The Shadow Hour

by Melissa Grey

  No fewer than three people replied, “Shut up, Quinn.”

  “Somebody has to go find her,” Ivy said. “What do we do?”

  “Exactly what we’re meant to,” Caius said. “You four have your mission.” He looked at Rowan, who returned his gaze with a steady one of his own. “And now we have ours. As you said, somebody has to find her, and I’m fairly certain I know where she’s going.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Early-morning fog shrouded the winding streets of Edinburgh’s Old Town. The castle rose on its hill high above, the tops of its battlements hidden from view. Echo slipped the cardboard sleeve off her latte and wrapped her hands around the cup, more for comfort than warmth. Compared with the muggy heat of New York in July, the less oppressive Scottish morning was a welcome reprieve. It was still a bit too hot for the leather jacket she wore, but a soldier never went without her armor. She leaned against the blackened stone wall of one of the tall, slender buildings lining the close that shot off the Royal Mile like a tributary off a great river—the one in which Professor Aloysius Stirling’s office could be found. Her patience was running thinner than the weak gray sunlight that fought its way through the clouds, but she waited. Still and silent.

  Echo glanced at her watch. Just a little after seven o’clock, the time that, according to Caius, the professor arrived at his office every day, without fail. She’d made sure to arrive early enough to scope out the street and caffeinate herself. In New York, it would be two in the morning, when all good Avicen—and a couple of Drakharin and a warlock—would be tucked in their beds. She had hours before anyone noticed she was missing. In theory.

  “Come on,” she whispered, wishing that her limited range of magic had the power to conjure the professor from the dense fog. “Come on, come on, come on.” Her watch—a dainty relic that had languished at the bottom of her backpack for months—ticked away the seconds. Every one in which the professor did not stroll down the narrow street was one second closer to the discovery of her absence. Time was a resource she could not afford to waste.

  Just as her hope began to dwindle—maybe the professor was sick, maybe he’d been hit by a car or struck by lightning or decided to change his routine for the first time in years—she spotted a figure turn the corner at the other end of the close, tweed hat ducked against the fog turning into drizzle, arms wrapped protectively around a stack of books. He was a short man, getting on in years, with white hair poking out from beneath his hat. Everything about him seemed professorial, from the glasses he pushed up his nose to the worn patches on the elbows of his jacket. He had to be Aloysius Stirling. Only an Aloysius could pull off elbow patches without the slightest hint of irony.

  Echo pushed away from the wall, dumped her half-finished latte into a nearby wastebin, and made her way down the street. The professor—or the person whom she really, really, really hoped was the professor—turned the knob and entered the building. Echo quickened her pace, half jogging to catch the door before it closed. She made it just in time, sticking the toe of her boot into the doorway. The man jumped, startled by her sudden appearance, the pile of books almost tumbling out of his arms. He cleared his throat, seeming to collect himself. His jowls were flushed slightly pink, either in annoyance or anger.

  “Excuse me, young lady,” he said in clipped Scottish tones. “Are you lost?”

  That was definitely annoyance. He looked at her the way one would look at dog droppings on one’s shoe. She tried not to bristle at his appraisal. Echo might have forgotten to put on a clean, unwrinkled shirt before leaving Avalon, bigger things on her mind and all. She probably looked like a ragamuffin. A sleep-deprived ragamuffin.

  “Are you Aloysius Stirling?” Echo asked.

  The man’s eyes narrowed in suspicion. “That all depends,” he said, “on who’s asking.”

  “My name’s Rose.” Echo had decided using a fake name was the safest option. The flutter at the back of her mind might have been a hint of ghostly laughter. Or it might have been her imagination. These days, it was hard to tell what was what.

  The man who was most certainly Dr. Aloysius Stirling, professor of mythology and folklore, slid the stack of books from the crook of one arm to the other. He made as if to close the door in Echo’s face. She didn’t let him.

  Caius had warned her that the professor was notoriously guarded about his research. It had taken Caius months to earn Stirling’s trust, but Echo didn’t have months. She barely even had hours. She needed a shortcut into his confidence.

  “I’m a friend of Caius’s,” she said, pulling the necklace out of her shirt to display the dragon crest on the locket’s face. The professor’s eyes widened in recognition. Her gamble had worked. “And I need your help.”

  —

  The professor’s office looked like it was inhabited by a man who wore tweed jackets and matching tweed hats. It also reminded Echo, in a way that twisted at something inside her chest, of home. Teetering piles of books were scattered around the room, though from a cursory glance, she could tell there was some sort of order to the scholarly chaos. The professor’s desk was so littered with stacks of paper its surface was lost to view. The tomes appeared to be arranged by theme, but not by any genres one would find in a traditional library. The shelf on the wall opposite the entrance was filled with volumes that covered every imaginable facet of bird-related mythology. Separated from that shelf by a window overlooking the narrow close was a bookcase crammed with texts on dragon folklore found throughout the world.

  Stirling’s demeanor had changed the second he recognized Caius’s crest. He’d ushered Echo up a claustrophobic staircase, making profuse apologies for everything from the way the ancient wooden steps creaked to the absence of a functioning lightbulb in the corridor leading to his office to the fact that the kettle wasn’t warming the water fast enough. She’d declined his offer of tea, but he was having none of it. She would have his tea and his hospitality, whether she wanted them or not. After all, a friend of the Dragon Prince’s was a friend of his.

  “I still can’t believe you know about Caius,” Echo said as she took the chipped mug of steaming tea the professor offered her. Earl Grey. A man after her own heart. With her free hand, she waved at the bookcases. “About them.”

  Stirling chuckled, a sound as warm and as round as he was. “Oh, dear, did you really think you were the only human who knew of their existence?”

  “Yeah, kinda.” Echo shifted uncomfortably. It was much too warm for the leather jacket. “Caius seemed to think you’d be able to help us with our kuçedra problem.”

  Stirling’s gaze transformed from jovial to assessing. He gestured for her to take a seat and lowered himself into his desk chair. Echo sat on one of the chairs situated on the other side of his desk; the chair was old, and its cushion hid a deep divot in the middle into which she sank. Stirling twined his fingers together over his generous midsection. “You’ll forgive me, my dear, but I’m going to need more than a locket with the prince’s crest on it before I start divulging sensitive information.”

  So that was how he wanted to play it. Echo wasn’t surprised. You had to give something to get something. Unless, of course, you stole it, but this was not a situation in which petty thievery would solve her problem. “What if I told you that you were right? The firebird is real. Caius found it.”

  A glint flashed in the professor’s eyes that Echo knew well. She had felt it herself, once upon a time. When she’d found the dagger, and the locket, and the key. It was the sense of a truth clicking into place, the satisfaction of having a belief become a fact. But Stirling’s excitement was short-lived. He schooled his expression into one of calm curiosity with a healthy dose of suspicion sprinkled on top. “As much as I would love to believe such a thing, once more I’m left with just your word to back it up.”

  Echo’s grin came unbidden. She shouldn’t do the thing. She really shouldn’t do it. Doing the thing was a terrible idea. This man was a stranger, and Echo had only Caiu
s’s faith in him as evidence that he was trustworthy, but the winged beast curled up inside her longed to be free. Who was she to deny it? “I have proof.”

  Stirling harrumphed. “Now, this I’ll have to see.”

  “O ye of little faith,” Echo said. If only she were as confident as she seemed. She projected every ounce of desperation she felt into her hands, as if it were a tangible substance she could marshal to her will. Please work, please work, please work.

  She placed the mug on the professor’s desk, adding a new mark to the mess of watery, ringlike stains on its ancient wooden surface. Stirling was apparently not the sort of man who wasted time with coasters. Echo cupped her hands and focused. Pain blossomed at the base of her skull. It was minimal at first, like an unopened bud straining for the sun at the start of spring, but the closer her power rose to the surface, the greater it became, like that very same flower unfurling its petals.

  Fire sprang to life in her palms. Stirling jumped, his knees banging loudly against the underside of his desk. Tongues of flame, as black as night, as bright as day, licked at Echo’s skin. The fire warmed her hands, but they didn’t burn as they had in the Black Forest. She’d only managed to use her power before when experiencing a violently strong emotion; this level of control was entirely new. The ache in her skull spread, sparking behind her eyes like a migraine. She pushed through it, focused on the magic churning in her palms.

  “Sweet mother of god,” Stirling whispered. One hand clutched at his waistcoat, above his heart, while the other fumbled a pair of spectacles from his breast pocket. It took him two tries to get the glasses on his face. “It’s real,” he breathed. His eyes reluctantly strayed from the black and white flames in Echo’s hands to her face. He stared, agog. “You’re real.”

  Echo sighed, letting the magic slip from her grasp. The fire died and her headache abated. She rubbed the back of her neck, where a dull throbbing lingered. “As real as they come.” She picked up her mug and took a dainty sip of tea. “I think it goes without saying that if you speak of this to anyone—and I mean anyone—I will burn down everything you love. Capisce?”

  Stirling was still staring at her hands, as though he could conjure forth more flames if he only wished hard enough. “Yes, yes,” he said. “Of course.”

  “Now,” Echo said, kicking her feet up onto Stirling’s desk and crossing them at the ankles, “I believe you had some supersecret information to share.”

  “Remarkable,” the professor muttered. He took his spectacles off and began wiping them with a monogrammed handkerchief that had seen better days. “Just the physics of it…”

  Echo waved her hand in front of his face. His head snapped up, startled. “Professor?”

  He shook himself as if coming out of a particularly vivid dream. “Right, right. The, uh, sensitive information.” He cleared his throat and straightened his waistcoat. “Well, I’m afraid it’s a long story and it doesn’t necessarily cast me in the best light.” His smile was a little shy, but also a little self-aware. “You see, I’m afraid I’m a bit of a misfit.”

  Echo offered her own smile in return. Caius was right about this one, she thought. He was okay. “Then you’re in luck. Misfits are my kind of people.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  Twenty years ago, before Echo was even a twinkle in her parents’ eyes, Dr. Aloysius Stirling had been one of the most esteemed professors in the department of archaeology and anthropology at the University of Cambridge. Admission to his seminars was highly sought after, and his colleagues had nothing but kind words to say about the man who knew how each of them took their tea and could discuss the collected fairy tales of Charles Perrault with the same alacrity he possessed when lecturing on the early anthropology of Claude Lévi-Strauss.

  All his colleagues save one.

  Every hero needed a villain, and in Stirling’s case, his antagonist was Dr. Walter Forsythe, chair of the department and known skeptic. While the rest of academia seemed content to take Stirling’s eccentricities in stride—it was one thing to discuss fairy tales and another thing entirely to believe they were real—Forsythe would have none it. There was also, Stirling admitted, the small matter of the dalliance he’d had with Forsythe’s wife, but, as he insisted with a flippant wave of his hand, that was neither here nor there. The real difference between the two men was competition of another sort.

  “You see,” Stirling said, lowering his voice and leaning over his desk, as if there were anyone around to overhear their conversation, “Forsythe had his eyes on my research. We both specialized in the cultural development of ancient societies, but I was always one step ahead of him.” Another harrumph. “The only reason he became department chair was because he was better at rubbing elbows and playing politics.”

  Echo nodded sagely, as if she knew the first thing about elbow rubbing or politics playing. “Is that so?”

  The professor straightened as though his spine were offended on his behalf. “Oh, I assure you, Walt had it in for me from day one.”

  “Or maybe he was just mad you boinked his wife,” Echo mumbled into her mug. Stirling, lost in the hypnotic rhythm of his own narrative, didn’t appear to hear her.

  “Forsythe wanted me out, but thanks to the peculiar magic of tenure, he couldn’t very well sack me and call it a day. No, he was a tricky beast. He used his not insignificant influence to make me look like a crackpot. That wily old toad cast aspersions on my good name.”

  “Aspersions?” Echo gasped. “He didn’t.”

  “He did. Walt wanted me to look bad. He discredited me, smeared my reputation every chance he got, at every conference, every retreat, to every publication that would listen to his self-important blithering. He made it so no one wanted to publish me. He suspended my classes at the university, put me on indefinite leave—involuntary, I might add. But worse than all that, that great bloody bastard stole my research.”

  Stirling took a breath, steeling himself for a continuation of his tirade. From the top drawer of his desk, he withdrew a red tin, removed the lid, and offered it to Echo. “Biscuit?”

  Echo plucked a Scottish shortbread from the tin. It was a tad stale, but still buttery and delicious. She knew she ought to put something in her stomach that had a main ingredient other than caffeine or sugar, but shortbread had the word “bread” in it, which meant it was practically healthy. Stirling helped himself to a biscuit and they sat in companionable silence for a moment before the professor remembered his outrage. “Right,” he said, brushing shortbread crumbs off his waistcoat. “Where was I?”

  “That great bloody bastard had just stolen your research,” Echo supplied.

  The embers of old wounds ignited in Stirling’s eyes, stoked by years of simmering resentment. “It happens more often than you might think in the brutal world of academic blood sports, stealing research. Forsythe has done a damn fine job of keeping it from me ever since. And these were primary sources, never duplicated.”

  Now, thievery was something Echo understood. “Why didn’t you just steal it back?”

  A look passed across Stirling’s face that was at once seething hatred and begrudging respect. “That no-good, deceitful”—his accent thickened as he let loose a string of profanities unique to the Scottish-English dialect, which Echo desperately tried to hoard in her lexicon of insults—“hid those texts very well. In a place I couldn’t hope to access.”

  “Where’s that?”

  “The British Museum.”

  Oh. It had been months since Echo had broken into an institution of such magnificence, but she was sure she’d slide right back into it once she shook the metaphorical dust off her skill set and the literal dust off her tool kit. Just like riding a bike.

  “Forsythe,” the professor continued, “was offered the position of director shortly after my fall from grace. He likes tormenting me.” Stirling took an extremely resentful sip of his tea. “Our paths crossed several months ago at a conference in Glasgow, and he took great pains to m
ake sure I knew exactly where he’d hidden my papers.”

  Echo leaned forward in her seat, tea forgotten. This was it. The starting line. She needed a direction to run in, and Stirling was about to provide her with one.

  “He put them in the Enlightenment Gallery. Under glass. Surrounded by alarms and the watchful eyes of museum guards. But they’re there.”

  “Are you sure Forsythe was telling the truth?” Echo asked. She needed Stirling to be absolutely sure. There was no room for error. Not with Caius and Rowan and Altair hot on her heels and a monster made of shadows hunting her down.

  The professor gazed forlornly into his cup of tea. His missing research might as well have been a lost love. “Sometimes, the truth is the very best weapon in one’s arsenal,” he said, “for nothing cuts deeper than brutal honesty.”

  Echo wasn’t entirely sure they were still talking about missing books, but a lead was a lead.

  Stirling sniffed haughtily and took another shortbread from the tin. “Forsythe knew the worst thing he could do to me was wave the jewel of my literary collection right in front of my face. And since he’d done such a thorough job of assassinating my character, no one would believe accusations of misconduct leveled at him by a nutty old crackpot like yours truly.”

  “What exactly was the jewel of your collection?”

  “The only surviving copy of the 1838 folio edition of Phineas Ogilvy’s A Compendium of Fairy Tale Creatures, complete with all two hundred thirty-five pages of copperplate etchings and watercolor illustrations.” Wistful longing stole across Stirling’s expression. “Oh, they were the finest illustrations you’ve ever seen. Such delicate watercolors. Finer than anything done by Audubon himself.”

  It sounded like precisely the kind of book Echo would have loved to hoard in her library room. “But what’s so special about it? Does it have any info that’ll help me?”

  Stirling’s smile brimmed with mischief. “No, as beautiful as the illustrations are, they’re largely the work of the imagination. Though the page dedicated to the firebird might be relevant to your interests,” he added with a wink. “The treasure you seek won’t be found in the folio’s pages, but in its spine.”