“Back at the beginning, magic was not good or evil, it simply was,” Cadence continues to read. “It existed in the elements—Air, Water, Earth, and Fire. It bore creatures formed of these elements, creatures to be both revered and feared. It flowed through the veins of humans, blessing them with the ability to connect with one of the elements.”
I reach out and turn the page. Despite the controlled air temperature, the paper feels warm under my fingertips. The drawings turn more menacing. A sea of people spewing blood. A pile of corpses covered with boils and black spots. I drag my finger under some of the French words: Peste. Le mal.
Pestilence. Evil.
“So, it wasn’t all rainbows and unicorns?” I end up saying, but it comes out like a question.
“Modern researchers talk about the Plague being caused by fleas and rats. But according to Brumian legend, it was dark magic that created the very first wave of Black Death.”
“Must’ve been one twisted wizard to do that.”
“Warlock. Wizards deal in good magic.” She shrugs. “If you believe in that, of course.”
“Do you?”
A tiny groove appears between her eyebrows. “I’m not sure. Yes and no.” She tips her head from side to side. “Part of me wants to believe it’s real, but the logical and disillusioned part of me has trouble accepting it’s true.”
I frown. Disillusioned? She doesn’t strike me as a disillusioned person—a little uptight, sure, but not cynical.
Whatever’s on her mind blots out the light in her eyes, dimming their blueness. Yet somehow, perhaps because she doesn’t seem quite as naïve and coddled as I expected, it heightens her attractiveness.
“The Black Death killed 60% of the population in Europe.” Then she spews out more facts that glance off my skull. I’m too busy absorbing the sweet scent of her hair and the red tint of her lips that’s so deep I wonder if she’s wearing lipstick. They don’t look glossed-up.
A renewed light enters her eyes as she continues schooling me in history. I really should be paying attention but physically can’t because most of the blood in my body has gone south.
“Slate?” She turns those Mediterranean-at-midday eyes of hers on me.
“Yeah?”
“Are you listening?”
I shouldn’t smile, but I do. Not because of all the sad, dead medieval saps, but because history turns her on. Then I stop smiling, remembering the way she was looking at that dickhead professor earlier, like he was a god.
I snap my gaze down to the illustration she’s pointing to in the giant book—two women and two men in wizard robes holding a gold thing in the shape of a quatrefoil. They’re standing on a circle that reminds me a little of the clock upstairs, the colors under their feet gradually deepening from white into a midnight blue. One woman points to the center of the golden shape, her finger resting on the bright-red dot at the heart of the clover the same way Cadence’s finger rests on the page.
“The magical committee,” she says. “Or Quatrefoil Council. In 1350, when Brume was literally dying, they appointed the most powerful families of Brume to be diwallers, or guardians of the Quatrefoil. The Council was furious with how people used magic to cause destruction rather than growth, so they removed it from the world by fracturing its source.”
“They broke the giant shamrock . . .”
“Quatrefoil.” She turns the page.
The next drawing shows the thing in pieces, the red dot snapped off the rounded wings.
My heart rate kicks up. Holy hell. Could that be the red stone I’m sporting on my sprained finger?
She turns the page again. An illustration of those same four men and women covers most of the paper, but this time they each hold a leaf of the Quatrefoil in front of them, engulfed in an element. Cadence doesn’t seem to notice that my breathing has quickened. She continues to explain, half-reading the text on the page, half-recounting it like it’s a love poem she’s memorized.
“The diwallers’ intent was to hide the leaves until they felt humanity was once again worthy of magic, so they each took ownership of an element, then cast spells to protect their piece and keep it in Brume.”
Spells to keep the pieces in Brume . . . I feel the swell of the stone on my finger. Did the ring erect the invisible wall on the train platform?
Cadence’s breath flutters the wafer-thin pages. “Legend has it, the diwallers’ descendants could bring magic back.”
“That’s some crazy-ass history.” I attempt to keep my voice smooth, but dread ices my vocal cords, making my speech sound choppy. “What’s the red thing?”
“Oh. Right. That’s the Bloodstone. It holds the blood of each family of diwallers and the power of all the elements. The Bloodstone is the most important piece of all. Without it, the leaves can’t bind together.” She lifts her chin, a smug smile on her lips. Like she just aced an exam.
My saliva thickens. I swallow, and it goes down like tar. “So, it stands to reason the Bloodstone’s cursed like the other pieces?”
She nods before gazing back down and flipping through a few more pages. “But it doesn’t specify how. Guess that’s the surprise for the poor soul who finds it.”
I can’t even appreciate how flushed her cheekbones are, or how wet her lips look. I’m way too busy reeling over the whole Bloodstone-curse bit. I clear my throat. If the stone on my finger is the stone we’re talking about, I’m officially foutu.
“Sometimes I fantasize the tales in this book aren’t just legends. Imagine how amazing it would be if this really was Brume’s history? If the founding families really were guardians and magic bearers? If—”
“If items like the Bloodstone were actually cursed and the wizards at the New Year’s party weren’t just a bunch of LARPers?”
“Larpers?”
“Live-action-role-players.”
A smile—a genuine one—brightens her face. It’s so magnificent it momentarily makes me glad I’m in a library on New Year’s Day in bumblefuck Brume.
Until I remember why.
“If all of it were true, Slate, it would mean that we could restore magic.”
We’re silent a moment; she, contemplating a lone archival box at the top of a shelving unit, daydreaming of possibilities; me, living a nightmare with few options. I need to find out if I’m wearing the Bloodstone or just some knock-off.
I have little doubt about the answer, but I ask anyway. “That Bloodstone’s got to be worth a lot. Where’s it kept? A museum? A safety deposit box? Dracula’s coffin?”
Cadence’s gaze narrows. “Why? Looking to steal it?”
Been there. Done that.
“You don’t care about Brumian history at all, do you, Slate?” She slams the book shut and shakes her head. “You’re just after something valuable. You’re not some middleman in the jewelry business; you’re a main man in the thieving industry.” She’s breathing so hard the thick turtleneck is vibrating. “I thought you wanted to know more about your origins, but”—she gestures to the room a little spastically—“all of this was just a ploy to find out about the stone, wasn’t it? Are you even a Roland, Slate?”
This girl is such a paradox—soft like cotton candy one moment and then hard as a lollipop the next. Between her volatile attitude, my severe lack of sleep, and my throbbing finger, I can’t help it . . . I laugh. Harder than I’ve laughed in a long time. I’m still chuckling after she’s rammed the book back onto its shelf, stashed the gloves, and stalked toward the door, hands splayed on her hips, glower fearsome.
I finally stop and inhale a long breath. “Whew.”
“I’m happy you got such a kick out of my history lesson.”
Even though I’m liking her feistiness, her comment sobers me. “I wasn’t laughing at you, Cadence.”
“I don’t care.”
She does.
“Good.” As I stride by her, I add, “You should never care what people think of you.”
We don’t say a word to each other after we l
eave the icebox, but her storming out ahead of me isn’t a total loss—I get a better view of her ass on the way up than I did on the way down. The temperature warms with each step. When we’re out of the hatch, the air’s downright tropical.
Cadence huffs, grabbing a few books off a cart and concentrating way too hard on locating their proper places.
I lean against one massive bookshelf and watch her stuff Les Liaisons Dangereuses between two thin books. “Thank you for your help.”
She snorts.
“I mean it. And I may be back with more questions.”
Her gaze cuts over to me. “Why don’t you save them for Professor Mercier’s history class?”
“You mean your boyfriend’s class?”
“My boyfriend? No. Adrien’s not—” Pink dots her cheeks as she fingers the glossy spines in front of her. “The professor isn’t my boyfriend. He’s an old friend.”
I cross my arms over my chest. Ridiculous as it is, her blind worship of the dude grates me. “Why was he here then?”
“How is that any of your business?”
“Doesn’t he have a clock at home?”
Her eyes narrow. “I’m sure he does. He came to take pictures of the dihuner to supplement his thesis. Now if you’re done with your cross-examination, I have work to do.”
Cold air snakes around us, and then a girly voice calls out, “Cadence?”
“Over here, Alma!” She shoves past me and rounds the bookshelf.
Pulling my glove back on, I trail her out of the maze.
Cadence’s curly-headed friend from last night lets out a squeal and rubs the little pearl on her pinky finger. “Slate! Do you have any more tricks? Can you make something else disappear?”
“Your virginity.”
That gets a booming laugh from Alma and a look of absolute repulsion from Cadence. You’d think I was a leper.
“Too late for that.” Alma’s smile is as wide as the Strait of Gibraltar. “We’re going to go grab something to eat if—”
“Slate was just leaving.”
I can take a hint.
I bid them goodbye, glancing up at the cupola dripping colored light on the giant, gunmetal-gray clock face decorated with none other than a golden outline of the quatrefoil—of fucking course. I stride down the aisle, the ochre-and-white floor tiles brown with slippery slush, then shoulder the heavy wooden door open. When it clangs shut behind me, the icy level of hell that is Brume hits me anew. The mist sinks into the wool of my peacoat. The cold freezes my nostril hairs and eyeballs. The only part of me that’s warm is the hand with the ring.
I crunch across the campus lawn, past a giant building that looks a little like a fancy art museum what with its limestone façade and ginormous picture windows. As I follow the windy road that laces around the village, I go over what I learned in the library.
I’d been hoping for a set of step-by-step instructions on how to get the damn thing off so I could hock it for a pretty penny, screwing de Morel over at the same time. But now, I have no choice but to pay the man a second visit, because I finally believe in magic.
8
Cadence
La Taverne de Quartefeuille is busy, which isn’t surprising considering nothing else is open in town.
When I walk in with Alma, it seems like all of Brume is wedged between the roughcast stone walls of the bistro that doles out the best fare in all of Brittany. Nolwenn, the owner, stops on her way to a table to greet me with a kiss perfumed by puffs of savory steam curling out of the ceramic casserole dish she’s carrying. The buckwheat and meat stew makes my stomach growl.
“I just cleared a table upstairs, ma chérie.” She nods to the crooked wooden staircase at the end of the bar, her puffy, peroxided hair not even shifting thanks to her passion for hairspray.
As we pass behind the jampacked row of red leather stools, I catch sight of black curls and gloves. Ugh. Why does Slate have to be everywhere? I speed-walk past him, towing Alma along before she can invite him upstairs or into her bed.
His little joke about absconding with her virginity has run on a loop inside my brain since we left the library. I’ve never met a man as crude and slick as Slate. To think that, when he showed me his birth certificate back in the library, his eyes teeming with hurt, I felt sympathy for him. The grief, or whatever I saw in his expression, was probably all an act.
I hate that I fell for it.
The wall along the stairs is covered in framed black-and-white pictures of Nolwenn and her white-haired, white-bearded husband, Juda, their arms around various celebrities who traveled through Brume on magical pilgrimages. Romain, their grandson, is also in a few, as are Gaëlle and Matthias. Matthias is Nolwenn and Juda’s son, but since he abandoned Gaëlle with three kids, he’s not talked about much. Or at least, not here.
“I still can’t believe it just up and started ticking,” Alma says, the stairs creaking like old bones under her platform boots. At least she traded in her skimpy black dress for a low-cut emerald V-neck sweater and black leggings.
“I know.” I tried calling Papa when we left the temple, but I got a text message that he was in physical therapy and that he’d phone me as soon as he was done.
I scan the low-timbered second story for the free table Nolwenn mentioned. It’s all the way across the room, beneath the window swathed in lacy white curtains. The square panes are steamed from the arctic chill outside and cozy heat billowing inside.
As I ford through the room, I wave hello to a few people and lean over to kiss Gaëlle’s toasty cheek. A smudge of magenta lipstick adorns her light-brown skin, courtesy of Nolwenn.
“The hat looked amazing on you last night, sweetie,” she says with a smile.
“It’s officially my favorite hat.”
“I told her she should wear it every day. I think it would vastly improve her style.” Alma winks at me, then turns her dazzling smile on Romain.
He goes crimson and tries to drown his blush by gulping down his entire glass of water.
“It’s not like anyone would judge you. I mean, we live in Brume,” Alma adds.
I roll my eyes. “No offense, but I think I’ll save it for special occasions.”
Gaëlle chuckles. “None taken.”
After wishing a few more people a bon appétit, I shrug out of my jacket and hang it on the back of my chair. My knuckles ache, and I stretch them out as I check the chalkboard on which Juda writes the daily offerings. I’m not sure why I do this since I almost always get the same thing: a paper-thin buckwheat galette filled with ham, spinach, cheese, and a fried egg followed by a crêpe drizzled in Juda’s homemade salidou.
“Know what you want, Alma?”
“The usual. And coffee. A lot of coffee,” she says as Nolwenn bustles up the stairs with four pitchers of cider.
Once she’s deposited them on the long table crowded by college kids accounting for most of the noise in the tavern, she weaves through the hodgepodge of tables toward us. Even though she gets up at the crack of dawn and only goes to sleep once the last customer leaves, that woman bursts with energy.
She jots down our order, whispering conspiratorially, “I’ll get yours in before theirs.” She nods to the big table.
After she vanishes back downstairs, Alma leans over. “So, now will you tell me why you were hanging out with the hottie newbie?”
“He had questions about Brumian history.” I unfold my red gingham napkin and place it on my lap. “And he’s not hot.”
“Um. Yeah he is. You’re just too blinded by—”
I kick her shin under the table before she can utter Adrien’s name when Gaëlle is sitting two tables away.
“Ouch.” She leans over and rubs her leg. “I wouldn’t have said his name out loud.”
Better safe than embarrassed.
Her long, copper curls rush around her face. “You’re awfully grumpy today.”
“Might be because someone sleep-screeched Happy New Year at four o’clock in the morning and to
ssed tissues on me.”
Alma breaks into a grin. “I was wondering why there were so many Kleenexes on the bed.”
As we wait for our food, I study the four-leaf shape stamped on the floor tiles. “Do you think the Quatrefoil really existed?”
Alma’s been in the archives. She’s perused the books, so she knows all about the diwallers who supposedly confiscated the magic and locked it away for safekeeping.
“Remember all those treasure hunts we went on when we were kids?” she asks.
“Yeah.”
“Do you remember all the treasure we found?”
“We didn’t find any.”
“Exactly.”
“So you think it’s all lore to attract tourists?”
I sense Gaëlle looking over at us, but when I raise my gaze to hers, I find she’s staring at her stepson, so maybe I imagined her attention.
“I don’t know if it was invented to better tourism, but it’s a real good story. I wish it were true. If I had magic, the first thing I’d do would be to cast away the fog.”
“Yes, because that would greatly improve the world.”
“It would greatly improve ours.” She wrinkles her nose at the fog pressing against the window. The denseness of the gray mass gives the impression the tavern’s suspended on a cloud. “Can we go back to talking about the new guy?”
I sigh. “I’d rather not.”
“Is he a good kisser?”
“What exactly do you think we were doing in the library?”
“I meant last night, at the party.”
“Oh. He didn’t kiss me.”
She gasps. “Is that why you’re pissed at him?”
“Of course not.”
“I can’t believe he didn’t kiss you. The way he was staring at you last night . . . Babe, trust me, I’m a real-live pheromone-detector, and that boy—”
“Al-ma,” I hiss, decomposing her name in two very distinct syllables to drive in the fact that I don’t want to discuss him or last night or this morning.
“Fine,” she grouses. “I’ll shut up.”
We talk about the clock and its repositioned hand, and then about the lesson I’ll be teaching. I run ideas past her, and since she’s as good a listener as she is a talker, I feel like I have the entire hour fleshed out by the time our food arrives.
Of Wicked Blood: A Slow Burn Romantic Urban Fantasy (The Quatrefoil Chronicles Book 1) Page 7
