I glared again, wavering between awe and annoyance at the condescending delivery. What he said made sense. I’d have to experiment more.
“And what did you do downstairs to Mrs. Finnegan?”
“Do?” Ranth and Ori said together.
I crossed my arms. “You shook hands with her, and there were golden sparkles.”
“Oh, a simple distraction charm.” Ranth’s smug look rankled me. He’d be showing me how to do that too, later.
“My turn to tell you two stuff?” Ori asked, not missing my annoyance.
Ranth turned his attention to Ori, seemingly unaware he’d ticked me off.
“Sure, what’d you find?” I tamped down my frustration and unsnapped a pouch. I handed out squares of chocolate while we focused on Ori.
Ranth settled on the bed next to Ori and Ant, and Ant didn’t even blink.
I stroked her. “Wait, why isn’t Ant freaked out now?”
Ranth glanced at Ant, locking on to my strokes. “Perhaps she’s gotten used to my scent?”
“Or maybe it’s because she’s seeing you differently,” I replied, nodding at the tattoo on his arm.
Ranth traced the tattoo with his fingers. “It is possible. Bastet’s creatures are complicated.”
“Bastet, the Egyptian cat goddess? The one who protects the home?” Ori asked.
“Yes, the lioness,” Ranth replied.
“Well Egypt is on the menu,” Ori flipped her screen around to show us a map of Egypt. “There isn’t much information on the Ahknim, but this order existed in the place he said it did. Thebais. I emailed you the research paper on esoteric orders I dug up, but I have it downloaded. There isn’t much, just an aside reference that the order took in young children who proved worthy of potential and raised them without the interference of their parents. When they came of age, they would ascend to the inner circle and would choose to be advisors to rulers or stay in the village and continue the training, then pass on knowledge tothe next generations. I looked up the reference, but it’s the same information taken from a period text. It might be a dead-end.”
Ranth crouched down to peer at the map. “We were always learning and always searching for the next level of knowledge.”
“There’s a bit more on the Serpent of that period. It was sort of an angel, but some considered it a demon.”
“Demon?” I asked, my throat going dry. Ranth had said Harold had a pact with a demon. Had Ranth done that too?
“That’s what the text said. It’s been translated though, so I expect it’s more of a standard Christian mythos of fallen angel demon rather than the aether creatures you can see.”
Ranth stood up and crossed his arms. “I don’t know what you are referring to, but the Serpent is neither good nor evil. It is not fallen, nor raised above others. It is outside human judgment. It has nothing to do with Essifers, or Derellers, or any of the Shayian.”
“Shayian? Can you spell that?” Ori asked. Ranth spelled it out for her as she typed. “Nothing in my downloaded references. Where does the term come from?” She chewed on a tip of fingernail painted with a soot sprite.
“I don’t know. It’s what we call the other-planar interlopers, the ones who prey on souls with smoke and fire.”
“Without Wi-Fi, I’m without books, which doesn’t make for a happy girl,” Ori replied with a grimace. “Moving on. Those photos you sent were really cool. Did you get to see more of that grimoire?”
“There were only twenty-seven, and it’s not a grimoire. At least, I don’t think it is. The text was poetry, not incantations, and they don’t make any sense. Yet, Harold used it to cast a complex spell. Any idea how he did that?”
Ranth shook his head.
I played with my moon pendant, revisiting the memory of the room. “Then all we know is the spell that Harold cast fromthe book was strong enough to split the curse on the bracelet. It has to be a spell that a powerful wizard could use creatively.” I left off the last part because I hadn’t decided what to think about Harold. A week ago, I would have said that Harold was impossible, but now I’d met Ranth. Harold could be more powerful—or more skilled—than Ranth or I.
“Right, you two are the experts, so that will have to wait for later too,” Ori replied with a puff of frustration. She closed her laptop.
I turned to Ranth. “Now that the curse is split, you can return to your place in the Garden, right?”
“It will not be a simple task, but it must be done and soon. If the Serpent is released, life as you know it would end.”
