A Spell of Death

CHAPTER FOUR-1

CHAPTER FOUR

MINA STEPPED INTO JACK's room, her booted foot landing softly on the polished concrete floor. She forced herself to let go of the breath she was holding as moths fluttered in her stomach. Glancing at the bed, her cheeks flushed as a memory of Jack's lips whispering across her skin surfaced. Of course, she'd been in the room before, but this time, without Jack, she was an interloper entering a forbidden inner sanctum. What secrets could I find out about Jack, what does he keep bound tight in that sad soul of his, behind his shuttered eyes? She inhaled sharply at the thought. Maybe I don't want to know. I have enough angst of my own.

She took another stuttering step forward, into the grey half-light, then stopped.

"What is it?" Rhys asked.

Looking over her shoulder, she saw he hovered in the doorway. "You could come see."

"Oh, no, I couldn't violate Jack's personal space."

But it's okay for me to do it. Mina's eyebrow lifted, then she returned to the thing that had made her pause. Bending to pick it up, she pressed it to her face as her jaw clenched. Her nose twitched.

"Have you found something?" Rhys asked.

"Hmm." Fabric muffled her voice, and she pulled it away and sniffed back the tears that were making her nose run.

"What? Is it the printout?"

Mina shook her head. "A hoodie." She pressed the garment to her face again, drinking in Jack's smell. Warm and woodsy. She could almost hear his blood song: woodwinds and brass.

"Not what I'm looking for," Rhys said. She turned and made a face, but he ignored her. "Keep searching. We need that piece of paper." With the others dismissing the need to find yet another arcane blade, Rhys had asked her to help him search for a printout Jack had mentioned, purported to show the Blade of the Sun. Perhaps because she was glad of any excuse to put off her next stop — supper with her brother, Dale, and his family — she agreed to scour Jack's room for the slip of paper. Behind her, Rhys coughed, wet and phlegmatic. "I can't find the website it came from anymore. It seems to have disappeared from my history."

Mina sighed and tossed the hoodie on Jack's bed before stepping over to his desk. Usually pristine, it was strewn with a sheaf of papers, as if abandoned in the middle of him working on something. She ran her fingers over them, fanning them out. Notes in his handwriting were interspersed with sketches.

"He's an artist," she whispered, her eyebrows twitching in surprise at the intricate ink drawings. Behind her, she sensed Rhys finally cross the threshold and a few seconds later he came to stand beside her. She didn't know if it was his curiosity or his impatience that had gotten the better of him.

He peered over her shoulder at the drawing she'd picked up. "A kusarigama. Clever boy."

"A what?"

He looked at her, eyes shining with boyish glee. "That's what he got the Smiths to make, something to take down a winged creature...the weapon he decided he needed when I told him the gargoyles would grow wings." The half smile slipped from Rhys' face and the light left his eyes. As his gaze returned to the drawing, his voice became quiet. "And it was almost enough."

Mina's index finger traced the chain that ran between a scythe-like blade and what appeared to be the business end of a mace, then she shifted the paper aside to reveal the ones underneath. Shuffling through, she saw nothing that looked like the printout Rhys was looking for.

"It's not here." Glancing around the spartan room, she didn't see any more loose scraps of paper. Even the rubbish bin was empty.

"Don't be so hasty." Rhys cast his gaze at the notebook exposed by her rifling. He lay his hand on it almost reverently, then opened it.

Mina's stomach fluttered again as she recognized what he had. "That's his journal."

"Don't worry. I'm not going to read it." He peered at her over his glasses. "Unless you want me too?" Mina's mouth opened and shut, but he looked away before she answered, and flipped through the pages. "And this..." He tugged at a small slip of paper Mina had missed.

"This is where he would keep something he didn't want everyone to see," she said as he unfolded the paper, revealing another detailed drawing in delicate lines of black ink. "But why wouldn't he?"

"The Blade of the Sun." Rhys adjusted his glasses, shifting them down his nose.

"I thought we were looking for a printout," Mina said, as he reached over and turned on the lamp, placing the sheet on the desk where she could get a better look at it. It was a hoop, with etchings all along the circumference.

Rhys rotated the paper on the flat surface as he squinted at the image. "It almost looks like...no, not Sanskrit." He stood up and sighed. Mina looked at the scribbles and noticed another set off to the side. Writing, even though they looked like wavy lines to her. But these were familiar wavy lines, though she couldn't place where she'd seen their kin before.

"There's a language Jack knows that you don't?"

Rhys' gaze slid sideways. "There are many things Jack knows that would surprise you." He craned his head as he rotated the page. "It's not the printout, but it is intriguing. This is much more detailed." He tilted his head the other way. "And I doubt it's drawn from imagination." He glanced at her. "So, what did he find out that he didn't share?"

"But it's just a circle. It's not a blade." She tipped her head sideways, trying to dislodge the niggling sense of familiarity looking at the drawing. "Maybe it wasn't important enough to share."

Rhys ran his pinkie finger over the lines of script Mina couldn't decipher. "See this." He pointed to a particular scribble. "I'm pretty sure it means Sun, but the rest of this is like code ciphered in a dead language written in an archaic script."

"I'm glad I'm not the only one who can't read it."

"Oh, I can probably read it given time. The shapes are familiar." Rhys folded the paper and opened the lapel of his jacket.

"That's Jack's." Mina reached out to stop him. "It might be private."

Rhys paused and looked at the paper, raising a bushy eyebrow. "I doubt it's some ode to a long-lost love." He tucked it into his pocket. "It might be the clue we need to find Jack, to find the blade. To survive the coming of Night."

––––––––