“I’m perfectly fine. Thank you for asking.”
Look at me being so delightfully and disgustingly polite even though I just woke up and haven’t had my very strong tea yet. I adore Laini and I’m trying to be less of a beast.
The morning sun streams into my house and I rise to stoke the fire back to life. It’s freezing in here. Lady Owl rests on her perch, her big eyes blinking at Laini.
“Why did you take off so quickly last night?” Laini asks. “It looked like you two were having a very good time.”
I wave her off and trudge to the kitchen to make tea. “That was all part of the plan.”
“So you managed it? You stole his stones?”
I snort a laugh. “The ones not attached to him, yes.”
Laini laughs and clears her throat. “What have you learned so far?”
“Let’s finish here and I’ll fill you in.”
I hurry the tea along with my magic and soon we are both toting a steaming cup into the sitting room.
“Oh, hello, Lady Owl,” Laini says.
We get comfortable by the fire—me in my chair, Laini in the large, round cushion sitting near the crackling fire, and Lady Owl on her perch.
The owl hoots and Laini leans over my book as I open it.
I point to the last rune I looked up. “All right. Let’s see. I have learned that these can access a wielder’s memory and that they pull energy from the world to work. It’s dark magic. I don’t like it. There are other runes, too, but the rest are pretty basic.”
“What do we do now?”
“I’m going to use them near that mysterious hole in the ground and see if anything pops up,” I say.
“Mysterious hole? Oh, is that what Rom was trying to tell me about earlier?”
“Probably because he was about to fill it back in for me when I felt the magic hiding in that area.”
Laini makes a thinking, humming sound.“Any ideas on what it is?”
“No.”
“But it can’t be related to Argos and his magic rocks, right? Because he just now showed up and Rom said the divot in the ground was substantial. I saw where Rustion had it roped off, but there was a crowd nosing about the place, so I wasn’t able to see it properly.”
“I suppose whatever is in the hole was there before Argos arrived, yes. But it gave us no trouble before him. Therefore, it is his fault. All of it is his fault.”
Laini gives me a look.
“What? I can’t help it if the truth isn’t nice. He is a problem for our town. It is what it is.”
We drop that side of the subject and she helps me comb through more mouse-nibbled scrolls, yellowed books with rusted buckled closures, and stacks of leather-bound tomes in a variety of languages. Thankfully, most have sketches and symbols that explain the magic they’re detailing.
Finally, I spot a line in a black grimoire that looks promising. Laini pours out another cup of lavender tea and sits beside me.
“What is it?”
“This one talks about storing power in a stone via runes. Ah!” I jab the words with my index finger. “The rune on the stones is a type of strength rune! It just looks different.”
I take the stones out and hold them up beside the drawing in the book.
Laini leans close and squints. “I don’t know how you can tell these things apart. They’re all a bunch of lines and squiggles.”
