Read Online Demon Bound by Meljean Brook - Free Book Online Page A

left buried by history, and forgotten. ’ But he also tells me that I am, of course, free to excavate it.”
    Jake frowned, clearly disappointed. “But—”
    “Michael also cannot see it. Any of it, except for my sketches. He teleported to Abu Simbel with me, and couldn’t see or enter the temple—even when I took his hand and tried to lead him over the threshold.”
    That left Jake speechless. He ran his hand over his head and looked at Alice, then the artifacts, several times.
    Finally he asked, “What about the symbols over the antechamber entrance? Have they shown up before?”
    “No, this is the first time.” Something else that was new. But although she was eager to discover the symbols’ meaning, she did not look forward to taking the steps to learn it. “I will have to ask Michael for the translation—”
    “ ‘We go north,’ ” Jake interrupted. He met her surprise with a quick grin. “I asked Lilith. So, they left directions in this one, but not the others.”
    “Apparently.”
    “Then how’d you find them?”
    “My Gift.” She saw that response wouldn’t satisfy him, and added, “When these temples appear, it disturbs the spiders in the area.” There was no other word for it. “The disturbance spreads quickly, but the farther away it is, the weaker it feels. So I follow it to the strongest point.”
    He studied her for a long time, she thought. Turning it all over in his mind, looking for answers. “And you’ve been finding these since—When did you finish your training?”
    “Nineteen hundred and eighty-eight.”
    “Over twenty years ago? Then why doesn’t anyone know about this?”
    “Anyone? Or you?” Alice watched acknowledgment touch his expression, and continued, “There are some who know. Anyone who has cared to ask me, or who has come across the photographs in the Archives—”
    “These are in the library?” he said mournfully, as if already grieving over the two decades he’d not known of their existence.
    “Perhaps if you’d ventured into the corner I usually inhabit, you’d have come across them.”
    Unexpectedly, he grinned. “Well, now that you don’t freak me out, maybe I will. You’ve been working on them alone all this time?”
    She shook her head. “Only since the Ascension. Before that, I had a team of novices to assist me.”
    “Oh,” he said, and winced. “Yeah. Sorry.”
    If her spine had been rigid before, now it became a steel bar. She’d forgotten about the stories the novices told. One was that she’d helped a few of her students to “Ascend” with her blade, but vanished the bodies.
    What the novices said didn’t matter—much of it had probably arisen out of their boredom in the years after the Ascension and before they’d moved to San Francisco. It was the truth the stories were rooted in that had her turning away from him.
    Of all the mentors who remained in Caelum after the Ascension, only Alice had lost every student. She was the only one who hadn’t inspired a single novice to stay, to fight—to live.
    And she didn’t want to see his sympathy, or his pity.
    “Hey,” he called.
    Short of breaking into a run, Alice couldn’t prevent him from moving in front of her. She stopped, her lips set in a firm line.
    He shoved his hands into his pants pockets, but instead of appearing cowed when his shoulders hunched, he only seemed taller. “Look, I know you want me gone.”
    Her response was a lift of her brows.
    That must have amused him. His appealing smile returned. “I’ve just been waiting for you to sic Nefertari on me.”
    She should have. “Is that how you intended to leave? You wanted her to frighten you?”
    “Nope. Just to see if you’d do it. I hoped you would.”
    “I’m sorry I disappointed you, then.”
    “I’ll bet.” He laughed to himself again, closing his eyes as if to contain it. After a moment, he opened them. “I’ll be looking through the stuff you have in the library.”
    “I assumed as much, yes.