“See you later,” I said, grateful she was getting away from Aidan. She and the others might have approved of him, but he was still too much of an unknown for me to be comfortable trusting him around the people I loved.
I turned to Aidan and really looked at him for the first time since entering P & P. I’d never seen a guy make a gray t-shirt look so good. It was a dark gray, the same color as his eyes. I’d thought they were brown.
“Have you eaten?” I asked, trying to distract myself from his eyes. He had a pint of some kind of dark beer in front of him.
“Yes. The pasties were excellent.”
“So, tell me more about this scroll,” I said between bites. “But quietly, I don’t want to drag Connor or Claire into this.”
“What do you want to know?”
“What else is written in it? I’ve never heard of it before, but it sounds pretty valuable.”
“It is. It contains information about all the most powerful species of supernaturals. Strengths and weaknesses. I don’t have many weaknesses, but I don’t want anyone knowing them.”
“Don’t blame you.” I popped the last bite of pasty into my mouth.
“And according to a reference I just found in an old text, it’s a prophetic scroll. It contains a list of the names and descriptions of individuals who belong to all the most powerful species. Past and present.”
I choked on my pasty. Names and descriptions? Past and present?
That meant me.
CHAPTER FOUR
Aidan passed me a glass of water as I coughed, trying to clear the pasty from my throat.
Okay, this had suddenly gotten a hell of a lot worse. My mind raced like a hamster in a wheel. The scroll might not actually exist. Or it might not have the information he said it had.
But if it did, it would include my name under the heading FireSoul, subheading To Be Killed On Sight. Or, alternate, To Be Imprisoned For Life.
Oh, this was bad.
“Are you all right?” Aidan asked, concern in his dark eyes.
“Fine, totally fine. Just swallowed wrong.” I nodded, trying to look normal and knowing I’d failed. Was there any way I could do this job without him? Steal it and destroy it before he saw it?
Unless he told me some really key details about the scroll, no. I didn’t have enough to go on. For my tracking ability to work, I needed a couple things. First, somebody needed to really want whatever I was looking for. My dragon sense was based on covetousness. That was no problem. I wanted that scroll. Bad.
But I also needed to know at least one or two intimate details about the object or person I sought. More was better. Images were the best, but knowledge of who made it or something like that would help. Just enough for my magic to latch on and take me there.
He’d have to give me that information. Then I’d get it and have Nix make a copy that omitted our information.
“So, this scroll sounds pretty interesting,” I said. “I’ll take the job. Half price because I broke into your tomb.” I’d do it for free, but I didn’t want him thinking I was too eager.
“Excellent. We’ll leave tomorrow.”
What the heck? That wasn’t part of my plan. “We? I work alone.”
“I’ll help you. It could be dangerous.”
“Dangerous is my day job,” I said. I winced, realizing I sounded like a jacked-up meathead from an action movie. But for magic’s sake, I walked around with daggers strapped to my thighs. You’d think it’d be obvious that I could handle myself. “I’ll take care of it. You don’t need to worry.”
“I know you can take care of yourself,” he said, his dark eyes serious. “But I want this scroll. Badly. And I don’t trust anyone else with it. I’ll come along.”
Damn. I waffled, but he looked determined. “All right. Tomorrow. Can you tell me a little more about the scroll?” Maybe if he told me enough, I could find it tonight.
He nodded and leaned back in his chair, long and lean muscles stretching out. I sagged a bit, grateful he didn’t suspect me.
“The scroll was written over a thousand years ago by monks who lived on an island off the coast of Ireland,” he said.
Nerves prickled along my skin. That was the third time today that Ireland had come up. First I raided a tomb there, then Aidan, who owned an estate there, showed up, and now these monks. I didn’t like it. I worked all over the world. Today was my first job in Ireland in years. And it had come complete with a demon who knew I was a FireSoul and a handsome, dangerous stranger who wanted me to find a scroll that could spell my death.
Yeah, it was weird.
“The monks are still the only ones who live on the island,” Aidan said. “They’re supernaturals, but they choose to rely on study and contemplation rather than magic. They’re called the Holy Order of Knowledge. Their entire purpose is to record every bit of knowledge about the supernatural world that they can. The Scroll of Truth was created by their greatest seer before his death. He used his power to write about the future, which is why my name is probably in it even though it was written long before my birth. But it was stolen.”
“By whom?”
“I don’t know.”