the room was that of the two candles she had lit before beginning her spell.
“Is that it?”
Teresa held the hand-tooled leather journal in both hands, her fingertips stroking the soft, faded material. She took in the carved sun and moon, the interlinking ribbons of power that streamed back and forth between the two. She felt the sense of ownership zinging in her bloodstream. As if her heart recognized the antique book even if her eyes didn’t.
“Yes,” she whispered. “This was Serena’s.”
She untied the rawhide strings that held the journal closed, flipped the book open, and her breath caught in her lungs. The slanted handwriting. The Old English spelling. Even the sight of the faded ink itself. All rose up inside her in a wave of memory so thick, so rich, that her eyes filled with tears that blurred her vision and rained down her cheeks. The woman she had once been called out to her from the heavy vellum pages. Treachery and betrayal flooded her soul along with a nearly tangible sense of hopelessness and regret.
While her heart bled quietly for the doomed woman who had once held this book precious, Teresa could only hope that the answers she needed so desperately would be found in its pages.
Chapter 50
“What’s wrong?” Rune glanced at her from the corner of his eye.
“Nothing,” Teresa said, waving one hand in dismissal of what she was feeling. “It’s just … weird, to be riding in a car with you.”
He smiled briefly, never taking his gaze off the winding stretch of road spilling out ahead of them. The tires hummed on the cracked asphalt and the wind from their passing was a constant whine. “No choice really. You have to read the book and you can’t do that while we’re flashing in and out, traveling by fire.”
“Yeah, I know,” she said, keeping her head down, her gaze fixed on the ink-filled pages in front of her. “It’s just weird. So normal, I guess. Even Chico’s freaked out.”
He scowled as the bird hopped back and forth between Rune’s and Teresa’s seats. The irritating whistle continuously poured from the creature’s throat and Rune gritted his teeth in response. The bird had somehow managed to find them at the motel the night before and Rune’s suspicions burned. What the hell kind of bird was it, anyway?
“Well,” Teresa added, “normal except for you buying a brand-new car with a suitcase full of cash.”
Rune didn’t even comment on that. For him, as for every other Eternal, money was no problem. Getting hold of the money hadn’t been an issue, either, since Eternals had access to incredible stores of assets through any number of banks. Buying a car from a dealer outside the city had been the only logical choice. Paying cash meant he had avoided certain paperwork and he preferred to leave no paper trail to mark their passing. It hadn’t been difficult to get the owner of the dealership to forgo a few legalities in exchange for hard currency.
“Have you found anything yet?”
“I’m not sure,” she muttered in disgust. “It’s so hard to read her-my-our writing.” Shaking her head, she flicked him a quick look. “Just the spelling is enough to give you a headache and she-I wrote so damn small….”
“Paper was expensive back in the day,” Rune mused. “No one wasted space.”
“Great. Just great. So all I have to do is thumb through about a million spells and some petty gossip about Serena’s neighbors. No problem.” She turned another page gently, as the paper was old and brittle. “This could take forever.”
“No, it won’t,” he said. “You’ll find what we need, Teresa.”
“You sound confident.”
“I am,” he said, giving her another quick look.
The road ahead was empty. They drove along a twolane highway stretching out to the horizon like a dusty gray ribbon tossed down and forgotten. The sky was heavy with clouds, but patches of blue dotted the expanse. The Chiapas landscape spread out on either side of them—lush meadows and green valleys soothed the eye, and in the distance, mountains high enough to be snowcapped jutted skyward.
“Hey,” she said a few minutes later, “I think I might have found something.” A smile colored her words, and when he looked at her, she was grinning at him. “You were right. I did find it. At least, I’m pretty sure I did. It says …”
She broke off suddenly and pointed. “Wait. Turn off here. That dirt road on the right. It leads to my grandmother’s village.”
He made the turn and