The Summer King Bundle 3 Stories - Jennifer L. Armentrout Page 0,57

my hair, I changed into a pair of black leggings and a lightweight black tunic-style sweater and decided to find out.

After making a pit stop in the kitchen to grab a cup of coffee, I went back upstairs to the office. The air was stale in the room and particles of dust floated in the beams of sunlight streaming in through the windows, so I flipped on the ceiling fan.

Ignoring the clutter on the desk, I walked to the bookshelves that lined the wall as I sipped my coffee.

There were a lot of books and journals, along with personal diaries. Hundreds of them. And I’d almost finished my drink before I found what I was looking for, a worn, forest green leather bound journal marked Roman St. Pierre.

Taking the journal to the chair that sat near the window, I placed my mug on the old chest and tucked my legs under me. I knew who Roman was. He used to be one of the doctors within the Order and I was pretty sure he’d passed away well over a decade ago. Thumbing past accounts of patrols and random passages about research, I found the section I was looking for.

Dated June 1983 was an entry about a fae who’d been cornered outside an establishment on Decater oddly named… Vanilla. My brows rose at that, but I kept reading and found what I was looking for.

Two male fae were viewed leaving Vanilla and captured a block west. Both appeared to be Changed.

Changed? What the…? I reread that line to make sure I’d read that correctly, and I had.

Their eyes were pitch black, opaque in nature, like the fae that had wounded Torres, confirming Torres’ account of the previous attack. Once held in captivity, they experienced rapid degeneration, the likes of which we have not witnessed. Within four hours, there was nothing left of them but dust. Harris believes it was due to their inability to feed, however our previous research suggests that fae can continue living without feeding…

Harris was one of the docs who worked for the Order. Unfortunately he’d died since, so I couldn’t call him and ask why in the world a fae would die in that short of a timespan. Or a better question would be what did they mean by infected? I kept reading, turning pages until I reached another entry dated a month later regarding the ‘Changed fae’.

“Oh my God,” I whispered, nearly dropping the book when I saw her name.

Based on the samples Merle brought back to headquarters, our suspicions concerning the Changed fae were correct. The drink the fae favored had been altered. Trace amounts of an unknown powdery substance similar to Devil’s Breath was found in the nightshade. We believe that this substance, which has originated from the Otherworld, is responsible for the Changed fae’s increased violent aggression and rapid degeneration. The effects of this substance may be similar to that of Devil’s Breath.

Seeing my mom’s name caused my chest to compress. It took several moments before I could continue, but when I did I discovered something quite disturbing.

Several pages had been torn out of the journal in many different places, and there was no other mention of Changed fae or Devil’s Breath.

Closing the book, I sat there for a moment. Was that place still there? Vanilla? I didn’t think so since I’d never heard of it. Rising from the chair, I hurried over to where the desktop computer sat. It took a Godawful amount of time for me to get to Google since there were about a million update alerts. After an eternity of false leads, I found the location of where I thought Vanilla used to be. Near the Candymaker store, there was now a bar called Thieves. I hadn’t heard of the place, but that didn’t mean much, because there were a metric crap ton of bars and clubs in and around the Quarter.

Pushing back from the desk, I went to the coffee table, where the stack of maps Mom had of all the secret fae hidey holes were. I spread the maps out, dragging my finger along the old parchment until I found where I was pretty confident Decatur was….

And yep, there was a mark above the location where Thieves was.

“Hell.” I straightened, popping my hands on my hips. I probably would’ve eventually checked out the place, but I hadn’t made it that far on Mom’s maps.

Wondering what the hell Devil’s Breath was, I went back to the computer and