Nineteen
GRIM
“It’s just a boring old dagger,” Remi muttered as the group stared down at the weapon we’d recovered. We were all gathered in the same space as our last meeting. Clearly no one had left since we’d gone on our quest to retrieve the bone.
“We’ve been over this,” Lucifer said. “It only gains its power when we’ve attuned it. Why does no one listen when I speak?”
“They were taught to ignore the devil on their shoulder,” Kai said with a wry grin.
Lucifer huffed in annoyance, which was my cue to step in. “What we need now is to figure out how to attune it.”
“Blood seems the most obvious to me,” Gavin offered.
“Is that a vampire thing?” Asher asked.
Gavin cocked one brow. “A magic thing. Blood is the most powerful conduit.”
“He’s right. Blood would be my guess too,” Moira interjected.
“But whose blood?” Merri asked with a frown. “And if it’s supposed to be a person who’s already dead, doesn’t that make blood pretty hard to obtain?”
“I can think of one person, maybe two, who fit the bill,” Lilith said, her eyes locking on me.
Without another word, I rolled up my shirt sleeves and picked up the blade, dragging it across my forearm to make a blood offering.
“He’s such a badass,” Kingston whispered.
No one acknowledged him. Instead, all eyes were on the weapon as I laid it back on the table and we waited for something, anything, to happen.
“Did it work?” Caspian asked, pushing his way to the front.
“I think it was a dud,” Tor replied, voice pitched low.
“Maybe blood wasn’t the answer?” Merri offered.
“Or we need some kind of witchy code word to go with it,” Kingston said, turning to Moira.
“No. There’s nothing here,” she said, hand hovering over the blade. “Not even a blip.” She turned her gaze to me. “Nice try, silver fox, but I don’t think you’re the one for this job.”
“Who is? How do we find out?” Frustration burned through me. We didn’t have time to play a guessing game. Every day, hell, every hour that passed was another moment closer to us losing.
“Perhaps Cain?” Caleb suggested. “The dagger is made of his brother’s bone, so maybe it needs to be imbued with his murderer’s blood?”
“That seems super hard to track down,” Merri said with a frown.
“He’s bound to have ancestors running around,” Asher said.
“And how the hell are we supposed to find them?” Remi asked. “Go door-to-door with a questionnaire? Excuse me, do you think you could be related to the original serial killer? Mind proving it with a pint or two of your blood?”
“He only k-killed one p-person,” Ben said with a sigh.
“That we know of.”
“Jesus Christ,” Malice grumbled beside me.
“Hang on just a minute,” Hades said. “He could be on to something.”
Remi beamed. “Seeeee?”
