fearfully. “I don’t want to look at it. I can’t.” Her grip on my hands tightened until she was almost crushing my fingers.
Then her eyes rolled back in her head and she repeated, “Thirteen times thirteen.”
I didn’t like this. Devon’s trance state was creepy. I waited to see if she would say anything else, preferably to explain what thirteen times thirteen meant, but she fell silent and closed her eyes again. When she opened them again, she looked at me and said, “I don’t know what it means.”
Great. What point was the power of prophecy if it was so vague?
“Thanks,” I said. At least I knew the magical door was gone from my head. I got up from the sofa.
Victoria put a hand on my shoulder. “Wait. Before you go, we might as well check if the enchantment is gone.”
I frowned. “What do you mean? I thought the false memories were the enchantment. They’re gone now. Devon just said so.”
“Still, there’s no harm in checking. This is magic that we’re talking about. Things aren’t always straightforward.” She pulled the rune-engraved stone from her pocket and hung it on its leather cord near my chest. “Freyja, adept of the mysteries, open our eyes to the magic which has been hidden from our sight.”
The amulet began to spin.
Chapter 7
“ T here is still an enchantment on you,” Victoria said, watching the spinning amulet.
I wasn’t so sure. “Maybe it’s just picking up the enchantments on my tattoos.”
Devon shook her head. “No, this is something much deeper.”
I looked from Victoria to Devon. “And you can’t tell me what kind of enchantment it is?”
The both shook their heads. “If we did some research,” Victoria said. “May we take a lock of hair from you?”
“No, thanks, I think I’ll pass.”
“You don’t trust us, do you?” Devon asked.
I opened the door and said, “Don’t take it personally. In my line of work, suspicion is healthy and can keep you alive.”
“How terrible,” Victoria said. “That really is no life at all, Alec. Everyone needs friends.”
“I have friends,” I said, walking back into the main part of the bookshop. I navigated my way through the stacks of books until I could see the front door. The witches were right; I didn’t trust them. Certainly not with a lock of my hair. But I might need to use them again in the future so I kept my mouth shut.
When I reached the door, Victoria said, “Good luck with the enchantment.”
“See you again soon,” Devon added.
“Yeah, right, thanks.” I went out onto Main Street and walked back to the office. My good mood was not only shattered now, it was in tiny fragments. I couldn’t believe there was still an enchantment on me. What the hell did it mean? Maybe the magical ability was coming from it but that didn’t make much sense since I’d first used magic when I was just a kid. It seemed unlikely that an enchantment had been cast on me then but, knowing my father, I couldn’t rule anything out.
By the time I pushed through the door to my office and ascended the narrow stairs, I was in a dark mood. It was in my nature to find answers to questions and solve cases. Not knowing what kind of spell had been cast on me or why annoyed me.
Felicity was in her office, at her computer. She looked up at me over the rim of her glasses and said, “Wesley Jones was here. He brought the Sherry Westlake material over.”
“Great, where is it?”
“On the floor in your office.”
I opened my office door and was surprised by the size of the cardboard box sitting on the floor by my desk. I’d been expecting something the size of a shoe box but this was so tall that it came up to my waist. Wesley had sealed it with packing tape.
“How much research did he do on Sherry?” I asked. “He must have been following her for months.”
“I don’t think it’s all papers,” Felicity said. “He told me there’s something else inside the box that you’ll want to see.”
I
Allan Boroughs
Stephanie Hoffman McManus
Rikki Dyson
Sebastian Seung
Nevil Shute
Chelsea Dorsette
Crissy Smith
J. Lee Butts
Jane Austen
Valerie Wood