Next, Annette gave me a bloody tissue and a bag with two pills.
I held the tissue by a clean corner. “There are other ways to track people than blood. Maybe next time, you could bring me a nice, clean strand of hair from a hairbrush?”
Annette ignored me. “Sage told Ava those pills let him see other worlds. It sounds like he might have seen more than that. He knew Ava and her family were different.”
I set the tissue aside and held the bag to the sunlight. The black pills were ever so slightly translucent. I unsealed the bag and rolled one between my thumb and finger.
Annette pointed at me. “Donotput that in your mouth.”
I took off my glasses and whispered a spell. The frames grew warm. When I replaced them, my vision was magnified a hundred times. I studied the pill again, and this time, I saw tiny symbols etched into the capsule. “There’s a containment ring.”
“What kind of containment ring?” asked Ronnie.
When I turned to answer, I was momentarily taken aback by the enormity of his face. Thanks to my glasses, every pore looked like a chipmunk burrow. I leaned closer. “You need a sharper razor. Your stubble should end in clean cuts. Those are like broken tree branches.”
“Focus, please.” Jenny’s smile softened the words.
I studied the symbols, then tugged the ends of the capsule, trying to pull it apart. Jenny reached to stop me, while Annette just swore. The capsule didn’t budge. “The writing looks Aramaic. Whatever’s inside stays there until you swallow the pill. Then the capsule dissolves, and the containment spell goes with it.”
“What else can you tell us?” asked Jenny.
“The characters are inhumanly perfect. I wonder if they were done with lasers.” I dismissed the spell on my lenses, unzipped my fanny pack, and pulled out my book.
“Stuart Little?” A sad smile softened Ronnie’s face. “My mom used to read that to me.”
Pages fluttered past my fingers, eventually stopping at the beginning of an Assyrian spellbook I’d nabbed in Mesopotamia back in ninety-three.
Ronnie peered at an illustration that hadn’t been part of the original book. “I don’t remember Stuart Little dissecting giant fire-breathing slugs.”
The writing in the book was a close-enough match to confirm the spell on the pills was Aramaic in origin. “It’s an expanded edition.”
Jenny scooted closer. “Is that Nabu-rihtu-usur’s spellbook?”
Everyone turned to stare at her.
“Youread Aramaic?” I asked.
“First of all, rude,” she said. “But no, I don’t. I came across a copy when I was nineteen. I’d flunked out of community college and taken a job working the fryer at Gold ’n Crispy, a local fried chicken place. G and C had a longstanding rivalry with Bubba’s Chicks across the street. The staff were encouraged to prank the other stores, and the sign war got pretty nasty. A month into the job, G and C employees started disappearing. Turned out Bubba Truett had gotten his hands on Nabu-rihtu-usur’s book. He was no wizard, but he was able to summon scorpion-men to take out his competition.”
Ronnie lit up. “Maybe the Gold ’n Crispy guy is behind all this!”
“I doubt it,” said Jenny. “The rest of the Slay Team had to go undercover, and there was a whole thing with Raj getting locked in a meat cooler with a pair of resurrected jackals, but we caught Bubba and took the book from him. As soon as we did, the remaining scorpion-men dragged him back to the land of darkness.”
“Kurnugi,” I said. “I visited there once. Not a fun place to spend your afterlife.”
“What did you do with the book?” asked Annette.
“We gave it to Felipe and the Guardians Council. Their library is like the Fort Knox of magic books.”
I turned my attention to the blood-crusted tissue. My book opened to one of the tracking spells I’d tried on Ronnie. I drew power from the house, touched the tissue, and recited the incantation.
“Anything?” asks Annette.
I should have been seeing through Sage Parker’s eyes, but what I saw looked like an endless cloud the color of curdled milk. I turned to a different page and a spell crafted to show me Sage like I was looking down at him from above. I felt the magic working, but I saw only darkness.
“What’s happening?” asked Ronnie.
“Temple hasn’t had the best of luck with these spells,” Annette answered.
