The Red Scrolls of Magic (The Eldest Curses, #1)(53)

Alec stood alone in the street for a moment, and then returned to Magnus, who had given up on finding clues and was on his phone making arrangements for the quiet disposal of Mori Shu’s body. Alec approached him with caution. Magnus’s cloak was hanging from shoulders that were a little more hunched than usual. His face, beneath his shock of glitter-strewn black hair, was a little tired.

Alec didn’t know what to say. “How did you meet Raphael? You two seem to know each other pretty well.”

“I helped him out a little once, I suppose,” said Magnus. “It was nothing.”

Magnus had come and healed Alec, the second time they had ever met. Alec remembered waking from delirium and agony to Magnus’s strange bright eyes, his careful, gentle hands. It hurts, Alec had whispered. I know, Magnus had said. I’m going to help with that.

And Alec, believing him, had let go of some of the pain.

That memory had stayed with him until he followed it to Magnus’s doorstep. Magnus did not think of himself that way, but he was kind. He was so kind that he could dismiss healing or helping as just another day.

Whatever Magnus had done for Raphael, clearly Raphael did not think it was nothing.

Magnus’s life was crowded with strange incidents and stranger people. Alec did not know a lot about it yet, but he could learn, and he knew one thing. His sister had said that a trip was how you got to truly know each other, and Alec was now absolutely sure that in the bright chaos of his long, strange life, Magnus had stayed kind.

While Alec had been talking to Raphael, two identical brownies had arrived in what looked like a huge green melon on large rickety wheels but which Alec figured was some kind of faerie ambulance, to take Mori Shu’s body away. Shinyun gave them some money, spoke with them briefly in Italian, and came to join Magnus and Alec. She gazed upon the ruins of the palazzo, drawing Alec’s attention there too.

“If there was ever a stone goat,” she said, “it’s buried under a few tons of rubble.”

“We’d better get going,” said Magnus, sounding uncharacteristically tired. “I guess we’re done here.”

“Wait,” said Alec. “The Chamber. We never found it. And I don’t think it can have been in the part of the palazzo that was destroyed.”

“That is,” said Shinyun slowly, “the part of the palazzo aboveground. Or we would be looking at it in pieces in front of us.”

“There are stairs outside, behind the building,” Magnus said. “They go down into the palazzo basement, I assume. But maybe they go elsewhere after that.”

Alec looked out at the canal nearby. “How far underground can you even build here? Would you be underwater?”

“Without magic? Not very far,” said Magnus. “With magic?” He shrugged, a smile creeping back on his face. “Who wants to go explore a creepy dungeon?”

There was a long pause and then Shinyun, very slowly, raised her hand.

“Me too,” said Alec.





CHAPTER SIXTEEN




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The Red Scrolls of Magic


MAGNUS’S MEMORY WAS CORRECT. A stone staircase descended into darkness in the alley behind the ruined palazzo. Alec kindled a witchlight runestone as they reached the heavy wooden door at the bottom of the steps. Shinyun caused a beam of light to shine from her index finger, which she pointed around like a flashlight.

Inside the door (unlocked by Alec with an Open rune), damp packed-earth walls held empty barrels and ancient rags, nothing more exciting. They turned a corner, then another and another, and then came upon a much nicer door, smooth and polished, with an image of a winged lion carved into it.

Once through the door, Magnus and Shinyun exclaimed in excitement, but Alec sighed in disappointment. “I’ve been here,” he said. “I remember this little statue of Bacchus.”

Magnus regarded it. “For the god of wine and revelry,” he said, “I always thought Bacchus was dressed much too plainly in his statues.”

Shinyun was poking at the walls of the chamber, looking for a secret panel or catch. Magnus was drawn to the statue on its plinth.

“I always thought,” he continued slowly, “that if it had been up to me, the statues of the gods would dress a little more . . . fun.”

As he finished the sentence, he reached out to touch the statue of Bacchus. Blue sparks flew from his fingers, and color and texture began to appear along the toga’s folds, his magic sifting away the plain white stone as though the marble had been dust that now fell away to reveal the more vivid, decorated statue underneath.

With a grinding noise, the section of wall beside the statue slid open to reveal a narrow staircase.

“A colorful solution,” said Shinyun. “Good work.” She sounded amused. Alec, however, was giving Magnus a strange, thoughtful look.

Magnus started down the stairs, Alec following just behind. Magnus almost wished that he was not there. He could not conquer his dread of what they might find, and what Alec might think of him when they did. The Bacchus statue had been a joke—one that no longer struck him as in the least bit funny.

The staircase leveled out into a long stone corridor that ended in darkness. “How is this all not underwater?” said Alec. “We’re in Venice.”

“One of the cult’s warlocks must have put up barriers against water coming in,” Magnus said. “Like Mori Shu.” Or me, he did not add.