I shrug, “Honestly, I have no idea, but there wasn’t an obvious food source, so either it doesn’t eat, or House was feeding him, and ifHouse was feeding him, then I’m reasonably certain that he’s going to continue to do so.”
Chapter Seven
Neith
“Good point,” Raiden agrees.
From his expression though, I would be willing to bet that as soon as he goes upstairs, he’s going to be looking through the hundreds of shelves in his room to see if he can find anything about the little bitey book.
“Since the book,” Van starts, and I clear my throat, he smirks and corrects himself, “since, Bitey seems to be quite happy to sleep in Baz’s arms, maybe we should talk about everything that we discovered while we were on the moors?”
“I am certainly intrigued,” Baz grins, as he continues to stroke Bitey’s cover.
River starts bouncing, “Oh, did you show them the rock?”
I shake my head, “No, I didn’t.” I fish around in my pocket, and then remember that I left it upstairs. “Oh, it’s upstairs. It’s a hagstone, and there was this giant flash of lightning, and then it just droppedinto my hand. I’m one hundred percent sure that it is what Winston wanted us to find.”
“Which means we don’t have to go back tomorrow and search the place again,” River adds with relief.
I can’t say I blame him, the forecast for the next few days is bleak.
And yes, I have reached the age where I check the weather.
“I’ll go and grab it,” I say as I start to stand up.
“Do you want me to go?” Doc offers.
“Oh, the lazy option, yes please,” I grin. “It’s on top of my dresser.”
Doc smiles and disappears. Within a minute, he’s back and holding the stone. He explains to the guys, “It doesn’t really look like much.”
“No, I don’t get any magical reading off it either, except when I first touched it, but it faded pretty quickly, so it could just have been the residue from however it appeared in my hand,” I reply.
The stone makes its way around the table as I explain the human lore behind hagstones, just like I did for River.
“That is partially true, like most things, the humans got it sort of right,” Baz explains. “Hagstones can be used to see Fae or the creatures from the realm, but that description is too limiting and doesn’t adequately describe what they’re capable of. They can actually be used to see anything hidden, but what in particular depends on the stone. So, for example, one could be calibrated to see the creatures from Fae, another could show you demons, one could even help you search for precious metals, or even hidden feelings.”
My eyebrows rise as I turn the little stone around in my fingers again, “That’s really interesting, I never knew about that.”
“I didn’t even know the human history behind hagstones,” River admits.
“Is there any way of knowing what a stone is for?” Raiden asks.
Baz shakes his head, “Unless you’ve bought one for a specific reason, then no, at least not that I’m aware of. I would assume that there must be a way that you could find out, but I’m unsure what it would be.”
“Since Winston sent us to find it hopefully, he knows what it’s supposed to find,” Raiden replies. “What about the vision?”
I nod, “Yeah, hopefully. So the vision was weird. Obviously, it was, but I mean, it was weirder than normal.”
I explain the vision in as much detail as I can, although I obviously can’t describe anything other than the voices to them since I was just floating in the dark.
“A whole species just wiped out?” Raiden asks, sounding as horrified as I feel.
I nod, “Yeah. The history and memories have been changed as well, so we don’t even know that they ever existed.”
It makes my heart pang with sadness.
“There were no hints of what the supernatural was?” Baz asks, looking disturbed.
