by Ella Summers
Like Thea’s life.
“You know more than you’re saying, Grace.”
“Yes. As always, I know more than you, Faris,” she replied with a sugar-coated smile.
“I will find out what you know.” He kept his voice calm and level, but I could tell he was fuming. Cold, menacing fury dripped off his every word.
“Good luck with that.” Her smile had turned decidedly sardonic.
I was almost starting to like Grace. I could certainly see where I’d gotten my spunk.
But I had to be careful. The demon might be manipulating me, trying to make me think we were the same. Well, we weren’t the same. Not at all. I wasn’t like either one of my parents, god or demon.
“I’ve seen how much a bit of emotion can boost a deity’s powers,” I said to Grace. “Or reduce their powers.”
“It is true for some,” Grace agreed.
“You think Ava riled up Khalon to get him to win her a big victory?” I asked her.
Faris’s penetrating glare shifted to me. “You know something too.”
“How does it feel to be the only one who isn’t in on the secret?” I asked him pleasantly.
The look on Faris’s face was all the answer I required.
“A victory at Calamity wasn’t the only thing on Ava’s mind that day,” Grace replied to me. “My sister has never been one for wasted opportunities”
“I see.” I nodded. “This conversation has been very informative.”
I stopped short of thanking her. It was dangerous to thank a deity; they might take that as an acknowledgement that you owed them something. Like angels did. Only deities were worse. Much, much worse.
Even after my parents left me alone in the garden library, leaving me with a knotted pile of knitting that had failed to amount to anything, my mind dwelled on the Battle of Calamity. Something had happened there. Something else. Something important. Something hidden beneath the surface and behind the scenes. I just knew it. Somehow I knew it. I couldn’t explain how I did.
I was sure there was something important about that day, and this wasn’t just about Ava scheming to keep Thea alive and making sure Bella was born. Something else had happened there. Some great scheme had played out that day at Calamity, unbeknownst to the soldiers fighting there.
28
The Door in the Floor
The airship arrived at the Silver Shore early the next morning. No monsters tried to pull us down as we crossed the Black Forest this time. In fact, besides my nighttime visit from Grace and Faris, the journey had been a pretty uneventful one.
Of course, that didn’t stop my designated protectors from protesting when I insisted on going down to the shore to look for Thea’s grimoire.
“You’re supposed to stay on the ship,” Alec reminded me, as though I’d forgotten.
“Those were Nyx’s orders, and she is going down to the shore,” I pointed out. “So I’m going down there too.”
Stash was next. “Sweetness, it’s just not safe.”
“You can go down there with me,” I told him. “But, seriously, who’s going to attack me? We’re way out in the middle of nowhere, and monsters can’t even get inside the Silver Shore. You guys have already searched the area and found no enemies, no boobytraps, no dangers of any kind.”
“Lord Faris will not approve,” Devlin said stiffly.
“If he finds out, I’ll tell him I escaped your guard and went down myself, so you had to follow me. Faris knows how I operate. He’ll totally believe that story.”
“That is exactly how she operates,” Patch told the others.
Devlin sighed in defeat. “Very well. But we’re staying by your side the whole time.”
“I would expect nothing less of such competent, professional, godly soldiers.”
“I’m going to quote you on that, Pandora,” Octavian said. “Maybe I’ll even score a promotion from Faris from it.”
“If Faris doesn’t punish us for letting her run wild,” Devlin said.
“Faris wants to keep the Guardians away from my daughter,” I told them. “Well, this is how we’re going to do it.”
“I think she has us there,” Punch said.
He looked very excited to be leaving the ship. He must have been convinced that there would be something dangerous down there to fight. In fact, he was probably counting on it. Punch had found the whole airship gig to be terribly dull. During our flight across the Atlantic, I’d once seen him preparing to shoot at an enormous flying monster, just to spice things up. Devlin had stopped him just in time.
As we prepared to fly down to the Silver Shore, Punch whispered to me, “I’m counting on you, girl, to bring us some of that legendary Leda chaos.”
Our landing party was full. I wasn’t the only one eager for a chance to leave the ship. In fact, once we left, there was hardly anyone left on board.
Leila looked around the Silver Shore. “This place is beautiful.”
“The most beautiful place on Earth.” Cadence kicked off her boots and dug her toes into the sand.
The sand sparkled like silver glitter. That must have been where the place had gotten its name.
“My father used to bring me here when I was a child,” Cadence said.
I bent over.
“What are you doing?” Nyx demanded.
My fingers paused in front of my bootlaces. “I thought I’d—”
“I know what you were thinking, Pandora. And it’s bad enough that some of my angels have completely lost their wits at the prospect of sandy toes.”
Nyx watched with disapproval—or was that envy?—as Cadence and Leila ran barefoot across the sandy beach. Basanti, Andromeda, and Alice had joined them. They were all acting very jolly, very un-Legion-like.
“They’re just restless,” I told Nyx. “They don’t have their knitting to calm their nerves like I do.”
“Knitting?” Alec asked me, perplexed.
“Yes, knitting.”
Alec could barely keep a straight face. “You can knit? You, the Angel of Chaos?”
“That’s right,” I said defensively. “And I’m getting pretty good at it. Right, Stash?”
“Indeed.” Stash nodded. “Leda has improved greatly. She no longer gets her whole body tangled up in the yarn.”
This time, Alec did not succeed in keeping a straight face. Enthusiastic laughter poured out of his mouth.
“Watch out, Stash, or I’ll find some way to incorporate my knitting into my dirty fighting,” I warned him.
Stash smiled. “Oh, but you’re not supposed to be fighting.”
“I wouldn’t be fighting. I’d be knitting. You’d just happen to get trapped in my yarn.”
“That would be some pretty messy knitting,” Arabelle said.
“Or some pretty precise knitting,” Octavian added.
“Your friends from Heaven’s Army talk too much,” Nyx told me.
“That’s what makes them so fun,” I chuckled. “But I guess we should start looking for the grimoire.”
“Yes. We should,” Nyx said seriously.
Apparently, she wasn’t going to kick off her boots and get her feet wet. I wondered what the First Angel did for fun. Probably something really wild, like reorganizing her filing cabinet. Or optimizing the contents of her refrigerator.
Nyx and I walked along the sunny Silver Shore, our boots firmly on our feet. Bella and Harker came with us, along with my trusty guards from Heaven’s Army. And Arina came too. I didn’t think she’d truly relax until her children were safe. I wanted to help her accomplish that. Children didn’t deserve to be caught in the middle of this power struggle between deities and Guardians.
I glanced at Arina. “Do you sense the grimoire anywhere nearby?”
“No, but there’s something else. A weird kind of magic. Magic that’s concealing something.”
“Maybe it’s the grimoire,” I said, feeling optimistic. “River, that rogue Guardian I met in the Vault, told me there are other secret st
ashes around the world. She confirmed that the Silver Shore is one of them.”
“Where is this concealing magic coming from?” Nyx asked Arina.
Arina pointed at one of the smaller lakes.
“In the lake?” Bella asked.
Arina nodded.
“Well, it looks like we’ll be taking off our boots after all,” I said to Nyx, triumphant.
Obviously, she was positively overjoyed.
“So it would seem,” she said drily.
I pulled off my boots. The moment my toes dug into the sand, I smiled. It really was as velvety-soft as it looked. Everyone else was removing their shoes as well.
“I wonder if there’s a sea monster inside the lake,” Punch said hopefully.
“Unlikely,” Patch told him. “Something at the Silver Shore repels monsters.”
But Punch wasn’t giving up hope just yet. “Then maybe just a really big shark?”
Patch patted him on the back.
“Octavian, Arabelle, Theon. You three go first,” Devlin barked out like he was ordering them into battle.
“But I want to be on the front line!” Punch complained.
Devlin ignored him. “Patch and I will go in on either side of Leda. Stash, you and Punch take the rear. He looked at Nyx. “I trust that you and Sunstorm can handle the two civilians?”
“Naturally.”
Nyx didn’t sound annoyed, but there was a sharp spark in her ocean-blue eyes. As a demigod, she’d probably long since tired of being treated as weak by the gods. On the other hand, she didn’t have seven gods surrounding her like a force field. Faris must have thought I was made of glass.
We all cast form-fitting, water-repellent bubbles around ourselves—Harker cast one around Bella, while I cast one around Arina—then we stepped into the water. There were fish in the lake, but no sharks or monsters, much to Punch’s disappointment. We walked across the lake’s sandy bottom until Arina suddenly stopped and stomped her foot down to indicate the spot of interest.
I flicked my hand, casting a spell that swooped into the dirt like a digger. My magic bounced against something solid. I stepped closer and leaned over to gaze into the hole I’d made. The wet sand was already settling back into the hole, but I could still see what I’d dug up.
It was a door. A door in the floor.
I reached down and grabbed the door’s metallic handles to open it. A shimmering field of blue light stretched across the doorway, repelling both water and sand. I poked it with my finger to see if it repelled people too, but my hand passed right through the field. Now, that was a force field.
I hopped through the door in the floor. The moment I passed through the blue field, my water-repelling spell popped, drenching my clothes. Good thing I’d removed my boots. I could dry my clothes with a wave of my hand, but shoes were trickier. They soaked up water like a sponge.
I landed in a small sitting room which had eight fat, cushioned armchairs arranged in a circle at the center. A woman of around seventy, dressed in grease-stained work overalls, sat in one of the posh chairs. She was fiddling with the small mechanical device in her lap. She looked familiar somehow, but I couldn’t quite place where I’d seen her before.
Nyx landed beside me, also soaking wet. “Where’s the grimoire?”
“No grimoire here.” I looked around the room, but there were no doors except the underwater entrance. “Just her.”
“That’s a radio she’s holding,” Bella said. She was the next one through the door.
“A broken radio,” the elderly woman said. “But not broken for long.” She flipped a switch on the device, and it lit up. “There. That’s better.”
“Who is she?” Harker asked the moment after he landed beside Bella.
“We’re still trying to figure that out,” I said.
The elderly woman smiled at me. There was something creepy lurking beneath that kind, wrinkled facade and white hair.
Stash landed in the sitting room. “There is something odd about her,” he said, echoing my thoughts.
Stash had the power to see through to someone’s soul, so I definitely took his statement seriously.
“What do you see inside of her?” I asked him.
Stash watched the woman. “There’s something false about her.”
The old woman didn’t seem bothered by his statement. She just kept smiling. She looked like she was waiting for something to happen.
Devlin, Octavian, Punch, Arabelle, and Theon landed in quick succession. This tiny room was starting to get awfully crowded.
“Where’s Arina?” I asked.
“She was right behind us,” Octavian told me. “She and Patch are studying the blue barrier. Apparently, it’s a fascinating feat of magical engineering.” He rolled his eyes. “Nerds,” he added under his breath.
I stepped toward the woman with the now-functioning radio. “Who are you?”
She held up her finger. “Just a moment more.”
Arina and Patch burst through the blue barrier.
“Leda, the water-repellent qualities of that barrier are truly…” Arina stopped. Her eyes grew wide as they locked on to the elderly woman. “What are you doing here?”
“You know her?” I asked Arina.
“Yes. Her name is Gertrude, and she’s my grandmother.” Arina looked at the woman. “What are you doing on Earth? How did you even get here?”
“It’s complicated,” Gertrude said.
“You know something about the dark angel Thea’s grimoire, don’t you?”
“Yes.”
“My face was on that parchment, the supposed clue to Thea’s grimoire. That was you. You put my face there.”
“Yes.”
“Because you wanted me to come here too.” Arina looked around the small sitting room. “Where’s the grimoire? Is it here?”
“In a matter of speaking.” Gertrude looked at the crystal wand attached to Bella’s belt. Thea’s wand. “The secrets of that wand—and so much more—are not in any physical book. They are too dangerous to write down.”
“Then where are these secrets stored?” I asked her.
“In here.” Gertrude tapped her head. “Thea was dabbling in magic she didn’t understand. I stepped in and offered to help her. It was with my assistance that she made that wand, an immortal artifact.”
“You know how to make immortal artifacts?” I asked her.
Athan had once told me Arina possessed the ability to craft artifacts as powerful as immortal artifacts, yet she did not require an immortal soul to make them. Maybe it was a skill which ran in the family.
“I do,” Gertrude confirmed. “There are, in fact, two ways to create an immortal artifact. The more common way is to link the piece you’ve crafted to a dead immortal soul. That is done at the time of death, which is a powerful, magical moment. That’s how most immortal artifacts are made. With dark magic. Using death.”
“But there is another way?” I asked.
“Yes. Like light and dark, life and death are two sides of the same coin. Just as you can create an immortal artifact through a powerful act of death, through dark magic, you can also use light magic. Life. The act of creation, of life, can be channeled into the artifact. Instead of linking the artifact you’ve made to a dead soul, you link it to a living soul, at the moment of life. There is great power in that as well.”
Gertrude looked at Bella, then the wand. “That is how that wand was created. Using her.”
Bella set her hand over her heart.
“Wait, you’re saying the act of Bella’s creation had so much power that it made the wand into an immortal artifact?” I asked.
“She is the daughter of a demon and a demi-demon,” Gertrude replied. “So her creation was a powerful natural force. It’s more problematic to make an artifact through life, through light magic, than through death, or dark magic. The light equation is more precise. That’s why most immortal artifacts are linked to dead souls.”
Arina had been very qui
et during Gertrude’s explanation, but she finally spoke now. “You taught me that spell,” she said to her grandmother. “But you didn’t tell me what it does, what it means.”
Arina looked pretty upset with her grandmother.
“I had no idea you would actually try out the spell without my supervision,” Gertrude replied.
“You created an immortal artifact this way?” I asked Arina. “Using light magic?”
Arina lifted her arms, and two matching silver bracelets slid down her wrists: one with blue stones, one with green stones. “Two of them.”
My brain was still processing this. Very slowly processing. Two artifacts.
Arina glared at her grandmother. “I was seventeen. Seventeen. I thought I was just tinkering with magic.”
“Powerful magic.” Gertrude pursed her lips. “I should have told you the consequences of that spell.”
“Yes, you should have.” Arina’s eyes were full of fury.
“Still, twin artifacts,” said Gertrude. “I didn’t expect you to start so big.”
I finally got it. “Your children,” I said to Arina. “Your twins. They were created by this spell.”
Arina’s voice quivered. “They were.”
“You tweaked the formula,” Gertrude said. “You experimented with the magical universe. Tapped into it. Your experiment created twins who look like their parents and have some of their magical traits, but they are really children of the universe. Two children, born from the mysteries of the magical abyss.”
“When Thea asked you to make that wand, she didn’t know what she was creating, did she?” Bella asked Gertrude.
“No.”
Bella looked like that one word had just sealed her fate.
“Thea thought she was just getting an immortal artifact from me,” Gertrude continued. “But then she went and gave the wand to Khalon. What a waste. After Thea and Khalon left, I gathered the rainbow magic mist made from the wand’s creation, forming it into a baby. A baby linked to the wand.”
“Bella,” I said quietly.
Ava had told Bella that her parents didn’t know she existed. This explained how that was even possible. Like Arina, Thea had thought she was just experimenting with magic.