Florian grinned. “That means there is something good down there!”
I wondered if it had anything to do with the mystery I was trying to solve but doubted it. I’d painted the door, revealing it as my admittance price to the library, but I felt no pull toward it. Whatever was down there interested me, but I didn’t think it held answers to my most pressing problems.
So unfortunately, it would have to wait.
“I’ll come back to help with it later,” I said. “But right now, I really need to figure out where the thieves took the ancientus spell.”
Florian nodded eagerly. “Indeed. That is a problem of the utmost importance.” He shook his head. “What’s happening to the people who are hunting it is terrible! To lose your magic.” He shuddered. “Unimaginable!”
“Agreed.” My magic was only partially gone, and it felt awful. I stood, turning to the library. “I’m trying to identify an ancient place, one torn down by heat and the rage of nature. An ancient place of conquerors and villains that has grown again.” Mordaca’s words came to me naturally. “And I think it’s in Italy.”
Caro’s clue.
The magic in my comms charm crackled, and I touched the metal with my fingertips.
“Ana?” Bree’s voice whispered out. “Another team found a clue. The name Abbondanza. No one knows who that is, though.”
“Thank you, Bree,” I said.
“One more thing,” she said. “Another team found a group of demons wearing the silver circle tattoo. That makes at least five us to find them. We think that there are bases of operation all over the world.”
And we were all working together to find the answer. Competing to find the spell and win the prize, but together, we were finding the clues to solve this.
I smiled. This was my kind of place.
It fueled my determination to find the answer.
“Good luck,” Bree whispered.
“That name sounds Roman,” Florian said.
“It does, doesn’t it? But Rome…” I felt nothing when I thought of Rome. Even though it was the conqueror’s city, was it the one I sought?
Florian cleared his throat. “Dearest library. Could you help our guest?”
Nothing happened at first. Then a light glowed across the great open space in the middle of the room. It was two levels down, close to the bottom.
“Let’s go!” Florian hurried off, a skip in his step.
I followed, my heart thundering as we neared the glowing light. A sense of excitement filled me. Of knowing.
There would be answers here.
We found a collection of dusty old books that were just begging for Mayhem’s dusting cloth. In fact, she zipped forward, the rag gripped in her teeth, and shined up the spines of the books. Muffin had disappeared, no doubt to take a nap or steal something tiny.
I knelt down to inspect the books, but the golden titles were long faded with time. Gently, I pulled two off the shelf and stood. I turned, looking for a table and chairs.
The items in question were floating toward me, carried by a sparkle of golden magic. They stopped in front of me.
“I think the library knows you’re doing important work,” Florian said.
“Wow.” Talk about cool.
I sat, slowly flipping open the pages of the books. The first showed the ruins of an ancient city. Herculaneum, in southern Italy.
It was from the Roman period. But I felt nothing.
I flipped through the next book, having no more luck. I reached for another, realizing the Florian was stacking them up next to me. “Thank you.”
“For the cause.”
I hoped I was up to the cause. My eyes began to cross as I carefully turned pages, looking at old illustrations and photographs of ancient sites all over Italy.
The problem was that our clues were so vague. The jerks who’d stolen the spell were probably laughing their asses off, knowing that they were so well concealed we’d never find them.
I couldn’t blame them, though. After I’d seen Lachlan fight, covering my tracks like a super pro was the only way I’d ever steal anything from him.
I was on the last book when a page glowed with light. I blinked. “Florian, do you see that?”
“See what?”
Magic vibrated inside me, drawing me to the glowing page.
But the page wasn’t glowing. It was my vision.
What the heck was this new magic?
It wasn’t quite like being a seer.
But it was definitely guiding me.
“Pompeii?” Florian asked.
I looked at the image of the destroyed city. Bodies cased in ash lay in the street, a horrifying image of what had happened in the ancient town in 79 A.D.
“I guess so.” I pointed to the word Abbondanza on the page. Apparently, it was a street in the destroyed city. “It looks like I’m going to Pompeii.”
I made it back to the round room just as the meeting was dispersing. Bree and Rowan were already gone, but Lachlan stood near the front.
I pushed through the departing crowd and made my way up to him.
“Where were you?” he asked.
“Hunting answers. My sisters kept me informed during the meeting.” I pointed to the comms charm around my neck.
“So that’s why they were whispering. Did you find anything?”
“A couple of things.” I thought of the trapdoor but didn’t mention it. “I think the spell has gone to Pompeii.”
“That’s possible. It fits the clues. But why there?”
“Like you said, it fits the clues. And my gut is telling me.” My gut being some unfamiliar new magic.
“Your gut told you Paris, too.”
“It’s a reliable gut.” Okay, this convo was getting weird. “Should we tell everyone to look in Pompeii?”
I wanted that half-a-million-pound prize, but I wasn’t going to risk the world to get it. We needed every advantage we could get.
“I don’t think so,” he said. “When the groups split up last time, they still found good information. And if your gut is wrong, we need more people hunting in other places.”
He was right. There was no guarantee that my gut would be right—or that we’d find exactly what we sought in Pompeii.
“Okay, good. What about everyone’s missing magic?”
“We think it’s linked to the stolen ancientus spell. When we find the spell, we’ll find the person who cursed us. But the Protectorate is trying to locate another solution in the meantime.”
“Good. I don’t like our chances of retrieving the spell without our magic.”
“Agreed.”
“I need to change before we go to Pompeii. Can I meet you at the entrance hall in thirty?”
“I look forward to it.”
I hurried out of the room and raced up the stairs to my apartment door. I slipped inside and ran up more stairs—sometimes it seemed as if the castle was nothing but halls and stairs—and I slipped through into my apartment.
The Cats of Catastrophe were in my apartment again. Princess Snowflake III sat on the couch on top of two pillows this time, and she glared at me, as expected. Bojangles hung from the curtains. And Muffin was warming his butt on a pizza box.
“How did you get pizza?” I asked.
“Meow.” I’m freaking magical, dummy.
“Got a slice left?” It was my favorite.
He meowed in what was clearly a laugh. I scowled at him, then hurried upstairs to change clothes. As I passed the easel set up along the side wall, I smiled. It looked like my panting had come in handy after all.
It didn’t take long to change into fresh jeans, boots, and jacket. I took a moment to clean the blood off my blades. Even though I didn’t have to see them while they were stored in the ether, I still knew they were filthy. I wasn’t a neat freak by any means, but it still grossed me out.
I stopped by the kitchen on my way out, only to find that the cats had eaten all my food before they’d ordered the pizza. And this was after Muffin had presumably had some ham with Mayhem. Even a bottle of cheap champagne was open and empty.
I glared at Muffin.
He glared back. Is this how you treat your guests?
I sighed. “Just try to clean up after yourself, okay?”
There was no point in sticking around to hear his response. He was a cat. He was going to do whatever the heck he wanted.
Lachlan was waiting for me down in the main entry hall, but my stomach was still grumbling. “You hungry?”