by Tamar Sloan
Inside, Arielle flicks the switch and the attic fills with pale light. She’s instantly assaulted by second thoughts. The air is musty and stale, and everything is covered in an aged layer of dead dirt. Boxes are stacked haphazardly in wonky rows, while sheets have been thrown over who-knows-what, creating strange, ghostly shapes.
Yes.
Arielle stills, but then rolls her eyes. “Glad you approve, Trinity.”
Taking a step into the mote-riddled attic, she realizes why her childhood friend is back. Trinity returned because her mother’s gone. And to be honest, Arielle’s glad. Trinity is a comfort of sorts as her world falls apart. Just like the attic.
The cloths Aunt Shell gave her aren’t going to cut it—Arielle needs a bulldozer for the amount of dust in here. But it doesn’t matter. Arielle doesn’t plan on cleaning. It’s obvious no one has been up here for a very long time.
Arielle slips through the disorderly piles of boxes. Each one is carefully labeled—Nichomancus.
“The father of mathematics,” Arielle murmurs.
Apostolic age.
“The onset of Christianity.”
The Library of Alexandria.
“Destroyed 642 AD.” Arielle brushes a finger over the label. “Mom never stopped mourning the loss of so much knowledge.”
Tears prick along her eyelids. Each label ignites a memory of her mother talking too fast and scribbling even faster, Arielle listening in wonder as she tried to absorb it all. This attic is like her mother’s mind—full of history, the reams of information carefully collated, yet stored with chaotic abandon. It’s probably why Arielle feels closer to her here.
She ventures further in, tracing labels and peeking under sheets. She finds a cane bassinet, a metal trike, and a stack of board games. Her eyes light up as she recognizes a familiar timber square-shaped box.
Carefully, she slides it out from underneath Monopoly and Mousetrap. The game pieces rattle inside the drawer built into the base. Arielle’s legs crumple and she plops cross legged onto the dusty floor, a bittersweet memory assailing her.
Her mother’s face had been so animated when the parcel arrived. She’d opened it with such care. “It’s a replica of one of the oldest board games ever discovered,” her mom said excitedly. Her eyes had flashed with humor. “No one knows how to play it.”
“Then how will we?” Arielle had asked, gazing at it. Little more than a flattened box with a grid of squares carved into the top, the mahogany had been buffed to a shine.
Her mother’s dazzling smile had flashed. “We’ll make our own rules.”
And so they had.
The pieces had been tiny carved pigs and dogs and smooth oval eggs. Her mother had giggled as she placed the first one down in the top corner.
“Uncle Moses had a farm, ei-ei-oh.”
A flush of happiness sweeps through Arielle, so poignant it hurts. “Mom,” Arielle whispers brokenly.
As if on autopilot, she removes the pieces and places them around the board. The pigs in the top left, the dogs in the bottom right, one egg in the center. The aim of the game was to get four of your animals in a formation around it.
Arielle takes the pigs—they’d been both their favorites—and gently sits them around the egg in the middle. “North, south, east, west,” she sings softly. “Ei-ei-oh.”
Before the grief clogging her throat can erupt in a sob, there’s a click and the central square drops away. Arielle gasps, leaning closer. “What the—”
There’s another, louder click and a drawer pops open beneath the board. Except it’s not the drawer that holds the pieces. It’s on the other side.
Arielle holds still for long seconds, not sure what just happened. “A secret compartment?” she asks in amazement.
With a quick glance over her shoulder to confirm she’s still alone, she pulls the drawer open the rest of the way. Her breath halts when she realizes there’s something inside.
A small, leather-bound journal.
She lifts it out with trembling fingers.
Yes, Trinity whispers, but Arielle ignores her. She doesn’t need her imaginary friend to tell her she just found something important. Something from her mother.
Something only she was meant to find.
Barely breathing, Arielle opens the journal. The air whooshes out of her lungs as she recognizes her mother’s looped handwriting. Her awe dulls as she frowns.
The first page has a name. A name she’s never heard her mother mention.
Joseph of Arimathea.
9
Reign
Reign’s just reached the end of the alley when he has to stop himself from crashing into someone who just turned into it.
“There you are,” Mac says in exasperation. “I’ve been looking for you everywhere.”
Reign’s about to respond when he notices Darnell and Rico standing behind her.
Darnell looks over Reign’s shoulder. “Who were you talking to?”
A heavy feeling plunges through Reign’s gut as he slowly spins to look down the alley, too.
The mist is gone.
The guy has disappeared.
The world is normal again.
Great. His descent into madness was witnessed.
“No one,” he snaps.
Darnell raises a black eyebrow. “You most definitely were. We heard you.”
Wanting to be as far away from the alley as possible, Reign starts to walk away. “You need to get your hearing checked,” he growls over his shoulder.
Mac quickly catches up, falling into step beside him. A quick sideways glance reveals she’s frowning, but Reign pretends he doesn’t notice. From behind him he hears Rico loudly whisper.
“Do you think it’s happening again?”
Reign spins around and Rico finds himself pinned against the wall of the library, Reign’s hand at his throat. He shoves his face close to Rico’s wide-eyed gaze. “What’s happening again?”
Rico grins. “Don’t they say history likes to repeat itself?”
Fury flashes through Reign, burning away the images of what just happened in the alley. He welcomes it. In fact, he stokes the furious flames. His hand tightens around Rico’s throat. “They also say there’s a first time for everything.”
He may never have hit Rico, but today seems a good day to right that wrong. But the threat only has Rico’s pale eyes flaring in anticipation. It seems he’s wanting this fight as much as Reign does.
Darnell moves in close, blocking the view to any bystanders. He clears his throat, his eyes darting nervously from side to side. “Darnell doesn’t want any trouble, guys. And he’s pretty sure you two don’t either.”
Because it was only yesterday that they were being chased by a cop in a stolen car…carrying three hot laptops.
Reign releases Rico. He glares at him, his hand still wanting to pin him to the wall. “Keep your mouth shut. You don’t want this history to repeat itself,” he warns, indicating toward the red marks on Rico’s neck.
Rico shrugs as he straightens his shirt. “Looking forward to the fun and games.”
Mac’s cool hand slips over Reign’s forearm as the need to pummel Rico flares again. “He’s a douche, but not a next-level douche,” she says quietly.
Reign huffs. They decided long ago that only asshat douches are worth the bruised knuckles.
Darnell's body unwinds. He shoves his hand in the pocket of his jacket and wiggles it around. “We just saw Candy,” he sing-songs. “You coming back to the hideout?”
Despite that being the exact reason that he came here, Reign shakes his head. Looking for an escape is what had him running into that girl, reading up on his dream, and then punching a far too solid hallucination. “Maybe later.”
Darnell’s about to speak when Rico grabs his arm. “You heard the guy. He’ll be by later.” With a sideways glance at Reign, he tugs Rico away. “Maybe there will be some left.”
Mac stands beside Reign as they watch them walk away. “To be hones
t, he was edging towards next level douche. Possibly super douche.”
“Now you tell me,” Reign mutters.
Mac shrugs. “Still not worth damaging your soft white hands.”
Reign shoves her lightly. “A guy needs to harden them up somehow.”
Mac rolls her eyes, jamming her shoulder into him in retaliation. “You have enough armor, my friend.” Her face falls serious as she indicates to a nearby bench seat. “Although it doesn’t fool me.”
Uneasiness slides up Reign’s spine and for a moment, he considers refusing the offer to sit down and chat. Mac must see his reticence because she juts a hip and raises an eyebrow. “I can outrun you.”
Which is true. Mac is faster than anyone he’s ever seen. With a resigned sigh, Reign walks over and flops down. He feels like a teen who’s about to get the third degree.
Mac sits next to him, staring straight ahead as cars drive past, unaware of her heavy gaze. “Who were you talking to in the alley?”
“I told Darnell. No—”
“Cut the crap, Reign. You were whiter than white.” She glances at him then back out to the bustling street. “Like you’d seen a ghost.”
“It wasn’t Lance,” he says quietly.
Although Rico and Darnell have heard the rumors about Lance, only Mac knows Reign’s fear that he’ll follow in his foster brother’s footsteps. Reign keeps no secrets from her.
Apart from one.
Mac lets out a sigh. “That’s something. He’s a ghost you should’ve laid to rest a long time ago.” She lifts a knee, picking at hole in her jeans, seeming to understand Reign couldn’t cope with her perceptive gaze right now. “Then what? Or who?”
Reign leans forward, his head falling into his hands. “I think I’m losing it, Mac.”
“What did you see?”
This is one of the reasons he loves Mackenzie. His best friend isn’t interested in giving him platitudes or lip service. She’s willing to meet him wherever he is.
No matter how dark it could be.
“I saw a whole bunch of smoke. Then a guy wearing robes appeared.” Reign sighs. “Then he spoke to me.”
There’s a pause and Reign wonders if Mac’s considering running and never looking back.
“And?” she coaxes. “What did he say?”
Of course Mac couldn’t leave it at that. She has to know every weird-ass detail.
“He said his name is Joseph of Arimathea,” Reign blurts. “He told me I’m some Grail Keeper.”
Mac whistles softly. “Cool.”
“It’s really not.” Reign turns her. That wasn’t the response he was expecting. “You don’t get to jump on the crazy train.”
Mac shuffles closer, her eyes alight with something that doesn’t make sense. She looks…excited. “Hear me out. About a year ago I was hanging around the university library—”
“Even back then? You hadn’t even graduated.”
She wrinkles her nose. “I was bored, okay?”
Reign snorts. “I’m pretty sure I’m not the one who needs an intervention here…”
“Don’t knock it till you try it,” she says playfully. “Anyway, I was reading up on Arthurian legend when I bumped into a woman in the medieval history section. She had a massive stack of books, so I helped her bring them back to her table.” She turns to look more fully at Reign. “She invited me to join her.”
Reign rolls his eyes. “And of course you said yes, so you could nerd out with some woman you’d only just met.”
Mac shoves him with her shoulder. “Who wouldn’t?” She sobers. “The books were on Joseph of Arimathea.”
Reign freezes. “Bullshit.”
“No bovine feces, I swear.” Mac lifts her hands as if to prove her point. “This historian, the Professor, told me this Joseph guy was pretty darned interesting.” Mac’s eyes glaze and soften, as if reminiscing over a fond memory. “She was so passionate. I reckon she could’ve told me about this stuff for hours.”
As much as Mac would never admit it, she would’ve loved that. Her brain is a sponge for information, and the tap of knowledge never seems to run fast enough.
“She said he was tasked with a great responsibility, and to do that he created some secret organization to help him with it,” she continues. “The woman didn’t really know what the task was, or who the organization was, which is why she was there.”
“I’m not sure what freaky-assed link that brain of yours is making right now, Mac, but I’m thinking you need to stop. Like you said yesterday, I need to cut back on the happy weed.”
Right now, Reign’s not sure he’ll ever smoke it again.
But Mac is practically bouncing on the seat. “It makes total sense. This is why the woman was so sure. Because it’s real!”
Reign shakes his head, wishing he’d never brought this up. He doesn’t need anyone joining in his hallucinations. “Is this why we’re friends? Because you’ve lost more marbles than I have?”
“I’m thinking our guy Joseph established these Keepers of the Grail he told you about.” Mac grins. “He seems to think you’re one of them.”
Grail Keeper, it is an honor to meet you.
“No, I’m really not.”
Mac ignores him. “And y’all need to keep the Holy Grail safe.”
We must find the Grail at once.
“Don’t care.” Reign pushes to his feet. This conversation is over.
Mac joins him, eyes alight in a way that only makes him more uneasy. “And I know just where to go to find out.”
10
Arielle
“What the…”
Arielle leafs through the journal, stopping a few pages in when the dark lines of a drawing catches her eye. It’s a face, but no human face. The eyes are sunken and shadowed, the mouth a black hole. The face is so tortured and angry, she’s not sure what the thing wants more—to kill her or die.
If she didn’t know better, she’d say her mother had drawn a demon.
“Except there’s no such thing,” she tells herself.
No wonder her mother had this book hidden. When they’d finished laughing, her academic colleagues would’ve sent her packing.
Returning to the front, Arielle focuses on the scrawled text. It seems the elders weren’t happy that Joseph of Arimathea removed Jesus’s body down from the cross and entombed him. In retaliation, they trapped him in a cave to die.
Except Joseph miraculously escaped. Arielle leans closer. He left Bethlehem for England, and went on to establish a secret organization.
“For what?” Arielle muses.
“I don’t know,” comes a voice behind her. “You tell me.”
Arielle spins around, her hand flying to her chest. “Gabby! I didn’t hear you come in.”
Gabby smiles. “That’s because you were reading that book like it was going to give you all the answers you’re looking for.”
Glancing down at the journal, Arielle sighs. “That would be nice.”
Gabby navigates through the leaning towers of boxes. “When Mom told me she sent you up here to clean, I didn’t actually think you were going to be up here so long.”
“Neither did I.” Arielle brushes her hand over the wooden board. “I found a game my mom and I used to play.” She looks up at her cousin. “It turns out it had a secret compartment.”
The surprise Arielle expected to see flash across Gabby’s face disappears as quickly as it arrived. She points to the journal. “With that in it?”
The book lays closed again in Arielle’s hands. “Yeah. It’s Mom’s, but from what I can tell, it’s full of…folklore.”
That has Gabby stilling. She sinks to her knees and sits beside Arielle. “That doesn’t sound like Professor Sierra Reed,” she says softly.
Arielle’s hands tighten around the journal. “No, it really doesn’t.”
“What does it say?”
“All sorts of crazy stuff, Gabby.” Arielle opens the journal to a random page, glad it’s not the one with
the drawing of the hellish face. Her finger follows the line of writing. “The obelisks are ancient columns of stone. They appear to be a key of some sort.”
Gabby frowns. “A key to what?”
“I have no idea. None of this makes sense.” Arielle scans the information again. “For each obelisk, there is a protector. Seven obelisks. Seven souls sworn to protect it.”
Arielle flips the page and freezes.
There’s another drawing, but this one is different to the first.
An obelisk rises from the soil, seven robed figures circling around it. Seven robed figures with wings.
Her cousin gasps. “Ari. Your dream.”
Arielle is stunned into silence, unsure what to make of all this. Her gaze roams to the other side of the page, where the symbol of a seven-pointed star rests.
“What is going on?” she whispers.
Gabby is silent beside her, and Arielle assumes she’s just as confused as she is. None of this is making any sense. Since when did her mother take notes on the supernatural?
And since when did Arielle dream about the very same thing?
She leafs through a few more pages, only to find they’re blank. She frowns. “That’s it. There’s nothing more.” She turns the book over, flicks to the end, then riffles through the pages again. “Nope. Nothing else.”
But just as she says the words, something slips from a slit in the leather cover and falls to her lap. Lifting it up, Arielle finds it’s a small metallic star. The same symbol as the one drawn in the journal. She holds it up and it glints dully in the dusty light. “What is it?”
Gabby leans closer. “I don’t know, but I’ve seen that symbol before.”
“You have? Where?” But as the words burst out, Arielle realizes she’s not sure she wants the answers. If Gabby’s seen the star, then that suggests some of this is real…
Gabby chews her lip, seeming to consider the answer. “A few months ago, on a school excursion,” she says slowly. “We were on a tour of some old house. This symbol was etched onto the wall of the library.”
Arielle blinks. “And what does it mean?”