Soul Survivor (17 page)

“W
ow,” I whispered, looking around the beautiful room. It had marble floors and dark wood accents. Computers lined the walls with more archives than anything. Books and newspapers were catalogued in case you wanted to physically see the documents yourself and not just on a computer screen.

“Baby girl, this feels hopeless,” George said as he pounded the delete key.

“It's not, George. There's gotta be something in here with Lucien's crest.” I fell back in the leather library chair, running my hands along my face. “Let's recap—we know that Moe Kaelica bore my family crest. Sonja had Julian's. Lena wore Dejan's. And Luis . . .” I faded off, not sure of exactly what to say regarding Luis Nunez-Buckley's. I hadn't found a picture of his precise family crest yet, but I was pretty certain without it that Luis was Lord Buckley's descendent. I just didn't understand
why
.

“Hello? Earth to Monica.”

I snapped back to the present, flipping the page once more. “Sorry,” I mumbled.

George cleared his throat. “You know whose crest was on Luis, don't you?”

I hesitated before shaking my head no.

“Okay.” George rolled his eyes. “Then you have an
idea
of whose it is, right?”

I didn't answer, simply slid a glance at him, the computer screen illuminating his face. “I have a suspicion. But nothing that I'm certain of just yet.”

“All the evidence so far suggests it is someone within our circle,” George continued talking more to himself than to me. “Julian said that Sonja was his descendent, right? A great, great niece of sorts. If we are looking for a pattern, then, most likely, Moe is your descendent. Lena is Dejan's. Yes?”

I nodded slowly. We'd been over all this before. We were running around in circles. The result was that it left Moe as part of some sort of long lineage of my family. “Yes. That would make the most sense.” My face fell into my hands once more. “But why? Why kill our descendants? Especially since most of us don't even know who the Hell these people are? We're not emotionally invested in them. I could give two shits about Moe Kaelica—a farmer from Utah.”

“Do you think it has to do with the bounty on you?” George's voice dropped even lower, wincing as he said it.

I thought of the Banshee and how no one else could see her. This was most certainly about me in some way or another. “It could.” Drew. The Banshee. Fear caught in my chest, freezing my breath in my throat. There was something more to that, but damn if it made any sense. I leaned forward, typing Andrew Sullivan into the system. After some digging around, I found his current address and searched through his lineage. No names stood out to me. Nothing was connecting him to anyone else from the group. I grunted and fell back in the seat.

George leaned over to see whom I had pulled up. “Drew,” he said. “What's Drew got to do with any of this?”

I shrugged. “I don't know. Just call it a gut feeling.”

“Okay.” George leaned over and clicked a few keys on my keyboard. “Let's print out his crest so that we have it.” He winked at me in a warm way and I let my head fall onto his shoulder. “Just in case, right?”

I nodded as he sent the document to the printer. “Drew's Irish, huh?” He added as an afterthought, “You're Irish.” George scrunched his nose. “Oh, fuck. Don't tell me we've got a
Chinatown
situation on our hands here!”

“Ew, no!” I pushed his shoulder and his chair rolled away from me. He threw his head back laughing and going back to his own computer.

“Well, thank God for that,” he said, standing to retrieve the printed document. He came back and placed the sheet of paper between us.

I lifted it, inspecting the image. It wasn't my crest. But it was definitely Irish. I paused, pinching my nose and squeezing my eyes closed in thought. “Descendants. Damn. It sounds like some sort of . . . spell, doesn't it?”

George's eyes snapped to me. “That's it,” he whispered. “It's a spell. It's gotta be.” George leaned into the computer, typing something in before he jumped to his feet. Within minutes he came back with a thick, hardcover book under his arm. “Back in Arthurian times, to break an already existing spell, you would need the blood of the descendants of those who were in the room while casting it. Someone is trying to break an existing spell. It's got to be. It would explain the use of magic in all their deaths. The runes that surround each body. It would explain why they are targeting our group.”

George flipped through the pages until he landed on a sketch. A woman in a dungeon chanting out the window. “The spells can be cast from anywhere with the right ingredients. We're dealing with some powerful shit here.”

“So, by this theory, this all has to do with a spell that Julian, myself, and Dejan were all a part of?”
And Lord Buckley
, I added in my thoughts.

George nodded. “Yeah, pretty much. I mean, it's not an exact science or anything, but that's what it's looking like.”

I leaned back in my chair. “It's got to be about me. About when Dejan turned me into a succubus.”

“That's how you know that guy? He's the reason you fell?” George's face dropped, the color draining from his beautiful cheeks.

I nodded. “Yep—he's the reason. Well, one of the reasons.”

“You think it was a spell he cast specifically about you?”

I shrugged. “I don't know.... No one was ever able to explain how or why it happened. But that would make sense, wouldn't it?” I shivered. “When I first met him, he and his master always took a . . . special interest in me.” My stomach flipped and a wave of nausea lapped at the back of my throat. A shiver rolled through my body and I shoved the memory of that night away.

“Baby girl, this is bad. If this is all about you and this bounty—”

“I
know
. Okay? I know how bad this is.” Silence hung in the air between us. It didn't help that the library was annoyingly quiet on top of that, too.

George cleared his throat and I looked up at him through my lashes. “Monica, if this is about Dejan's succubus-turning spell—you realize that this means Julian was somehow involved. If his descendant's blood was spilled, he was a part of this. There's no other explanation for why Sonja would have been murdered.”

Fuck. I knew George was right. Somehow . . . one way or another . . . Julian was responsible for my falling from Heaven.

 

Careful not to touch the journal, I lifted the Bible from under it, flipping the cover open. An inscription on the first page caught my eye.
My Dearest John, May the peace of God follow wherever your life may take you. You have my heart, Fatima
.

There was a piece of twine marking a page and I flipped to where the marker held its place, scanning the page for any indication of something relevant. Job 37:10
By the breath of God frost is given: and the breadth of the waters is straightened
.