had come complete with a demon who knew I was a FireSoul and a handsome, dangerous stranger who wanted me to find a scroll that could spell my death.

Yeah, it was weird.

“The monks are still the only ones who live on the island,” Aidan said. “They’re supernaturals, but they choose to rely on study and contemplation rather than magic. They’re called the Holy Order of Knowledge. Their entire purpose is to record every bit of knowledge about the supernatural world that they can. The Scroll of Truth was created by their greatest seer before his death. He used his power to write about the future, which is why my name is probably in it even though it was written long before my birth. But it was stolen.”

“By whom?”

“I don’t know.”

“If it’s been missing for so long, how do you even know about it?”

“I keep a seer on retainer. She scries for threats to me and my enterprises every year. This year, she sensed a threat in the form of the scroll. She thinks someone else is trying to find it. But all she could see was the name of the scroll and that the Order of Holy Knowledge created it. I want to find it before the other person does.”

Oh hell. This had just gotten worse. Someone else was after it? Seers couldn’t see every aspect of the future, but they were infallible about what they could see. “Do you know anything about who is hunting it?”

“No. Just that someone is.”

“Know anything else about it?”

“That’s it.”

“It might be enough.” I’d gone on way less in the past. I had its name—the Scroll of Truth—who’d made it and what it was made of. I’d found the Chalice of Youth with just a name and the knowledge that it was made of gold. But then, it was really, really easy for me to find gold.

I closed my eyes and tried to envision the scroll. I focused on the names—Scroll of Truth and the Order of Holy Knowledge. My mind reached out, seeking the thread that would tie about my middle, but pain slammed into me.

I gasped and slumped forward in my chair, my head pounding. I reached up and cupped my forehead. This had never happened before. Why did this scroll make me feel this way? First in the stairwell and now here.

Was it because it contained information about my past? It made me even more determined to find it. No question, it involved me. Any time I tried to think about something important from my past, the pain came.