Slaying Monsters for the Feeble - Annette Marie Page 0,80

as though he’d never seen me before. Rage twisted his face, lips pulling back from his pointed canines. His hands clenched and glowing veins streaked up his wrists.

“Your promises mean nothing. Your words mean nothing.”

As his furious snarl rumbled through the room, crimson power blazed across him. His body dissolved and the band of light leaped into the infernus on my bedside table. The pendant vibrated, then went still.

I flung myself onto my bed, face buried in my pillow to hide the tears streaking down my face. Zora had helped us, fought beside us, supported me—and he was perfectly fine with killing her. Perfectly willing. Perfectly remorseless.

No matter what he did, what he said … no matter how fiercely he protected me or how carefully he touched me … under the surface, he had no heart. He didn’t care, didn’t feel, didn’t love. He could kill anyone and feel nothing. He could kill me and feel nothing.

Why had I ever thought he might be anything other than a monster?

Chapter Twenty-Three

“Robin,” Amalia hollered, “would you hurry up?”

I hastily pulled the turtleneck sweater over my head, almost dislodging the small ponytail I’d forced my hair into—aided by half a pound of bobby pins. My hair was barely long enough to tie back.

My new black sweater was soft but the fabric didn’t stretch and I had to wiggle my arms into the long sleeves. It fell to the tops of my thighs, the sleeves brushing my knuckles. I did up a row of buttons that ran over the shoulder and up the neck. Buttoned, the fabric hugged my throat.

Dropping the chain of my infernus and new artifact over my head, I hurried out of the room. Amalia stood near the door, her winter coat in one hand and car keys jingling impatiently in the other. She wore a turtleneck identical to mine—black with a dizzying pattern embroidered over every inch in matching thread. The effect was subtle but quite striking.

“Finally,” she exclaimed. “How does it fit?”

I straightened the sweater’s hem in annoyance. Considering how many times I’d waited for her, she could be more patient. “It’s fine.”

She nodded. “I prefer to use a knit fabric or even a cotton poplin stretch for shirts, but those wouldn’t work with the embroidery.”

I ran a fingertip over my sleeve, tracing a familiar shape hidden in the pattern. “A shielding cantrip?”

“Yep.” She slapped her flat stomach. “The hexes cover the entire shirt. I’ve tested them with knives, though I doubt they’d stop a bullet. Still, every little bit helps, right? The effect lasts about half a minute.”

I reexamined our sweaters. She’d finished both last night and insisted we wear them today—more because she was proud of her work than because we needed them. Uncle Jack, assuming we found him, wasn’t likely to stab us.

Still, a shirt that could protect you from piercing attacks for thirty seconds was pretty amazing. The shield cantrip wasn’t one I’d have thought to use. It was mostly useless because you had to draw a ridiculously huge rune to protect anything larger than a post-it note; the smaller the cantrip, the less magic it absorbed and released.

But covering an entire shirt in small cantrips was ingenious; they’d all trigger together with a single incantation. And the craziest part was that a sewn cantrip worked at all. Cantrips were normally drawn by hand because the process of creating them imbued the symbol with power. A regular human could draw runes all day long and not one would contain a smidge of magic. Only Arcana mythics could create them.

Amalia was watching me with a raised eyebrow—waiting for my approval.

“It’s nice,” I reiterated. Hadn’t I already said it was good?

“Uh-huh. Let’s get going, then.”

I grabbed an extra sweater and followed her down to the parking lot where our rental car—which Amalia had picked up this morning—waited. I opened the dull gray door and climbed into the equally dull and gray interior. Amalia dropped into the driver’s seat, started the engine, and we were off.

Time to find my uncle and get the Athanas Grimoire back. It was finally happening.

We made it out of downtown with little trouble and drove through the disreputable Eastside for twenty minutes. Crossing the harbor, we entered the significantly greener and more spacious neighborhoods of North Vancouver.

“So,” Amalia began, “what’s your problem this morning?”

I stared through the windshield at the mountain silhouettes filling the horizon. “No problem.”

“Yeah, sure. How come I haven’t seen your demon pal all morning, even though we should have