15
Zeph
“All right then, hit me with it,” Silver says to her sister. Hanna squares her shoulders and I stifle a sigh at the two of them.
Silver decided that before we risk visiting the Forbidden Archives or starting her network of ghost informants, she needs to test out her latest power—the one absorbed from the Dead Zone. Apparently, the best way for Silver to test it out is to have us attack her with our magic and see if she can null its effects.
I fucking hate this plan, but Silver insisted and so here we are.
We’re in the vamp’s apartment above Second Circle and he’s sitting in the corner, busying himself with a book and not paying the slightest bit of attention to the madness going on in front of him.
“Holy shit, it’s working.” Hanna’s eyebrows shoot up as a blast of fire leaves her hands, only to die a moment later.
Silver nods, seeming satisfied. “Okay, let’s try something else. Zeph?”
I shake my head. There’s no fucking way I’m shooting a bolt of lightning at her. “Too dangerous,” I reply.
“How about a bit of rain? Drizzle? Come on, please?” Her eyes widen as she beseeches me to fire my magic at her.
Crazy witch.
“Fine.” I summon a downpour into the middle of the room and try not to smirk when the vamp finally glances up with an unimpressed frown as I soak his carpets.
But then the drizzle disappears and even though I can feel my magic still coursing out of me, it has no effect.
“You’ve nulled it,” I say, impressed as hell.
She beams at me, and I feel my heart pounding in my chest. Fuck, it’s like one look from her and I’m about to have a heart attack.
“All right then, Dante. I need you to use your compulsion magic.”
He glances up at her and puts down his book before slowly getting to his feet. “How is this going to work?” he asks. “My compulsion hasn’t ever worked on you before.”
Silver nods a few times and my stomach turns as memories I’ve tried to kill bob up to the surface and threaten to take me under with them. If this fucker thinks he’s gonna come—
“Hanna?” Dante’s voice is low and I can practically hear the power in it. “Stand and walk into the middle of the room.”
... nothing happens. Hanna just looks at him before turning her attention to Silver, who is grinning.
Dante rubs his chest absentmindedly. “Strange. I don’t think he’ll be able to tell that you’re blocking his magic. It felt to me as though it was working, but clearly it did nothing.”
“That’s perfect,” Silver says. “So now we can get to work.”
The ghost network turns out to be surprisingly easy to put together. Silver somehow seems to find ghosts everywhere she goes. Seriously, it’s nuts. There are four she stops to have a chat with before we even get to the damn Archives. I’m not sure ifshe’s got some part of her necromancy unleashed, which was hidden before, but it’s like the ghosts flock to her.
And it turns out she was right about them being bored as hell. Seems they’re more than happy to have something to do with themselves. Or that’s what she says, anyway. Dante and I can't see or hear them, so we stand around with our thumbs up our asses while she chats away to the thin air. Good job, I think the sun shines out of her ass, or I’d be thinking she was crazy right about now.
And then we reach the library and within half an hour I’m up to my eyeballs in vamps.
We’re sequestered away in the Forbidden Archives, where the shelves and shelves of books apparently all relate to the blood-sucking pricks. If that wasn’t enough already, the three of us are crammed together in a corner around the only desk. I’m practically bumping knees with the vamp, and it’s seriously testing my nerves.
After flicking through a bunch of books with debatable covers and a seriously musty smell, Silver pops up to fetch another armful. And I take the opportunity to tell the vamp he’s not needed.
“You can go,” I tell him. “You got us down here, which was handy. But I’ll take it from here.”
