Page 68 of Shield of Fire

“He was safe in his hidey hole when I left him. Whether he remains there is another matter—he was very jumpy.”

No surprise, given he was almost blown apart. “I thought he was certain he’d be safe there?”

“He was initially. I think he was having second thoughts when he realized I wasn’t staying to protect him.”

“Have you got the address? I need it to send to Sgott.”

“Considering I drove the man there, I do indeed.”

His tone was dry, and a smile tugged my lips. I typed the address into a message and pinged it off to Sgott. “Do you need to head straight home tomorrow?”

He shook his head and handed me a glass of wine. “Why? You intending to question Loudon yourself?”

I hesitated. Optimally, I would have loved to, but while we’d removed Ka-hal’s bug, it was no guarantee they didn’t have a secondary means of tracking me. Right now, Loudon was too big a source of possible information to risk. Better to leave him to Sgott and his people.

“Before Gannon died,” I said eventually, “I managed to get the location of the scroll Loudon had. We need to get over there and retrieve it before our foes beat us to it again.”

“With Gannon dead and Loudon in safe keeping, that shouldn’t be a problem.”

“If there’s one thing I’ve learned over recent weeks, it’s never to underestimate your foe.” I took a sip of wine and rolled it lightly around my tongue. It was crisp and fresh, with notes of peach and nectarine and just the right amount of acidity. Perfect for summer but pretty damn good in winter, too. “This is lovely—who’s the maker?”

“It’s Cat Amongst The Pigeons—an Australian wine I had shipped back during my extended trip over there.”

I raised my eyebrows. “I didn’t know you’d spent time in Australia.”

“I had a commission down there a while ago.” He shrugged and motioned toward the tubs of food sitting on various trays. “Shall we make ourselves comfortable and eat? Otherwise, the food will get cold.”

“I suspect the food might be the only thing that does over the next few hours.”

“Only a few hours?” A wicked smile tugged at his lips. “My dear woman, I intend to keep us warm the entire damn night.”

If there was one thing I learned over the course of that glorious evening, it was Eljin was a man who kept his word.

Sleep came late—very late—into the night.

But with it came the dreams.

Dark dreams filled with betrayal and death.

Dreams I couldn’t remember after they’d woken me up, the Eye burning on my chest and my heart racing uncomfortably.

Dreams that kept me awake as dawn’s light slipped across the night and Eljin slept beside me.

A quick Google search gave us the address of Gannon’s storage unit, and the code he’d stored on his phone also worked on the gate. His shipping container was at the very end of a long pink row of them.

We climbed out of the car, and I walked across to the electronic lock to punch in the code. Once it had released, Eljin grabbed the door lever and hauled open one side of the container’s double set. Inside, it was cool and clean, but basically empty except for a couple of boxes that had some sort of laminate coating across the outside surface.

“Not the best environment to be storing old scrolls in,” Eljin said. “But at least he’s used proper archival document boxes.”

I squatted beside the first one and carefully pried the lid off. “Maybe this was never meant to be a permanent storage option. Maybe he just wanted to keep the scroll temporarily away from Loudon.”

Eljin squatted in front of the other one. “Why would he want that? From what Loudon said in the car, they were longtime partners.”

The musty, earthy scent of old paper rising from the box made my nose twitch. “Yeah, but Loudon has a fetish for old scrolls, so Gannon always kept hold of the ones they’d been commissioned to find. Apparently, if they disappeared into Loudon’s vault, they never came out.”

Inside the box were a half dozen or so yellowed and rather fragile-looking scrolls, along with at least five manuscripts of varying sizes. I didn’t pick any of them up. I knew from various things Lugh had said over the years how damaging the oils from skin could be to fragile documents.

“There’s a random collection of scrolls and manuscripts in this one, some vellum, some parchment,” Eljin said. “How did you uncover that about Loudon?”

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