Page 57 of Cursed Wolfsbane

“Nothing happened, but I did translate the phrase. It says, ‘In truth will she find the home.’” Malachi points to each word as he reads it, giving me a mini French lesson. Even when he’s not in the classroom, Malachi often reverts to professor mode.

My eyes widen, and I rush around the other side of the table to stare at the map again. “That’s a line from the prophecy,” I whisper. Hope blooms inside me like the first flowers of spring—tentative, fragile, and easily crushed.

“It is. You definitely found something, baby girl. Any idea where this leads?” He leans back in his chair as he stares at me in contemplation.

I fidget under his intense gaze before grabbing the paper to have something to do with my hands. “I’m fairly certain it’s blueprints to a historical cathedral in, um, Bayeux.” I try not to butcher the pronunciation of what I think is a French town. It certainly sounds French.

“That’s in Normandy,” Bastian chimes in as he saunters over. Xander and Saint are close behind him, all of them wanting a chance to look at what I found. Bastian hops up on the table next to me and reads over my shoulder. Xander and Saint stand behind Malachi and wait for their turn.

“Fair warning, it might be a weird experience touching the paper.” I hand it off to Saint who has no reaction. He gives it to Xander when he’s done looking at it. I roll my lips between my teeth as I try to figure out why I’m the only one who reacts. “Hey, Saint? Do you know what magic would cause only certain people to see an image when they touch something?”

While I grew up in Hawthorne Grove, I left before getting much of a mage education. I’m supposed to be this super powerful hybrid, but I’m at such a disadvantage compared to the rest of mages. I know little about magic and have even less natural aptitude for it, apparently. Saint’s our best hope if we need magic for something.

Saint rolls his neck back and forth in thought. “I’m not sure, but I know it requires extremely powerful magic and a very complex spell. It’s a separate spell to hide a vision on an object and to make sure only certain people can see it. If I had to guess, the spell’s keyed to your family line to prevent the information falling into the wrong hands.”

“So, is this what we came here for?” I was kind of hoping for some neon sign that loudly proclaimedthis is what you’re looking for. Instead, we have a piece of paper with a vague prophecy line written on it that leads to a location only I can see.

Fabulous.

I’m sure there’s nothing that could go wrong with this setup.

“It seems likely, but none of us have much of our section left to go through. Let’s finish those up, and then we can figure out what we want to do.” Xander waits until we all agree before heading back to his table piled high with texts.

I flop down in the chair at the end of Malachi’s table since the books are all here. Putting in an earbud, I shuffle my playlist and Amber Run’s “I Found” comes on. Cracking open the tome at the top of the stack, I start looking through it for answers I don’t know that anyone has.

Around one in the morning, I finally close the last one from my section. Everyone other than Saint and I are done, including Malachi who had to read most of the foreign language books from everyone else’s part. I thought I was a fairly fast reader, but Malachi has me beat.

Everyone gravitated over to what was originally Malachi’s table. It’s long enough that we’re all able to spread out to get everything done. A few minutes later, Saint closes his book and looks up to see the rest of us watching him. He ducks his head and rubs the back of his neck at being the center of attention.

“Anyone find anything else?” I ask to take everyone’s focus off Saint, “because I certainly didn’t.”

“Nope. Nothing,” Bastian chimes in. Malachi and Xander both shake their heads.

“I didn’t either but let me try the spell once more to make sure there’s nothing we’re missing.” Saint chants the same incantation he did yesterday. The same sections of the library light up, in addition to all the books we have piled on the table. Even the piece of paper glows an eerie red.

I’m guessing that means we’ve looked through everything here that’s relevant. “So, we need to go to Bayeux now?”

“Yep!” Bastian jumps up and walks around until he’s standing behind me. He thrusts his phone at me. “Is this the cathedral, pretty girl?”

My eyes widen when I see the church from the spell. It looks slightly different, like it’s aged a little or the surrounding area has changed over the years, but it’s still very recognizable. “Yeah. How’d you find it?”

“I googled ‘Bayeux cathedral.’ Luckily, the church is actually named The Cathedral of Our Lady of Bayeux, so it was pretty easy to find.” Bastian gives me a wry smile at the name of the Gothic inspired cathedral. “There are a ton of Notre Dame churches all over France, and Bayeux is no different it seems.”

“Thanks for finding that, Bastian. It’s a huge help.” Bastian glows at my praise. I give him a small genuine smile before pushing to my feet. Raising my arms over my head, I take a moment to stretch. I’ve spent way too much time in these hard wooden library chairs these past two days. It’s fine with me if I never have to sit in one again. “Are we ready to head out after we put the books up?”

“Yeah, we should be good to go,” Malachi answers for the group. He takes the paper with the cathedral map and carefully folds it along the existing creases before putting it in his black wool coat pocket for safekeeping.

It only takes us a few minutes to clean up everything and revert the space to how it looked when we got here. Following closely behind Malachi as we leave the library, I’m startled when he stops suddenly, a deep growl rattling in his chest.

Peering around him, I gasp in shock as I see the last person I expected to be here.

CHAPTER 26

BRIAR

“Patrick?” I breathe as I take in his disheveled appearance. His usually neatly styled hair is in disarray, his typically perfectly pressed clothes wrinkled, and his formerly classically handsome face sallow and sunken.

In short, he looks like shit. The petty part of me enjoys that way more than I should.

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