“Now to figure out where to go next,” I mumbled, more to
“Now to figure out where to go next,” I mumbled, more to myself than Roy. I turned, and a low scream crashed through the room. I ducked, my eyes flying wide. Then I realized the sound wasn’t a scream; it was singing—and coming from my purse. Phone. I hadn’t even thought about turning the damn thing off before sneaking about. I sent the cal to voice mail. The phone went silent and then, before I could even turn the ringer off, began singing again. Who?
I could just make out LUSA on the cracked screen. The last time I’d seen her I’d given her a diagram of the runes used in the construct disks. It was possible she’d learned something, which might help me find Hol y. Or she could have heard there was a warrant out for my arrest.
I didn’t have time to be indecisive; I had to make the thing stop ringing. I slid my finger across the display to answer.
“What is it?”
“Alex Craft? Why are you whispering?” Lusa’s amiable voice asked on the other side of the line.
“That’s complicated. Did you contact Corrie? Were you able to learn anything about the runes?”
“You better believe I did. I took the runes to Dr. Corrie, like you suggested. We had to search back, way back, in his old tomes to find mentions of these runes and we stil haven’t identified most. Even his library gets a little spotty once you go back a few centuries, but it looks like none of these were in use as late as four centuries ago, and if you’re looking for when they would have been common, you have to search back at least six centuries. Though remember, that wasn’t exactly an age of sharing for witches, so the variation among practitioners and covens was pretty vast.”
So either someone had dug up a really old grimoire or we were dealing with a witch who had been around a long time. I thought about the glamour-coated constructs. I knew a place where a witch could live long enough for magic to revolutionize around her more than once. Faerie.
I asked about what spel s the runes might have been I asked about what spel s the runes might have been used for, but Lusa and Corrie were stil in the identification stage of research, so I wrapped up the cal in several hurried whispers. Lusa wasn’t happy, but I couldn’t afford to keep playing twenty questions with a reporter when it might get me caught crouching in the dining room by the FIB.
Now to get out of here. As I turned toward the door, a dog started barking upstairs. PC.
I stopped, stuck in indecision. I was on the run. I didn’t know where I was going. I didn’t know if I’d even be okay in the end. But Caleb was in Faerie by now, and Hol y was missing, so there was no one here to take care of PC if I didn’t make it back soon.
I couldn’t leave my dog. I took the stairs as quietly as possible. When I reached the top, I cracked the inner door and PC barreled out.
“Hey, buddy,” I said, dropping my purse on the top step so I could pick him up. “I’m going to put you in my purse, and then we are going to be real y, real y quiet and sneak out of here, okay?”
He yipped, just happy to see me, and I sighed. It was times like this when I wished someone had invented a charm that made dogs understand English. Well, here goes nothing.
I slipped the dog inside my purse. He was a smal dog, but it wasn’t that big of a purse, and his front legs and head popped out the top. I placed the strap of the purse across my chest, and PC didn’t squirm, so he seemed to feel secure. Stil , I kept a tight arm on the purse as I crept down the steps and out the back door.
“Two steps sideways to one step forward. When the world decays, you must do what is against your nature to do or the knights will fall.”
I startled at the voice in my head, and whirled around.
“Fred?”
The large stone gargoyle crouched down on the side of the porch, its wings curled tight around its body. If I hadn’t the porch, its wings curled tight around its body. If I hadn’t been able to see the slight blue tint of the soul, I would have thought the gargoyle nothing more than a smal stone boulder.
“What does that mean?” I whispered, but the gargoyle didn’t answer. I waited several moments, but I couldn’t stand there waiting for an explanation of the cryptic . . .
premonition? Riddle? I had to get away from the house and out of sight.
It wasn’t until I reached the street where the cabbie had dropped me off that I real y considered where I was going.