by Amanda Ashby
“Send it back where?” The words were out of her mouth before she could stop them.
“Back where it belongs. Back where we can keep it safe. Back to the year 1310.”
“What? Are you insane?” Cassidy felt her jaw drop. So far, she had been doing a good job of not giving in to the hysteria that was threatening to rise up from her belly. Not when faced with the owl turning into a guy. Not when hearing of the demons and the immortal life. But now she was being told that she had to send something back through time. Her whole body began to shake as she stared at the loose woolen shirt he was wearing before she remembered the other guy from the mall, who had been wearing chain mail. How was this even possible?
“That is something I’ve often been accused of. But my mental state is not the issue here. I have explained what I need you to do, and the sooner we start your training, the better,” he said, but Cassidy just stared at him blankly, causing him to bristle with frustration. “I need you to take this seriously. Whether you like it or not, you are the next guardian.”
“I’m sorry.” She had finally managed to find her voice. “If you really were from the fourteenth century, then why can I understand you? According to Nash, you all spoke differently back then. Even the writing in that book was different.”
“The grimoire.”
“Fine. Book . . . grimoire. What’s the difference?”
He gave an impatient shake of his head. “Non. The grimoire is the reason you can understand me. All the power and knowledge of the Brotherhood lie within the covers.”
“What? So by touching a book, I can go all BabelFish?”
He ignored her question. “It only works when the grimoire chooses to accept your touch. But since we are standing here, it is obvious that it has now done so. That is why you can understand me when I speak and why you can see me. You will also find that you can now read the text.”
Again, the tattoo on her arm began to blaze as the hysteria in her belly turned to dread. Not because of how ridiculous he sounded but because some of what he was saying made sense.
“And how can you understand me?” she croaked.
“It’s not important,” he assured her, his mismatched eyes blazing with a passionate intensity that made her shiver. “What is important is that you start training to find and protect the Black Rose immediately, because it won’t be long before the demon knights discover that it has been lost. You have a lot to learn before the solstice if we are to succeed.”
“Stop saying that.” Cassidy shook her head. “Because it isn’t going to happen. I’m not going to be a guardian of anything. Besides, there must be hundreds of people who would do a better job of it than I would.”
Thomas didn’t disagree; instead, he merely shrugged. “The grimoire has chosen you.”
“Yes, but it chose me only because I had a stupid fake tattoo on my arm.” Cassidy pushed back her sleeve to show him her arm. “Your book made a mistake. Anyway, if it’s such a big deal, then why don’t you do it, huh? After all—”
Thomas abruptly cut her off. “Touch me,” he said, and Cassidy widened her eyes.
“Wh-what?” she asked in alarm, since, despite the surreal nature of the whole conversation, up until now she hadn’t felt in danger. But it suddenly occurred to her that she had no idea what he was capable of. She edged her way farther down the wall, once again feeling the uneven plaster digging painfully into her spine.
“You heard me. Touch me,” he said, his voice not brooking any argument, and Cassidy found herself stepping toward him, purposely avoiding his hypnotic gaze. He held his arm out to her. She took a deep breath before finally reaching out to him. She could almost feel the heat radiating off his body, as his intense eyes stared down at her, and—
Her hand sliced through the air as if he wasn’t even standing there.
She whipped her hand back as if she’d been bitten, confusion stinging at her eyes. Thomas didn’t say anything. He just stood there, his brow taut with impatience. She reached forward again, this time for his chest, but once more her hand was greeted by nothing but air.
“I don’t understand.” She rubbed her fingers, her eyes never leaving his face. “Are you a ghost? Why can’t I touch you?”
“I am no shade,” he assured her. “Though many have tried to put me in my grave. Unfortunately, I cannot travel through time. I am where I have always been. You can see me because I have projected a vision of myself to you,” he said, his voice still filled with impatience. “However, to do so requires a lot of effort. Magic.”
“Okay.” Cassidy shut her eyes for a moment as she tried to make sense of everything. “And the owl?”
“The owl is real and exists here in your world. I am not part of it, and it is not part of me, but my power is such that I can bind with creatures if I choose. It is a lot less exhausting than appearing to you as I am now. So I connect with the owl to find the things that I seek.”
“Like me?” she croaked as she realized why she’d had the eerie sensation that someone had been watching her.
“Like you,” he agreed in a calm voice, as if it was totally okay to go all stalker dude when it was for a good cause.
“What about the guy at the mall? Armand? I felt him. He knocked my purse off my shoulder. He wasn’t an apparition. He was real,” Cassidy said, while trying to stop herself from drowning in the overload of information. Thomas bowed his head, and she had the distinct impression he was swearing, but when he looked up, his face was blank.
“Armand thought he could defy the laws of nature and travel through time. He wanted to follow the grimoire and protect the Black Rose as he had sworn to do, but he didn’t understand his limitations, and thus, he paid the ultimate price.”
“He died?” Cassidy gasped as she recalled his unnatural pallor and the feverish red spots on his cheeks.
Thomas gave a curt nod of his head. “He was a fool, and his foolishness has cost us dearly,” Thomas spat. “The Black Rose and the grimoire are here, and we, the knights who have sworn to guard it, are there. Now can you see my problem?”
“Not really.” Cassidy shook her head so that her long hair went flying into her face. She quickly pushed it out of her eyes. “If you can’t time travel, then how can anyone get it?”
Thomas let out another faint string of expletives. “We use magic to help us fight the demon knights, but our magic is earth-based and pure. Unfortunately, those who covet the Black Rose don’t share the same beliefs. They use blood magic. Slicing the veins of innocents corrupts almost as surely as the touch of the Black Rose. It also gives them power. And not only will blood magic let them travel through time, it will help them trace that which they seek. And if they succeed, they will be even more dangerous. More deadly. More . . . unthinkable. Now, please. Our time is limited. The demon knights will soon find the grimoire, and unless you stop them, they will also find the Black Rose. I can’t let that happen.”
Despite the fact that he wasn’t really there, the intensity in his face was so overwhelming that she could almost feel the force of his emotions shimmering out through the apparition. As surreal and unbelievable as the situation was, she had no doubt he was telling the truth. Cassidy felt the familiar confusion that often happened to her as she tried to make up her mind. If the Black Rose really was half as dangerous as he said, then—
“Cass, are you out there?” her father called as the outside light flicked on. A moment later he appeared at the top of the path, leaning forward on his crutches.
“Dad, what are you doing?” Horror rose in her throat, though she wasn’t sure if she was more freaked out that he had caught her talking to a strange ghostlike guy who could turn into an owl or that he was outside on his crutches when his doctor had quite clearly told him that, for the first week, he should keep his leg elevated as much as possible and use his crutches only on even surfaces.
“I was worried about you. You’ve been out here for at least half an hour, and I could hear voices,” her dad said bef
ore catching sight of the overturned recycling bin. “Don’t tell me that the neighbor’s cat has been at it again.”
“What?” She was blank for a moment as she followed her dad’s gaze past where Thomas was standing, still as a statue, his face pale, apart from the angry scar running down his check. She let out a little gasp. Her dad couldn’t see Thomas. Then she realized he was waiting for an answer, and so she dropped to her knees and started to shovel the plastic bottles and papers back into the bin before dragging it back into an upright position. “Yeah, it was the cat. I’ll just finish cleaning up out here, but you need to go back inside and put your leg up.”
“Remember that chat we had about your not being overprotective?” he asked in a mild voice, before turning and carefully maneuvering himself with his crutches back inside. Once he was gone, she got to her feet and headed to the gate. Her fingers trembled as she unlatched it, but finally it was open and she began to drag the recycling bin and the trash can out to the curb for tomorrow’s collection. As she moved, adrenaline pounded through her body. She had no idea what was going on, but she knew that it wasn’t something she could get involved in. Not if it meant her dad would risk his recovery just to check up on her. She left the cans on the curb and made her way back inside the gate. Thomas was still waiting there, but she ignored him.
“Where are you going?” Thomas demanded, his face still leached of color.
“I’m going inside. Where I belong.”
Then, without another word, she walked straight through the apparition that was Thomas. For a moment his mismatched eyes widened in disbelief, but instead of doing anything, he suddenly disappeared altogether, leaving only a single feather in his place. She locked the back door as soon as she was inside. She waited a moment until her heart rate had returned to normal before going to check on her dad. She had no idea what had just happened, but she was 100 percent sure that she didn’t want it to happen again.
EIGHT
“This is extraordinary,” Nash said two hours later as he carefully turned the page of the book and pointed to a diagram, his excitement so palpable that he was almost bouncing off the bed. “Do you realize what this is? A genuine grimoire. Here. In my hands. I should’ve figured it out by the diagrams, but they’re just so rare that it never occurred to me. And now, not only do we have it, but you can read it.” His pale blue eyes were alight with awe.
“Shhhhhh.” Cassidy held a finger up to her mouth as she glanced toward the bedroom door. It was only ten at night, and even though her mother still hadn’t come home from the office, her dad had gone to bed an hour ago, which was about the same time Nash had arrived in answer to Cassidy’s desperate text message. He’d been saying “This is extraordinary” ever since.
“Sorry.” He instantly lowered his voice, his gaze never leaving the book in front of him. “But honestly, it is amazing. I can understand only about one word in ten, and yet all of a sudden, you can read it like it’s a magazine. I wish it would choose to accept my touch so that I could read it, too. Tell me what this one says. Is it a spell or an instruction? Oh, I bet that it’s a—”
“I think you’re missing the point,” Cassidy cut in while trying to avoid looking at the grimoire, since, unlike Nash, she found it more than a little disturbing that it was no longer a blurry mess of confusion but rather was completely legible. Mainly because if that part of what Thomas had told her was true, then it might mean that— No! She slammed the lid shut on that particular thought, since no good could come of thinking it.
Nash regretfully shut the grimoire. “You’re right, I’m sorry. It’s just hard not to get carried away. The implications this could have are unprecedented. And this Black Rose that he talked about. You do realize that he’s referring to immortality. The fifth element: spirit. The unknown factor that every scientist, philosopher, and alchemist has searched for, since . . . Aren’t you curious?”
“Not even a little bit,” she was quick to assure him.
Nash heroically seemed to swallow his disappointment while trying not to look like a scientist who had just had his lab equipment taken away. Then he perked up a bit. “So if this Thomas of yours comes back, perhaps you could just ask him a few questions for me?”
“He’s not my Thomas,” Cassidy quickly protested. “And you’re forgetting that I don’t want to see him again. Ever. Ever, ever, ever. That’s why I’ve got to figure out a way to make sure he doesn’t come back again, since one run-in with a freakish knight is enough to last me a lifetime.”
“Do you really think he will?” Nash studied her face.
“He was pretty intense—you know that crazy look Mr. Kirkland used to get in his eyes when he talked about dung beetles? It’s like that but doubled. I get the feeling that he’s not the kind of guy who likes taking no for an answer.” As she spoke she glanced over to Nash’s silver Zippo, which he had left on her desk. He didn’t smoke and as far as she knew he didn’t have any major pyro tendencies, but he often did his best thinking when staring into the flame of the lighter. She suddenly wondered how well it would burn through leather book binding.
“Okay, okay.” Nash suddenly stood up and pocketed the Zippo, as if somehow reading her mind. Then he headed for the window. “I’ll help you, as long as you promise not to do anything dumb. Let me go see Howard. You know, my antiquarian friend. He’s an insomniac who owes me a favor or two. Hopefully, he’ll let me do some research on grimoires and the best way to deactivate them.”
“Thank you.” Cassidy gratefully followed him over to the window and watched as he effortlessly swung his long legs over the ledge and dropped out into the garden of the one-story house.
“Don’t mention it. And try to get some sleep. You look exhausted,” he advised before he disappeared out into the night and started to jog the three blocks back to his own house. Once he was gone, Cassidy crawled into bed and closed her eyes, but regardless of how tired she felt, her mind refused to shut down. Instead, it went over and over her disturbing encounter with Thomas. And no matter how much she tried to block it from her mind, it just kept coming back. In despair, she finally pushed back her comforter to turn some music on, in the hope that it would take her mind off everything.
The wooden floor was cool beneath her feet as she thumbed through her MP3 player searching for a song, but before she could put it into the docking station she caught sight of the grimoire, at the far end of the desk. The MP3 player fell from her hands as she saw a pair of swirling amber eyes staring out at her from the cover. They were there for only a second, and then they disappeared.
Cassidy had to clamp her hand over her mouth to stop herself from screaming as her heart pounded in her chest. They were the same eyes she had seen last time she looked in the grimoire. The same eyes that she’d seen on the owl. Thomas had told her that he’d been using the owl to seek her out, but now she wondered if he was looking at her through the grimoire as well.
However, as she stared at the book, her panic was replaced by anger. She was so sick of people telling her what to do. First her mother and now Thomas. Why didn’t anyone seem to understand that no meant no? Then she froze as something else occurred to her. If the book didn’t exist, then Thomas would no longer be able to find her.
If the book didn’t exist . . .
That was it, and before she could change her mind, she reached for a pair of scissors and dug them deep into the leather cover. After all the drama the book had put her through, she almost expected it to make some kind of noise and perhaps ooze some black sticky goo, but apart from the sound of the blade slicing through the leather, there was nothing.
Cassidy stabbed at it again, this time making sure she ripped the pages as well, until all that was left was enough shredding to keep a hamster happy for a month. She gathered up the disemboweled tome and scooped it all into a plastic bag, quickly making her way to the front door.
Her nerves jangled at the idea of being outside, but the thought of having the grimoire in the house for another m
inute, even in its slashed state, made her stomach churn, and she forced herself to step out into the inky night. The sharp October weather prickled her skin, but she ignored it as she cautiously checked that no one was around—and by no one she meant owls or apparitions of sullen knights with blazing, mismatched eyes. However, apart from a cat howling somewhere up the street, there was nothing. Her heart hammered as she hurried to the curb and quickly threw the grimoire into the garbage can. Then she hurried inside and back down the hallway, so scared that she could barely breathe and—
“Cassidy, is that you?” asked a voice from the kitchen, and Cassidy froze as she realized that her mom must’ve come home. She reluctantly peered in to where her mom was standing next to the microwave, clutching a sharp knife in her hand.
“I-I didn’t hear you come in,” she stammered.
“I did call, but when there was no answer, I thought you were asleep. What were you doing out there?” Her mom looked confused as she put the knife back down on the bench.
“Um, I was just getting some fresh air.” Cassidy crossed her fingers and tried not to look as if she’d just been disposing of a mutilated ancient book that a time-traveling, demon-fighting knight who was now dead had given her.
“Fresh air? But it’s freezing out—” her mom started to say before glancing over to where the articles she’d left had once been sitting. “Oh, let me guess. You were throwing away the information I got for you before the trash gets collected tomorrow.”
No, Cassidy started to protest before remembering that she had, in fact, thrown it away earlier, but before she could say anything her mom opened up a nearby drawer and pulled out another bunch of papers.
