I arrived at the exact spot he’d described at five minutes to nine.
At five minutes after nine, I felt my anger begin to simmer. I was just trying to decide how long to wait, when he stepped out of the shadows at the end of the shelving unit nearest to the clock, and all my anger swirled through my gut, unsure where to go.
“You came.” He lifted an eyebrow.
I folded my arms. “Why so surprised? Was this some sort of test?”
“Not a test.” He walked further into the light, and now he looked at me thoughtfully, then at the thing hovering over my head. “I arrived at nine,” he explained, still staring up. “I’ve seta temporary chimera up here. It should push away anyone who might’ve wanted to access this part of the floor, at least for the next few hours.” His gold eyes met mine. “But we should use the experimental sheds for any magical work after this.”
“Magical work?” I frowned. “I thought we were going to look into who killed my parents? And who tried to kill me?”
“We’ll need to deal with your primal first.” His eyes slid out of focus when he went back to staring over my head. “And a few other things. You need to learn better shielding spells. I blocked at least six attempts to get into your magic today.” He continued to stare up, his voice unchanging. “We’ll need the library sometimes. For the other thing. But I mostly just plan to come here to grab books.”
I barely heard the last part.
“Did you say people were trying to get into my magic?” When he didn’t answer, or even meet my gaze, I spoke louder. “Someone tried to get into my magic? Today?”
“Of course. Didn’t anyone tell you that might happen?”
I opened my mouth, then closed it.
They had, actually. Alaric warned me about that, and more than once.
He’d thought I might be a target because of my half-human blood. Moreover, he’d spent a fair bit of time teaching me how to defend myself from those types of attacks. I’d thought I was getting better at it, but apparently not. As the implication of Bones’ words sank in, I felt even more of my blood pool in my gut.
“What were they trying to do?” I asked.
“Sexual shit, mostly.” Caelum grunted, a faint annoyance skating across his expression. “Over half were just fishing attempts, trying to see if theycouldget in, but it was mostly mages. A witch tried to charm you so that when you looked in the mirror, you’d look ugly to yourself. It’s a mild distortion ofreality… I’ve seen those types of things before. The idea is to be sneaky enough that the victim doesn’t notice the distortion, but it still affects them.”
“Why would someone do that?” I asked, affronted.
He refocused on me with a shrug.
“Jealousy? Pettiness? Racism? Who knows? People do shitty things.” He continued to stare at the space around me, clearly focused on something I couldn’t see. “I wasn’t that interested in the why. I was mostly looking for anything serious… another attempt after last night. Someone who actually knew what they were doing.”
I bit my lip, refolding my arms. “And?”
“And, what?”
I swallowed my impatience with an effort. “Did you find anything like that? Anything serious?”
His eyes clicked back into focus, and shifted to mine.
“No,” he said. He frowned, then waved a hand vaguely in my direction. “Close your eyes. I want to try something.”
I frowned, immediately wary.
He wanted to try something?Anothersomething? I considered saying no, then, realizing we wouldn’t get anywhere if I didn’t make an effort to at leastsort oftrust him, I did as he said.
“All right.” He took a breath. “Now… look straight above your head.”
I started to open my eyes, but he stopped me.
“Eyes closed, Shadow. The whole point of telling you to close your eyes is so you don’t use your eyes, for fuck’s sake.”
Feeling foolish, and now annoyed, I closed my eyes.
I made an effort to reach above my head, using only my magic that time.
