Page 53 of Cathmoir's Sons

“It’s your enchantment, Professor Nowak.”

Teddy chuckles. “Wouldn’t be too sure, then.”

“It hasn’t been wrong yet.”

“Huh. What’s she sayin’?”

Before I have a chance to answer, Jane rises from a row of seats on the stage and approaches the podium.

“Thank you for coming to Carrie’s memorial service,” she says.

Chapter 15

Honeymoon in Vegas

LUCA

Istand at the back of the auditorium, shoulder-to-shoulder with Law. He’s watching Kellan as she sits between her friends Rachel and Teddy half-way down the tiers of seats. His intensity is creepy, even to me.

I elbow him. “Act casual.”

“Fuck off,” he hisses, although very quietly, since Jane Serpa’s speaking.

For someone who got to snuggle his estranged mate all night, he’s a grumpy fuck.

“Thank you to everyone who sang Carrie off to the Mother with me last night,” Jane Serpa says, her dark eyes touching face after face in the seats in front of her. “I can’t think of a finer way to honor her. Nor can I express how much peace I feel today. I know Carrie touched many people in her life. Anyone who wants to will have a chance to speak today. But Carrie left instructions that this ... man ... be allowed to speak first.”

Jane turns and nods at an elderly man sitting in one of the chairs behind her.

The man rises. I lift my head and scent. It’s impossible to pick out one scent among the hundreds in the auditorium, although I swear I catch an edge of Kellan’s scent, but I flick my fingers to use my Element to bring his smell to me.

Snakes.

The man smooths down a long, maroon jacket trimmed with gold braid that he wears over fitted pants and walks to the podium.

Jane recoils from him and quickly takes a seat.

“My name is Sheshdhar,” he hisses. He’s a Naga, like Jane and Doctor Prince, although he’s not making any effort at hiding it. “I am the head of Clan Hisaka. Doctor Prince was born into my clan. She carried many secrets, not the least of which was repudiating her clan and consorting with—” He looks over his shoulder at Jane Serpa. “Ashuddh. Although she turned her back on her clan, we did not forsake our fallen daughter. When she came to me a week before her death and gave me this charge, I did not refuse her.”

I’m not familiar with the word he uses, but there’s no mistaking his tone and glance. He’s just insulted Jane. Newly widowed, grieving Jane.

He takes a box out of his jacket and sets it on the podium. It’s a square box, maybe six inches by six inches, inlaid with ivory or shell.

“Doctor Prince said the brightest minds in the Unseen World would gather today,” he says. “She charged me to put this box before you and bid you solve the box’s puzzle. Find Ulune’s Daughter and her treasure, before her doom falls on the world.”

He steps away from the podium. “I know nothing more. I and my clan will not help you. We mourn our fallen daughter in our own way and ask that you respect our loss.”

He bows, turns, and walks down the steps on the side of the stage. Staring straight ahead, ignoring the trail of whispers thatrises in his wake, he climbs the auditorium’s wide steps and walks past us through the rear doors.

“You want to kill someone?” I whisper to Law. “Go kill that asshole. He just called Jane Serpa something unforgiveable.”

Law lights up and whisks out the door after the old Naga.

I pad down the steps, climb over several people who grumble and glare, and drop into an empty seat behind Teddy Nowak.

Kellan’s explaining the Naga’s words to her pink-haired friend. “Ulune’s Daughter was another name for Charybdis, the monstrous whirlpool of Greek legend. She sucked down ships, killing the crew and guarding their treasures in the vault of the sea. In some legends, Herakles killed Charybdis and took her treasure for himself. In others, she simply sleeps, waiting to rise again.”

“Her doom?” Rachel Arisdaughter asks.

---