Page 80 of Veil of Night & Flames

“You did that yesterday, sweetie,” Riley says, putting the now-open pastry box in the middle of the table and passing out plates before calmly taking her seat. “But don’t let that stop you.”

I share a grin with Riley as Tia scowls, pretending to be offended, but clearly fighting a laugh.

For a few minutes, there’s only the sound of pastries and coffee and Tia turning pages, surveying more than reading as she gets a sense of what’s in the book.

Finally, she stops flipping, frowns at a page, turns to the next, frowns harder, and goes back two pages.

“Okay,” she says, but she’s not really talking to anyone but herself. “Okay. There it is.”

“What?” I ask.

“The private language. He’s using it starting from the fifth page.”

“So what’s it say?” I ask.

She looks up at me. “Haven’t got a clue. We need the gloss.”

I glance at Riley, who’s serenely munching a donut, then to Chase, who thankfully looks as confused as I feel.

“Okaaay,” I say, drawing out the word. “What’s a gloss? And please tell me I don’t have to go back to the Nightmare Realm.” Seeing Adric would be lovely, but seeing Finn just makes me sad. And I’ve had enough Kali for the day.

“A gloss is like a key,” Chase says from where he’s still leaning against the counter.

Tia nods. “Exactly. You need it to translate. And we found a vague reference to it in a journal. Apparently, some seventeenth-century monk in the same order wrote a gloss decades after the main text was finished. Threshold means this. Veil means this. House means this. Get it?”

I nod. “I think so. You need the gloss to translate the book.”

“Pretty much.”

“Well, that sucks,” I say. “Couldn’t a computer figure it out?”

“There’s nothing to feed a program. Even AI needs a pile of existing translations to learn from. And there are no translations. If there were, we wouldn’t need the gloss.”

“So we’re stuck?”

She winces a little. “Pretty much. From what Riley and I can tell, nobody has the thing, but it must have existed because it’s referenced in dissertations as a known lost item.”

“So we’re out of luck?”

“Maybe,” Riley says. “I ran across a paper with a theory that it’s in a private collection.”

“Can we contact them?”

Riley and Tia share one of those this is the bad thing looks.

“What?” I ask, though my sudden queasiness suggests my gut already knows the answer. “The Oneiroi?”

Tia nods. “Which means the only person within shouting distance who might be willing to let us see that gloss is Sebastian Vance. And what do you bet he’ll put a price on it?”

“Yeah,” I say. “And the price will be me.”

Chase, who’d been about to pour a fresh cup of coffee, sets his mug down and looks straight at me.

“I know,” I say.

“You don’t want to be beholden to the Oneiroi,” he says. Or to Sebastian Vance.”

“I know,” I repeat. “But we need that gloss.”