Bloodfire (Blood Destiny 1) - Helen Harper Page 0,34

office door itself was closed, I took an involuntary glance backward to make sure no-one was watching and then stepped inside. I left the door slightly ajar behind me so that I could listen for any signs of the pack or the Brethren returning.

It was neat and tidy, and almost comforting in its familiarity. It was almost as if the essence of him still clung to the air. I didn’t want to sit down in his old cracked red leather chair - that just seemed like too much of an intrusion - so I perched on his desk instead and booted up the computer.

It whirred to life and the screen lightened to the login page. Shit. I had absolutely no idea what John would have used for his password. I thought carefully and then tried typing in his birthday. The error screen popped up almost immediately. Then I tried pack, Cornwall, shapeshifter, even password, but none of them worked. My fingers drummed on the desk impatiently. John wasn’t particularly tech savvy so I doubted he’d have picked something really secure like a string of random letters and numbers. Perhaps he’d left a note of the password lying around his desk. I started to lift up papers but there was nothing that jumped out. Still feeling slightly guilty at nosing around his personal belongings, I began opening up the desk drawers. The top one just contained an array of slightly chewed pens missing their lids, and the odd paperclip, whilst the next one down was filled to the brim with printouts of the pack’s financial statements. The bottom drawer had a slight buzz around it as if it was warded.

I carefully lifted out one of the chewed pens and touched the tip of it to the lock on the bottom drawer. It started to singe slightly and melt. Okay, then, not that drawer just yet then. I looked around the rest of the office for guidance. There were shelves overflowing with every conceivable shifter how-to guide. Paperbacks on different otherworld species, hardbacks on weapons and fighting techniques, even a large edition of Cooking With Aunt May, ‘everyone’s favourite lupine chef’. My side was starting to hurt again and I put my hand out to steady myself on the desk. Instead of the hard wood, however, my hand met with a heavy paperweight. John had always had it, for at least as long as I’d known him.

I picked it up to look at it further. It was made of Caithness glass and contained a pretty pattern inside of purple and red swirls. I was about to place it back down when I realised that the under-side felt oddly rough. Flipping it over, I saw that a small rune had been etched into it somehow. It looked Fae, but whilst I could speak a few basic words and sentences, I definitely didn’t have the skill to decipher the rune itself. Unless…my eyes searched the bookshelf again. There! John had a dusty old Fae- Human dictionary sitting at one end. I pulled it off, struggling with its weight, and opened it. The rune had three markings on the side in the shape of three teardrops so I had a vague idea of which section to look in. Next to the teardrops was what looked like a little stringless harp. That helped. Faerie language was pictorial. Once you had an idea about what the separate pictures were, you could start to find out their meaning. I counted the brush strokes on the right hand side. Five. That meant that in the teardrop section, I had to flip to the five stroked subheading and then find the harp. I was too impatient and I almost tore through the pages to find the right part. I traced my finger down the listed runes before seeing it. Herensuge. Huh. That was Basque for dragon.

I leaned back towards the computer and typed it in. What the hell, it was worth a shot. To my delighted surprise, as soon as I hit return, the monitor chimed in happy agreement. I let out a long breath - I was in.

John’s computer desktop was sparse. There were a few folders displayed so I clicked on one entitled Statistical Sightings, figuring that it might give me an indication about what otherworld creatures had been spotted recently in the area. It opened up to a comprehensive table detailing the activities of various nasties going back to 2006. The figures were fairly even: in 2006