Suppressing a scream, she forced herself up, her legs shaking. How long until Emerazel comes for me? Her right leg had been shredded by the talons, and she only lasted a few seconds before she was on the floor again, crawling this time. Slowly, each movement torture, she dragged herself into the hall. There was an extra cellphone in her bedroom. It would be agonizing climbing the stairs, but she’d get there eventually. As long as I don’t bleed out first.
Blood smeared the hall as she crawled. If anyone wanted to fight her now, she’d just roll over and give up. Just get to the phone, Ursula. As soon as she dialed 911, help would be on the way. They’d stitch her up in the ER, maybe sew her veins back together. The gashes went straight through to the bone, but it would give her some time.
She paused, gasping for breath. I’m not going to make it that far…
What other options did she have? Kester had used a healing spell after the fight with the moor fiend. A healing spell would get her, quite literally, on her feet.
Focus, Ursula. Could she recall the spell, like she had with the sigil spell in Club Lalique? Probably not. She’d been unconscious when he’d chanted it over. She closed her eyes, racking her brain. Maybe it was somewhere in that procedural memory of hers. But, she had nowhere to begin.
The pain drowned out nearly all rational thought. She leaned back against the wall, closing her eyes and taking deep breaths to manage the agony.
She could read Angelic, even if she couldn’t produce a spell out of thin air. What she needed was a spell book. Her eyes snapped open. The library. Those books had to be Henry’s collection of grimoires, and she’d seen Kester unlock the books on his shelf. All she had to do was recite the unlocking spell and skim through their pages.
With a shock of pain, she forced herself onto her hands and knees again and crawled down the hall to the library. The hallway had never seemed so long before—but she’d never felt like she had knives piercing her bones before.
Kester. He had some sort of history with Abrax, she was pretty sure. He’d had an intense reaction when she told him about the incubus. He’d already wanted to kill him. Whatever their history, she wanted to hunt down Abrax and finish the job for him. She shuffled forward, groaning as she reached the library.
Almost there.
She dragged her broken body to the locked books. They stood just as she remembered them, lined up on the bottom shelf with that familiar glow emanating from their bindings. Grimacing, she reached for one, but the force field pushed her hand away.
She grunted, trying to think clearly. How did Kester do it? He’d simply held his hands out and recited a spell.
Not a spell, she thought. That word—like a woman’s name. Gasping, she rolled onto her side and held out her shaking hands. She closed her eyes, picturing Kester’s mouth as he spoke the word, his deep voice caressing her skin, and she repeated after him. “Oriel.”
As soon as she finished, a magical aura whispered over her skin, just like it had when she’d chanted the spells with Kester. The glow around the books flickered for a moment but didn’t disappear. Bollocks.
She slumped back to the floor, the pain in her legs pure agony. Her breath came in short gasps, and the blood continued to pump from her wounds, staining the rug. There wasn’t much time left.
She closed her eyes. If Oriel was a name, then maybe each of these locking spells were personalized, like a password on a computer. And if this apartment had belonged to Henry… How the fuck was she supposed to guess Henry’s password? She knew nothing about the man apart from the festive state of his organs after his death. Her heart thrummed. Had she seen anything in the apartment, any photographs…?
The painting. There was a painting in the living room of a beautiful woman named Louisa. And if Kester had named his spell after a woman…
She reached out her hands again, choking out the name. “Louisa.”
For a moment she thought she’d guessed wrong, but then the yellow glow faded. Relief washed over her. Finally getting somewhere.
Her eye raced along the titles on the books’ spines. There were copies of the Fasciculus Chemicus and the Theatrum Chemicum Britannicum, an ancient-looking book simply called DAEMONS, and an Angelic book that translated to “Lenus’s Healing Spells and Poultices.” Bingo. She pulled it from the shelf with a thud, barely able to lift herself off the floor. She flipped through it, translating the Angelic spell names at the top. God, she was so tired. She needed to sleep…
But if she fell asleep, she’d wake again bathed in flames.
Fear pushing her on, she refocused her attention. Spells for curing rashes, tinctures for alleviating gout, and conjurations by Ashmole, Norton, and Starkey. She flipped through an entire section on bovine maladies and crop sickness, rapidly losing the will to live.