“I’m not working today. I wanted to have breakfast together.”
Only then does Antaris eat in earnest.
Breakfast settles into something between normal and strange. When they finish, Antaris pockets the note and takes his plate to the sink. He begins searching for the stool he uses each night to help wash up, but Hiram shakes his head. “I’ll do it later.”
Before Antaris can scoop up the kitten for a goodbye cuddle, Hiram waves him over. Antaris pauses, curiously tilting his head.
“I’m ...” The words die in Hiram’s throat. He tries again, turning in his seat. He hesitates, just once, then asks, “Can I show you a word?”
Slowly, Antaris nods.
Hiram moves his hand to the side of his chin, then brings it forward with his thumb up, signing as he says, “Tomorrow?”
It’s not perfect, but they practice after dinner each night. Letters. Basic signs. Last night, Hiram taught him the signs for each ingredient they used. Emboldened by the progress, Hiram stays up after Antaris goes to bed, poring over the book Veda gave him well into the night. He doesn’t know if this will work until Antaris signs the word for himself. They sign it again, together. Sheer determination has carried Hiram to this point, where he finally asks for something simple yet monumental to him. Inconsequential to anyone else.
“Tomorrow,” Hiram says and signs again. “I’d like to start eating breakfast with you. I think—”
Antaris doesn’t let him finish. He makes a fist and signs one word.Yes.
Then he’s off to play with the kitten.
Hiram’s smile lingers while he makes tea for Antaris. After pulling the thermos from the dishwasher, he nearly jumps out of his skin when he finds his son standing there, holding both the kitten and another thermos. For Veda. That’s right, they’ve been having tea before school.
“What tea do you want to make her?” Hiram asks.
Antaris looks down at the kitten in his arms, thinking.
He chooses mint.
The walls of the downtown library are high, arched into a painted ceiling. A grand staircase leads to the upper level, but the sight of endless floor-to-ceiling bookshelves and tall ladders brings Hiram to a halt. The scent of magic is heavy, comforting. Books float from shelf to shelf until they find their way home.
Hiram is early for an appointment he scheduled reluctantly, but first ...
“Mr. Ellis, the Authorized Book Room is available for the requested hour,” says a meek librarian behind him. “Thank you for your family’s patronage.”
The Ellis family has funded the library’s rare-book acquisition, restoration efforts, and translations for decades. Hiram never has to join the monthslong wait list for access, only walk in, ask for what he needs, and watch them scramble to oblige.
“The talisman will reactivate in an hour,” she adds.
The lights are dim until he enters the Authorized Book Room, and only then do they brighten. It’s spacious, lined with more floor-to-ceiling bookcases centered around a table with four chairs. The booksare old but impeccably cared for. Hiram puts on his reading glasses, hoping to find history.
The book describes how Sanguis consumes from the inside, shows pictures of the ravaged bodies of its victims, and outlines the brief but excruciating agony it causes. There are survivors, and their cases are inconsistent. The clearest note in the entire book is:The longer Sanguis resides in the body, the harder it is to extricate.Hiram removes his glasses and pinches the bridge of his nose. Veda’s life is being held together by sheer cosmic luck and Khadijah’s determination.
There’s a smudge on the bottom of the page that turns into words when Hiram puts his glasses back on.
Death will lead it out.
Hiram frowns. “What kind of direction is that?”
Flipping the page, he finds an entirely different spell.
“Sight Unseen ...” he reads aloud.
The words act as an activation spell, breaking the letters apart and sending them flying around the pages, bouncing off the edges of the paper. Hiram sits back and checks his watch. The timing couldn’t be more perfect. He can ask Clinton to unscramble both hexes, but first, he has questions for the librarian. It may have nothing to do with Sanguis, but this scrambling hex is too specific to be a coincidence. When he calls the librarian back in to notify her about the hex, she’s flustered, terrified of getting into trouble. The book, she tells him, is irreplaceable, the only one of its kind in the country.
“Is there a record of everyone who has been in this room?” Hiram asks.
“There is,” she replies shakily.
