“Okay.” She steps away from me, her smile falling, the glitter in her eyes dimming. As she climbs the stairs, she tugs the elastic out of her hair, finger-combs it, then reties it. Is it me or are her hands shaking?
I don’t think I imagined her edginess, and it chills my pounding blood. When I start picturing her piece showing up and me not being there, I climb the stairs two at a time. I find her sitting at a big square table with Adrien, head bent over a copy of theKelouenn, pencil already poised and scratching at her paper. I watch them discuss possible meanings of a Breton word.
I try not to feel jealous that they share something. Remind myself of all we shared downstairs. I square my shoulders and head over.
I can be useful.
I’ll find a way to be useful.
* * *
I endup being useful by getting food and making photocopies. Cadence and Adrien squint at the damn scroll all day, and even when Alma and Bastian join them, things don’t speed up. We hit the sheets late and are back at the library again in the morning. Early afternoon, I grab the food Adrien ordered at the tavern and bring it back to the squad. Bastian and Alma sit with Adrien and Cadence, trying to consolidate their notes from the history book with the words from the translated scroll.
“In the book downstairs, it says thedihunerhad a heart of blood.” Alma bites the tip of her pencil. “Does the scroll mention it?”
“I didn’t see anything about that in the text, but there’s still pieces Cadence and I haven’t been able to translate.”
“I mean, there’s the Bloodstone.” Cadence gestures to my hand, which is presently pulling the lids off containers of charcuterie and cheese. “Could the stone have been on the clock?”
Adrien joggles his head.
I filch two cubes of Emmental cheese. “Have you figured out how the creepy-ass drawings factor into the text?”
“They correlate to the text outside the quatrefoil shape,” Adrien says.
Apparently, they made progress while I was being a good delivery boy.
“They’re examples of curses,” he says, as I examine an unannotated copy.
Between the ink smudges and words that look scrawled by an epileptic in the middle of a seizure, I’m surprised they managed to decipher a thing.
Alma flips over the drawing of a splayed corpse. “Can’t eat with that in my face.”
Bastian studies a fanged insect, or is it a body part? I’ve taken part in some twisted treasure hunts, but this one takes the cake for most insanity-inducing.
He leans over and grabs one of Cadence’s papers, and then they’re exchanging notes. She claps excitedly, which makes Bastian grin and jot something down. Apparently, some people are enjoying the task.
Freaks.
Myfreaks.
When I hear Adrien mumbling to himself, I glance his way.
I’m glad to see him reading over his notes, because I was momentarily worried he’d lost his mind, and since he’s already lost all of his hair . . .
“Anything, Prof?” I roll my neck from side to side.
“I think I got something. I’m not sure exactly what it means, but—”
“Lay it on us.”
“Like I said, the passage outside the quatrefoil is a list of plagues and curses. Insects, the undead, something about stone and dust. I’m guessing it’s an explanation of the dark magic that went on before the Quatrefoil was broken apart. I’d need more time to figure it out.”
“And the passage inside?” Cadence coils her ponytail into some sort of knot at the nape of her neck.
Adrien sighs. “Well, there’s this big ink spot that covers part of the text.”
“I noticed that earlier.” Cadence frowns. “It’s odd. I would swear it wasn’t always there.”
