The clock on the far side of the bed was blocked by Devon’s body, and when I shifted to check it, he snaked an arm around me. I fell back to the mattress and let him press us together. Warm skin, hard muscles and a heavy erection met me, rousing me further awake, though Devon’s eyes remained closed.
This wouldn’t do. I was on a timetable. But as I went to poke him in the chest to wake him up, my gaze was drawn down the length of him, and my will buckled slightly. Devon lacked Lucen’s broad physique, but his narrower shoulders and chest were solid muscle. Rather than poke him, my finger traced the line of dark hairs between his pecs. I could afford to be nice and ease some of his emotional distress before I left him for the day, right?
He must have sensed my feelings. His eyes opened, and he smiled, wrapping his other arm around me too. “This is not a bad way to wake up. We should do this more often.” His voice lacked the telltale signs of grogginess, suggesting he hadn’t been sound asleep after all.
“That seems…” I floundered for the right words, but all I could think of was disturbingly intimate.
Devon could sense it too. “Relax, Jess.”
“I am relaxed.”
“Which is why you tensed down to your toes.”
I rested my head on his shoulder because it was better than letting him see how my cheeks burned. “Is this what being away from your addicts does? It makes you act funny.”
“No, this is what facing the possible end of the world does. It makes me think about priorities.” He lifted my head. “How many nights a week do you stay with Lucen?”
“Before recent events, you mean? About three.” That was the schedule we’d set anyway, but we hadn’t had much opportunity to test the feasibility of it. The idea was to give Lucen plenty of time to see his addicts without me accidentally running into one of them. Although I’d had to accept this was part of life with satyrs, I didn’t need more reminders of it.
Devon ran a finger over my lips. “Tell me honestly that you wouldn’t like spending one or two of those free nights with me.”
I couldn’t, but it scared me regardless. I could feel my heart beating against my chest. “So a quickie in your office at Purgatory is no longer enough for you?”
There I went again, hiding in the jokes.
“Not all of them were quick, and no. Last night reminded me of the joys of extended get-togethers.”
“So you want more sex?” And those kisses and the sleeping here last night—that was nothing? I couldn’t tell how I wanted him to answer. His behavior and my emotions were tangled in a knot that I feared to pick. My love life was complicated enough as it was.
Devon’s cool eyes seemed to be searching me for something. “This has no impact on you and Lucen, Jess. You love him, and I’m glad. He loves you, and I’m glad. But I have more fun verbally sparring with you than I do with anyone else, and I have even more fun fucking you, and I like you. You’re smart and sexy, and you make me work for every time I’ve managed to leave you speechless. I’ve tried to keep my distance emotionally, but it gets harder the more time we spend together. And the more time we spend together, the more I want to spend. You can’t tell me you feel differently.”
My mouth went dry. Devon’s speech didn’t do much to ease my confusion or chase away my fear. If anything, it made the confusion worse. My head swam with emotions I couldn’t sort out. “I don’t understand how I can do both—love Lucen and like you. Or how either of you are okay with both.”
“We’re not like most people you’re used to.” He coughed dramatically. “You’re even less like most people, which is probably where your confusion comes from. In your head, you’re a normal human. Oh, I know you’ve accepted you’re not,” he said, cutting off my objection, “but years of acculturation aren’t unlearned in a couple weeks.”
No, they couldn’t be, and Devon excelled at pointing out things I didn’t like to hear and making me listen. I hung my head, gathering my thoughts, and got a nice view of the man beneath me for my troubles. Damn, he complicated things, but my body didn’t care.
“Okay. I mean, yes. I mean, I like the idea of spending more time with you too.”
He grinned. “So, are we good?”
My head spun, and I really wished Lucen were here to give me his opinion on what happened. Logic told me he’d agree with Devon, but it would have helped to hear it from his lips. “We’re good.”
I was merely very, very confused.
And late. Very, very late.
As it turned out, Devon hadn’t stayed up much later than me, his internal clock as messed up by the flight and time zone changes as mine had been. While I showered, he got dressed and planned to spend a few more daylight hours sleeping in his room, which was conveniently located in the same hotel. Apparently he trusted I’d be safe locked up inside Gryphon archives during the day.
Someone knocked on the door as I was finishing drying my hair. Before I could yell at Devon not to answer, I heard the door swing open.
Dragon shit on toast. I was going to be late even if I skipped breakfast, and there was only one person that could be.
“Agent Kassin,” Devon exclaimed. “How unpleasant to see you as always.”
I dropped the hairdryer and hurried into the room. The scene was worse than I’d feared. Devon was only partially dressed. His shirt was unbuttoned, and he was wearing no shoes. Tom did not look amused.
Flustered, I ran my fingers through my damp curls. “Devon was just here to…”
“Make sure no one tried to knife Jess in the middle of the night.” He smiled as he finished buttoning his shirt. “I’m disappointed there were no Gryphon guards outside her door.”
“He brought us some potentially useful information,” I said. That had been the story I was planning to spin. For all the good it would do now. What Devon had been doing in my room was quite obvious, and Tom was obviously quite disgusted.
Devon picked up his phone and gestured to me with it. “Let me know when you leave.”
“Yeah.” I breathed a sigh of relief as he slipped past Tom and out the door.
Tom didn’t bother to disguise his contempt, and only then did I notice he was carrying coffee. He set the coffee on my desk. “What happened with the other one?”
I assumed he meant Lucen, and my cheeks warmed. Tom probably thought I was sleeping with the entire Boston domus. “He’s in Boston.”
“Were you paying any attention to what I told you about spending time with satyrs?”
“That was also in Boston. Look, can we agree that I stay out of your personal life and you stay out of mine?”
Tom crossed his arms. “My personal life doesn’t consider me a snack.”
“No, but when you get angry, your experimental coworker occasionally does.”
He set a brown paper bag next to the coffee. “And I was trying to be nice. When you didn’t show up at the café like we planned, I brought you breakfast.”
I peeked into the bag and discovered a croissant. Damn it. Now I felt guilty, although I suspected part of Tom’s motivation had been to get me working earlier. “Thank you.”
I had no interest in spending more time in the room while the rumpled sheets on the bed and my clothes on the floor reminded Tom of what I’d been up to, so I ate my breakfast as we walked to World.
“I got the email you sent last night,” Tom said. “Is that what Devon gave you?”
I stuffed the last piece of croissant in my mouth so I could ditch the bag before entering the building. “No, I haven’t sent you the photo from Devon yet. What I sent last night was information from the goblins. Too much information, I’m guessing. We’ll have to search through it and see if anything useful is there.”
I emailed Tom the photo from Devon and explained in more detail on our way to the archives. Tom had already sent the goblins’ information to Marie, and he passed t
he photograph on to her as well, in case it helped. Down in the basement, he put the photo up on a larger screen so we could see it better.
“Devon said some of the markings were glyphs, but he thought others were a language he couldn’t recognize.”
Tom scratched his chin, zooming in more closely on the upper right-hand side of the photo, but unfortunately, the resolution only allowed for so much detail. “I think they’re all glyphs, but not glyphs in the current style. We call glyphs a magical alphabet these days, but once they were a true alphabet. The magicians and priests—the people who ended up becoming Gryphons—used it to encode spells and other magic-related writing. The magi taught it to them. They used it to send messages that only those in the know could read.”
“Like a code alphabet?”
“Basically.” He nodded to himself. “I’m sure I’ve seen this before, but we’ll need help translating it. If that really is the glyph language, then this is certainly old enough to be from the correct era. If it contains anything useful, I might have to grit my teeth and thank Devon myself.”
I snorted. “Start with me. It was my idea.”
A shadow of a smile passed over Tom’s lips. “It wasn’t enough that I bought you breakfast?”
“Not when you’re just going to expense it.”
While the information Devon and Steph had procured for us excited Tom and Marie, putting it to use was slow and tedious work. Translating the glyphs would take time, and Marie needed just as much time to go through everything Steph had sent. Tom and I kept busy in the archives, him continuing his search for anything related to the Vessels, and me researching the fury prison, particularly whatever a key might have to do with it.
Our first real break occurred on the second day of our efforts. Marie found a scanned photograph in the goblins’ files that was very similar to what Devon had obtained from Claudius. Certain we were on the right track with these photographs, Tom used them as a new starting point in his search. If the others had pieces of this parchment, then it stood to reason the Gryphons did too, and that it was important.
Olga, the Gryphon who’d been tasked to translate the parchments, came down to the archives as we were getting ready to leave later that day.
“I’m not getting far with these translations.” Her English was perfect, yet oddly accented with both Russian and French, and it struck me what an interesting mix of Gryphons came together to work at World. “This part—” she pointed to the upper left on the goblins’ scan, “—is simple. Basically, someone made a note about who this belonged to. This says it’s property of some goblin. The other one says it is property of a satyr. But the rest?” She shrugged.
“Nothing?” I cursed to myself.
“It’s what-you-call-it—gobblegook. Meaningless.”
Marie cracked open a can of soda. “Maybe it is code?”
“Code written in code?” I raised an eyebrow.
“These things you are looking for,” Marie said. “The people who hid them would want them well-protected.”
Tom rubbed his hands together thoughtfully. “It’s not impossible. Thanks, Olga. I might bother you again if we find another one.”
Olga’s inability to translate the remaining text on the photos was dispiriting, but as Tom pointed out, it could also be another clue we were on the right track.
Since Tom hadn’t specifically told me to keep quiet about what we found, and since Lucen and Devon had both proven themselves useful sources of information, I shared what we’d discovered with them that evening.
Devon had brought his laptop, and he set up a video chat with Lucen. While we drank French wine in Devon’s hotel room, Lucen sat on his sofa drinking beer.
“Did the meeting end early?” I asked. “Why are you home?”
He raised a blond eyebrow. “You didn’t hear what happened?”
“I’ve been buried in a basement all day. No, what happened?”
Devon muttered something that sounded like “Not good” and refilled my wineglass. I took it he’d been in contact with Lucen—or simply the outside world—over the past twelve hours. Something I hadn’t been.
Lucen set his beer down and grimaced. “You want to start with the local or the national?”
“Ease me into the disasters. It’ll give the alcohol more time to hit.”
“The goblins figured out their hard drive was stolen. That went over as well as you can imagine.”
I sipped the wine gratefully. “They accused everyone at the meeting.”
“Of course. And when it was clear no one at the meeting knew anything about it—not that they could sense anyway—they became angrier. Ulan wanted to blame the Gryphons regardless, and Gunthra suspected the furies were behind it. That agitated even more people.”
Nice work, Gunthra. She’d probably have been better off keeping her mouth shut, but if she wanted to keep people focused on the fury threat, it wasn’t a terrible idea.
“So I take it that broke up the meeting?”
“Weeell.” Lucen made me wait while he drank more beer. “I think the meeting could have survived if it weren’t for the other disaster. I can’t believe you didn’t hear about this where you are.”
Devon put his hands on my shoulders. “You’ve met Tom Kassin. He’s fairly single-minded and is probably trying to keep Jess focused.”
Lucen shook his head. “Yeah, but seeing as this concerns us.”
“What?” I asked, a second time.
“Atlanta.”
Lucen didn’t have to be more specific. From his tone, it was obvious what had happened, and I almost jumped out of my chair, but Devon’s hands got in the way. “No. How bad?”
Lucen must have brought his laptop closer to his face because his head got larger. “As bad as you’d expect. I’d say this was almost exactly the same M.O. too.”
I pushed down my fear as best I could, but my blood wouldn’t be warmed. “Buenos Aires, Sydney and Atlanta. That’s three. If they have the Vessels, they only need two more.”
“Europe, Asia or Africa—should we start placing bets on which continent goes next?”
“You’re making unfunny jokes,” I told Devon.
“Things are less scary when you can laugh at them.” He leaned over my shoulder so he could see the laptop better. “In light of this, is his Supreme Upper Asshole still not saying anything useful?”
Lucen smiled grimly at the description of Claudius. “I don’t know. The meeting broke up when the news came in. The Gryphons left to confer, and Dezzi went with Claudius. He doesn’t like me, so she might have thought she could talk sense into him better alone. That was only a couple hours ago. I’m hoping she’ll call later.”
“When do we start to panic?” I mused aloud, but I was mostly talking to myself. “Three down, two to go, and we’re not getting anywhere half as fast.”
Lucen glared at me through the camera. “You don’t panic. You keep doing what you’re doing where you are. I do think we need to be more proactive on this side of the Atlantic though. The Gryphons need to lean harder on the magi. Fuck Xander. It’s not as though he’s the only one with connections among them. And we need to think about expanding our allies. Dezzi should talk more to Eyff. There hasn’t been a breakthrough on the murder investigation, but we don’t have time to wait for everyone’s feathers to un-ruffle.”
“Agreed,” Devon said. “I’m so disappointed our people sent Claudius instead of someone more reasonable. There had to have been a better choice.”
Discussing satyr politics wasn’t anything I was interested in, and I drank more wine, too stressed out to appreciate the taste. It wasn’t until Devon started massaging my shoulders that my attention returned to the men’s conversation.
“You know what else I think? I think we need to help Jess relax so she can sleep tonight.”
Lucen grinned. “Excell
ent idea. I even have a plan for how to do this remotely.”
I held out my glass to Devon. “Fill please. Whatever you two are scheming, I don’t think I’m drunk enough yet.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
Tom didn’t want to talk to me about Atlanta other than to acknowledge the situation wasn’t good. Well, no shit. He did, however, get called into a meeting with members of the Brotherhood, leaving me and Marie in the archives without him.
The silence and dreary tediousness of the work left me restless, and the hours of sitting drove me batshit. I’d regretted never going to college, but if this was what it was like to study, I couldn’t help think I’d been better off. Poorer, possibly, but at least when I’d been waiting tables, I never started having auditory hallucinations or too much time to daydream.
The latter was particularly problematic as my daydreams tended to involve two satyrs, and then I became bored and horny. And until the evening came around, there was nothing I could do about either problem.
The ceaseless whir of the A/C droned on as I made my way down a row of shelves, searching for another book I had depressingly low hopes for. A moment of horror when I almost dropped it livened up my life for a split second, then normality returned. The book was larger than anything I’d checked out yet, and consequently it weighed a ton. But it was just as fragile as the others, and I feared what a good smack on the floor would have done to it.
I set it down on one of the tables within the archive itself, missing the gentle clicking sounds of Umut’s scanner, which at least came in irregular intervals. Irregular intervals gave the brain something to notice and therefore offset auditory hallucinations. Or so was my working theory.
Taking a deep breath, I flipped open the cover. Naturally, a book like this had no index, but the archivist who’d stashed it away had said it contained information about the Pit, and one of the keywords it had been logged under was “key”. Alas, I’d have to read the whole thing to find the word, and the English was as archaic as the book.
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