Page 79 of Guarded By the Nightmare

His daughter gasped and lightly clapped her hands in excitement, while the Arachnaea tilted his head profoundly.

“We were killing them. They had it coming,” Mina stated bluntly, and I loved her for it. “How insane was insane, precisely?” she asked, lifting the picture up. “Because he looks like he managed to get over to another country and tie both of his shoes, for this photo. And this is a pretty dapper suit.”

Royce frowned. “The insanity part came later. My grandfather told me he’d inhaled too much mummy dust,” he said, with a snort. “He was somewhat normal when he went over there, when my grandfather was a little boy, but when he came back he was obsessed with protecting a magical rock from Ellis.”

I slid my presence over the table towards Royce dramatically—and the Arachnea hoisted up a skein of silk, which would do precisely nothing to me if I attacked.

Then I realized his goal in throwing it would’ve been saving Royce’s daughter, who seemed oblivious to the danger she might be in, as she leaned forward, eyes wide.

“And his plan for that was...” I prompted Royce.

“You. Which clearly backfired. Because all you do is kill people.”

59

MINA

“I would liketo see my hourglass now,” Sylas demanded, in a very low voice.

I reached forward, and the part of him I touched became solid, so I could pull him back. “Baby, don’t be scary.”

“How do you kill people?” Sirena asked.

I could sense Sylas was about to tell her, when I cut him off. “How old are you?” I asked her.

“Eighteen. And I want to know.”

“Sirena,” Royce said, in a tone of disappointment. “Go upstairs and get the hourglass off my desk, will you?”

The girl made a face, but she ran off to do as she was told, while I gasped. “Is that safe?”

I remembered what’d happened to me when I touched it, and glanced down, pulling my sleeve up—myhourglass was still marking my time on my arm.

“Yeah. She’s my bloodline. Your boyfriend there is going to beherproblem, after I die. I’ve been meaning to have this conversation with her for a while now.”

“But he hasn’t because when my mom finds out, she’s going to be so pissed!” Sirena said, racing back into the room, holding the thing.

“Your mother knew what she was getting into when we met,” Royce grumbled, but then took it from her hands, so she wouldn’t get any nearer to Sylas than she already had.

I intercepted the hourglass after he put it on the table. It didn’t hurt me to hold now—and the level of sand inside of it matched the level on my tattoo precisely. There was a band of gold across the top of the hourglass that said, “Sleep and dream of me, till dreams become reality.”

“And this...is the rock?” I asked, tapping the bottom chamber of glass.

“It is. I mean, I think. At the end, he locked himself up in one of the rooms of his house, and lost the ability to ‘tie his shoes’ you might say. Then he went up on the roof, waving his hourglass around one fateful full moon, and this happened,” Royce said, waving at Sylas in a derogatory fashion. “My great-grandmother reported his death, he had a mysterious hourglass tattoo on his arm that some asshole in the city’s rudimentary coroner’s office took a photo of, along with the other carnage, and the rest was history.”

“Do you have any other memorabilia from him?” I asked.

“No. His wife burned most of it in disappointment. Before he’d gone down to Egypt, he’d been a credible man. When he came back...” Royce’s voice trailed off. He shrugged, and I looked over to Sylas, who had gone worrisomely still.

“Why did Ellis want it?” he asked, very slowly.

“I have no idea. He hassled my great-grandfather for it endlessly, even sending Pinkertons over to toss the place, but everything stopped after he died.”

“I can’t believe you were holding all this out on me!” Sirena said—and I had a sense of déjà vu again. Like time had taken a hiccup.

I whirled on Sylas at once. “We need to go talk in the hall.”

He turned toward me in surprise. “Why?”

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