Blade Bound

“Moving up to the second floor,” said an unfamiliar voice from the long gallery that led to the main staircase, flashlight beam bobbing as he climbed toward us.

A guard, probably, doing a sweep of the premises.

Here, Ethan said, and pulled me into a rounded alcove, our backs pressed against cold stone as the flashlight swept across the hall in front of us.

The footsteps drew closer until a man in a dark suit with plenty of muscle beneath walked past, flashlight in one hand, comm unit in the other. He paused in front of the alcove, and we held our breath.

“Nothing in zone four,” he said, lifting the comm to his mouth. “If she’s here, I don’t see her.”

“Roger that,” said the digital voice on the other end of the line. “Proceed to zone five, check in again.”

“Roger that,” the man said, and kept walking down the hallway. We peeked out as he turned the corner into the other wing of the house.

Let’s go, Ethan said, and we crept down the hall in the opposite direction. We found two more bedrooms, three more bathrooms, a sitting room, a game room, and what looked like servants’ quarters.

And then, at the end of the wing, we opened the final door, and walked into madness.

“Whoa,” I quietly said.

The alchemical symbols Sorcha had drawn across the city had been crazily written, in one case covering walls, floor, and ceiling of a toolshed in a cemetery. I’d assumed there’d been so many—and that they’d been drawn in such a bizarre way—because it had been necessary for the magic. Now I wondered if it wasn’t just a symptom of her underlying insanity.

The room was large, at least as big as the other bedrooms we’d seen. Pale walls, wooden floors, no furniture but a wooden table and chair in the middle of the room.

But the walls were almost entirely covered in pieces of paper. There were small handwritten notes, pages with pictures and blocks of text, and long scrolls of alchemical symbols like the ones Sorcha had drawn across Chicago tacked across the room. Origami shapes in white paper hung from the ceiling, and shreds of paper were scattered across the floor.

Ethan walked closer to the wall, brow furrowed as he looked it over.

I walked to the table, looked at the simple stone bowl that sat there. There was a box of matches beside it, and a drying twig.

I lifted it, sniffed. Rosemary, and with the matches and crucible, probably a spot where Sorcha had performed alchemical magic. I looked up. The middle of the ceiling was marked by a large round medallion, its floral shapes covered in soot.

I put the rosemary down, walked back to Ethan. Alchemy, I said. This is her workroom.

He nodded, gaze tracking the writings and images.

There seemed to be a focus area centered on the wall across from the crucible. Green twine linked pages in other parts of the room back to the sheets here. But if there was a narrative here, or any kind of linear logic, I couldn’t see it.

Does this mean anything to you? he asked.

Not even a little. I’m guessing she’s working out magic, trying to figure out how to make connections between symbols or spells? But that’s my best guess.

Ethan nodded.

Maybe it will make more sense to Mallory, I said, and pulled out my phone, managed to snap one photograph when the alarm split the air, as sharp as a knife.

“Attention,” said the voice that rang through the house’s apparent intercom system. “Your illegal entry has been detected, and the authorities have been notified. Attention,” it said again, then repeated the message.

I guess they found the window, Ethan said.

Or saw our tracks in the snow.

Either way, he said with a wink, let’s make a graceful exit.

I nodded. I’m right behind you, I assured him. I darted to the center of the chaos, began ripping papers from the wall, shoving them into my open backpack. I wasn’t leaving empty-handed.

Then we moved into the hallway, clung to the shadows, and made our way out again.

• • •

Mallory was situated at the conference table in Ethan’s office when we returned, books, notebooks, soda cans, paper, and pens spread across the table. It wasn’t unlike the mess in Sorcha’s office, although it didn’t look quite as insane. And I didn’t have a single doubt about Mallory’s motives.

“We weren’t even gone for two hours,” Ethan said, gaze wide as he took in the chaos of his usually ordered office.

“Good witches work fast.” She looked up at me, gestured to the backpack. “What did you find?”

“Insanity,” Ethan said.

“Seriously,” I said, putting my backpack on the table. “It was A Beautiful Mind in there.” I gave her the details. “We didn’t find any computers, notebooks, whiteboards. No secret plans just lying around.” I unzipped the backpack, pulled out the papers I’d snatched from Sorcha’s office. “But I did grab these.”

“And they are . . . ?” Mallory asked, eyeing them suspiciously.

“A very small percentage of her notes,” Ethan said.

I nodded. “They were all over the room, so I grabbed a couple of square feet before we had to make a run for it.”

“They saw you?” Catcher asked.

“No,” Ethan said with a smile for me. “They found evidence of our entry. I’m afraid we may have broken a window.”

“Should have broken more than that,” Catcher muttered. “The assholes.”

Mallory pulled off the top sticky note, which read “glizzard,” eyed it suspiciously before setting it aside again. “We’ll look through them when we get back.”

“I take it you’re ready?” Ethan asked.

“Ready to listen, and ready to go.”

He arched an eyebrow. “And where will we be going?”

“Downtown, relatively near Towerline. It needs to be within the former alchemical web, and preferably quiet.” She winced. “And maybe not right next to a residential building. Just in case.”

In case things went sideways. Because there was always a chance of it.

“To confirm,” Ethan said, “you want to be near Towerline—in downtown Chicago—but not too close to the other million people who live there.”

“Exactly,” she said brightly.

“Millennium Park,” Catcher said. “There won’t be anyone at the pavilion tonight. The lawn will give us space. It’s not exactly close to Towerline, but it’s as close as we can get with that kind of space and privacy.”

Mallory pursed her lips. “Interesting idea,” she said. “Maybe I can use the trellis as some kind of antenna.”

“Let’s just take this one step at a time,” Catcher said.

• • •

Since we’d all be heading back to Cadogan House after our trip downtown, Catcher drove the SUV. He and Ethan landed in the front seat, which gave Mallory and me a chance to talk. Doubly good, because I wanted to keep pushing aside my rising emotions.

“And how are you finding married life?” Mallory asked from her spot beside me on the second-row bench.

“At the moment?” I considered the question. “Treacherous.”

Mallory snorted. “Yeah, but in fairness, your dating life was pretty treacherous, too. That’s what you get for nabbing a Darth Sullivan.”

I glanced at her. “Has he told you his nickname for me?”

“Of course he has.”

I lifted my brows. “What do you mean ‘of course he has’? Fess up!”

“Oh no,” she said, picking a remaining bit of chipped polish off her nail. “I want no part of that. You’ll weasel it out of him eventually.”

I narrowed my gaze at her. “I could weasel it out of you.”

She grinned. “I seriously doubt it, vamp.”

“Spoilsport.”

“Probably about many things, yes.”

The view turned to darkness as we reached Lake Shore Drive, which would take us into downtown.

“And how are you?” I asked.

She frowned. “What do you mean?”

I kept my voice low. “You looked, I guess, kind of lustful about Claudia’s magic.”