Clearing my throat, I look at Kaspar and Salem. “Cover your ears as well as you can. We’ll do a practice run with just a small amount of my song. That way, we find out which one of them is correct without forcing them to trail me the entire time I’m in Hell.”
“It would serve them right,” the dragon mutters. “But fine, we’ll give it a go.”
Salem grins as he covers his ears, and I wait until Kaspar pulls a pair of actual earplugs from his pocket in a tiny case. I have no idea why he’s packed like Batman, but I’ll take it, I guess. When they’re done, I turn back to the other demons. “Are you guys ready?”
Anton nods as a swirling, colorful wisp of magic escapes him and wafts toward the wall. A dark, spiky burst comes from Damon next, and I can almostfeelthe chaos as it joins with the beautifully colored ‘pride’ power from its heir. I take a deep breath, centering myself for a moment, and then I hum a softtune. Surprisingly, my song is visible in an array of blues and greens before it heads for the other magic to meld together.
“Is anyone feeling like they need to stalk Slade now?” Kaspar says loudly, and I almost stop humming to laugh at his comically loud question.
“I don’t,” Anton replies confidently. “But I see our combined energy funneling into the sigils, which was the point. Slade, you need to turn up the volume, so to speak.”
“Yeah, I’m good, too, so he’s right. You can go whole hog,” Damon adds. “Whatever that means for you.”
I move to actual singing, projecting my voice loud enough to shake the fixtures on the walls. The drawings glow as the ball of melded power sinks into them one by one. Spidery cracks of energy climb up the wall they’re marking, and I have to focus on my song so I don’t stumble on the words as they spread.
“Do you see anything? Or feel, or whatever?” Salem yells from behind us. “I’m fine, but you know… I have no fucking idea if this light show is helping.”
“We don’t have enough time to waste any,” Anton replies as he watches the wall. “And that fool can’t hear my reply, but you two can. This is working, I believe, and it’s following the trail of something… see how it’s moving from a wide disbursement to funneling toward the upper right corner?”
Damon nods. “I see that. What’s in that direction?”
“Studios,” the pride demon says with a grimace. “Whatever we’ve got a bead on, it’s hiding in studios. That cuts down the need for searching classrooms, but it means we’ll have to use magic to crawl over each one because they are all different andgeared to different specialties. I have one in this building, as does Xerxes, for our artistic degrees.”
“Shit,” Damon mutters as he looks at me. “This building has a fuckton of personal studios, and once wefindwhatever is setting off the magic, we’ll have to figure out who it belongs to and then who else might have had access to it. Our brief visit here might take longer than expected if we want to track this down.”
I blink, waiting for them to continue. I don’t want to stop singing until they tell me to, but I also want to respond. Finally, Anton uses his free hand to motion for me to stop, and when I do, I pant softly. “Damn…”
“Catch your breath, Slade. We will need to do this again in other areas. You don’t want to lose your voice.” Damon grins a little, and I give him a thumbs up.
“Not to be a killjoy, but now that I don’t have to cover my ears…” Salem shakes his head a bit as if to clear it and then walks over. “We need to follow that… whatever the hell it is. I want to know what fucker is hiding something from us in these damn rooms.”
“You and me both,” Kaspar rumbles. “Even if the answer is that we have to track down the owner and zap his ass until he spills.”
This might get ugly really fast if we let Kas decide how we get info from people—though, by the look on the panda’s face, he might be okay with that, too.
Twenty-Three
ROGUE
“Y’know, the little gal has been gone longer than expected. Should we go check on her?” I look over at Morgana, who shakes her head.
“This floor is supposedly extremely well-warded and shit. Perhaps she just needs a moment to gather herself? We threw alotof truth her way, and it might hit her all at once. Giving her space to assimilate is only polite.”
Nodding, I lean back against one of the chairs as Javi starts screaming at his own ass again. This is exactly why I don’t have the slightest desire for tiny beings to invade my life; I just don’t think I can handle it. “Shhh, you. Just because you’re not getting all the attention Archie gave you doesn’t mean you can act like a brat. Normal Javier isn’t a brat, so you can’t be.”
Morgana laughs, her face full of amusement. “On that, we agree. Or the sentiment I got from your expression, I mean. I’m not predisposed to having my ovaries weep at the sight of small ones and never have been. I’m sure I have the fortitude for it, but I don’t find myself yearning like some people. People have alwaysacted like that was something to be ashamed of, especially my dearly departed ex.”
I watch as her humor is overshadowed by something more raw, and my eyes pop open as I point at her with a shaky finger. “Oh. My. Fucking. Goddess! That’s it!”
Her gaze narrows as she watches me home in on her with the intuition that has always made me good at my Guardian job. “What? What’s it? Have you had too much of the Fae bubbly?”
“I havenoteven begun to drink,” I declare as I lean forward and stare at her intently. “However, I’ve figured out the big fucking secret. I know what it is, Morgana LeCiel.”
Sniffing, she rolls her eyes as if I’m the most boring thing in the universe. “Pfft. What secret? I don’thavesecrets; I’m infamous now.”
I stroke my hand over Javi’s head so he doesn’t get yappy again as I scoot across the floor, getting closer to her so I can whisper. “I know why that damn trial was fucking closed and why the damned transcripts were edited, even in the Guardian archives. I’ve figured it out.”
Her expression doesn’t flicker for a second as she replies coolly, “I’m sure I don’t know what you’re talking about. It was publicized everywhere; the media had a field day. There’s no secret; Magnus was a cheating, crooked bastard, and I hunted him down to kill him.Et voila, end of story, Rogue.”
