sure he comes.”
Zay nodded. “I’ll get him there.”
She brushed her hair back again. “Now, what I most needed to talk to you about, Allie, is the well. I want you to look at it. To tell me what you see in the magic there.”
“You want me to Hound the well? Really? For illegal magic use? You people don’t even recognize the law on magic use, so I’m sure you’re not using it illegally.”
She gave me a steely gaze and I wiped the innocent look off my face.
Note to self. Do not be a wiseass when your Blood magic teacher is stressed-out.
“Right. I can Hound the well,” I said. “Not a problem.”
“Zayvion, I’d like you to be there too, please,” she said.
He rubbed his palms across his jeans and stood.
I finished off my coffee and left the empty cup on the table.
Maeve led us down a long hallway to a set of stairs that jagged down and down.
I’d been in the lower level of the inn just once before. When I’d had to stand in front of members of the Authority and fight for my life. I hadn’t expected to get out of it with my memories or magic intact.
I wanted to take Zay’s hand and hold on like a little girl as we descended the stairs, but I refused to. There was nothing down here I couldn’t handle on my own. I’d already proved that.
The last flight of stairs spilled out into a room that looked like it should be the receiving room of a castle, a ballroom, a grand theater for a grand ceremony, instead of the basement of a railroad boardinghouse.
The floor was tiled with marble that washed from the purest white through grays, then sank into the deepest black. The ceiling rose up two stories, huge pillars spreading out at the ceiling into wings that arched up to meet in the center. Glyphs shaped and carved the pillars, the arch of wings, the ceiling, and the walls. Magic drawn in lead, glass, iron—a powerful network of holding spells, warding spells, most I still didn’t know—surrounded the room and the well that pulsed like the earth’s heart beneath the marble floor, deep underground.
There was one thing out of place since I’d last been here. A cage stood in one corner of the room. Built of steel, four-sided, it looked mobile and was placed over the purest white marble tiles.
In that cage was a beast of a man, a nightmare creature caught between life and death. Greyson.
Chills rolled up my spine and I could not take my eyes off the cage, nor the man who was still too much beast within it. Covered by a blanket, he hunched in the corner of the cage, his too-long arms crossed over bent knees, his mouth resting against his forearms so that only his eyes, animal yellow, glowed from within the shadow of the blanket.
I smelled his magic, twisted, dark, burnt-blackberry stench, mixed with the old wax and polish perfume of wood that had been cleaned for centuries. And I smelled blood.
Greyson had a good nose too. He turned his head, just enough to show a flash of fang digging into his arm and leaving a trickle of blood behind.
Something in my head flickered, rattled, and scratched behind my eyes.
I knew the feel of that. Even though I hadn’t felt it for two months. It was my dad. Then my father’s voice, clear as if he were standing next to Greyson’s cage instead of in my head, whispered, Come to me.
Chapter Three
A hand landed on my left shoulder. I yelled, pivoted, and swung.
“Holy shit!” a voice said.
My fist whiffed through empty air. That was because Shamus Flynn was fast. He ducked and skidded down two steps, neatly avoiding a broken nose.
He laughed. “You have got to lay off the coffee, Beckstrom. You’re all twitchy and whatnot.”
“I thought . . .” I was breathing hard. Felt a little sick too. Didn’t know if it was from the overwhelming smells, the half-beast killer guy staring at me, my dad’s voice seeming to come from the half-beast killer guy, or the feeling of my dead dad scraping at the backs of my eyes again.
Why choose? It was all of the above.
Greyson, back when he was just a man, had been one of my father’s murderers. I’d seen that memory from sharing my head with my dad. And since Greyson had one of dad’s experimental disks stuck in his throat, it was a pretty easy leap