with one of the elements.”
I reach out and turn the page. Despite the controlled air temperature, the paper feels warm under my fingertips. The drawings turn more menacing. A sea of people spewing blood. A pile of corpses covered with boils and black spots. I drag my finger under some of the French words: Peste. Le mal.
Pestilence. Evil.
“So, it wasn’t all rainbows and unicorns?” I end up saying, but it comes out like a question.
“Modern researchers talk about the Plague being caused by fleas and rats. But according to Brumian legend, it was dark magic that created the very first wave of Black Death.”
“Must’ve been one twisted wizard to do that.”
“Warlock. Wizards deal in good magic.” She shrugs. “If you believe in that, of course.”
“Do you?”
A tiny groove appears between her eyebrows. “I’m not sure. Yes and no.” She tips her head from side to side. “Part of me wants to believe it’s real, but the logical and disillusioned part of me has trouble accepting it’s true.”
I frown. Disillusioned? She doesn’t strike me as a disillusioned person—a little uptight, sure, but not cynical.
Whatever’s on her mind blots out the light in her eyes, dimming their blueness. Yet somehow, perhaps because she doesn’t seem quite as naïve and coddled as I expected, it heightens her attractiveness.
“The Black Death killed 60% of the population in Europe.” Then she spews out more facts that glance off my skull. I’m too busy absorbing the sweet scent of her hair and the red tint of her lips that’s so deep I wonder if she’s wearing lipstick. They don’t look glossed-up.
A renewed light enters her eyes as she continues schooling me in history. I really should be paying attention but physically can’t because most of the blood in my body has gone south.
“Slate?” She turns those Mediterranean-at-midday eyes of hers on me.
“Yeah?”
“Are you listening?”
I shouldn’t smile, but I do. Not because of all the sad, dead medieval saps, but because history turns her on. Then I stop smiling, remembering the way she was looking at that dickhead professor earlier, like he was a god.
I snap my gaze down to the illustration she’s pointing to in the giant book—two women and two men in wizard robes holding a gold thing in the shape of a quatrefoil. They’re standing on a circle that reminds me a little of the clock upstairs, the colors under their feet gradually deepening from white into a midnight blue. One woman points to the center of the golden shape, her finger resting on the bright-red dot at the heart of the clover the same way Cadence’s finger rests on the page.
“The magical committee,” she says. “Or Quatrefoil Council. In 1350, when Brume was literally dying, they appointed the most powerful families of Brume to be diwallers, or guardians of the Quatrefoil. The Council was furious with how people used magic to cause destruction rather than growth, so they removed it from the world by fracturing its source.”
“They broke the giant shamrock . . .”
“Quatrefoil.” She turns the page.
The next drawing shows the thing in pieces, the red dot snapped off the rounded wings.
My heart rate kicks up. Holy hell. Could that be the red stone I’m sporting on my sprained finger?
She turns the page again. An illustration of those same four men and women covers most of the paper, but this time they each hold a leaf of the Quatrefoil in front of them, engulfed in an element. Cadence doesn’t seem to notice that my breathing has quickened. She continues to explain, half-reading the text on the page, half-recounting it like it’s a love poem she’s memorized.
“The diwallers’ intent was to hide the leaves until they felt humanity was once again worthy of magic, so they each took ownership of an element, then cast spells to protect their piece and keep it in Brume.”
Spells to keep the pieces in Brume . . . I feel the swell of the stone on my finger. Did the ring erect the invisible wall on the train platform?
Cadence’s breath flutters the wafer-thin pages. “Legend has it, the diwallers’ descendants could bring magic back.”
“That’s some crazy-ass history.” I attempt to keep my voice smooth, but dread ices my vocal cords, making my speech sound choppy. “What’s the red thing?”
“Oh. Right. That’s the Bloodstone. It holds the blood of each family of diwallers and the power of all the elements. The Bloodstone is the most important piece of all. Without it, the leaves can’t bind together.” She lifts her