Page 12 of Road To Runes

"Like the one you made today?" I asked, raising my eyebrows at her.

She batted my hand as if I was a kitten in need of a telling off."Yes, because I didn't get to sleep in this morning."

"All right." I held my hands up in defeat. "Get your beauty sleep. I could do with a little time to do some research, anyway."

That was a lie. Ideally, I would have headed out as soon as possible to avoid being here when Asher arrived. But if thatwasn't possible, I would sneak myself some dinner and do a little more research on the power I wanted to track down.

I headed downstairs, my ears pricked for any sound at the front door. Asher wasn't likely to knock, and I really didn't want to be around when he came waltzing in.

It was Laura's turn to make dinner that night. She stood over a huge soup pot, wearing a red polka dot dress; a far cry from the work clothes I had caught her in earlier. She had tied her auburn locks back in a Viking style braid and a full face of make-up. I still couldn't quite fathom how this blacksmith who routinely hammered the living daylights out of metal had such a fierce feminine side.

Edward sat at the dining table, bent over his sketchpad and surrounded with open tins of pencils. His tongue between his teeth, Edward sketched out a gazelle on the paper.

His floppy blonde hair had grown out so long that it wouldn't be long before he could pull it back into a ponytail. Perpetually covered in paint, Edward wore nothing but comfy clothes, many of which had holes in. He had built up a layer of muscle from years of daily yoga but he wouldn't enter a gym if you paid him.

"Starting another project you're not going to finish?" I asked as I headed toward the cupboards.

"It's a commission." Edward jabbed his pencil in my direction. "Ihaveto finish it."

"Things picking up again?"

Edward shot me a mischievous look. "Not as well as they are foryou. Didn't you say you were going to quit book slinging?"

Once or twice. But that was before Asher and I had broken up. Back when I had the foundation to make huge changes like that.

"Mind your business." I plucked a cup of noodles out of a cupboard.

Laura drew in an exaggerated gasp mid-stir. "Excuse me, I'm making dinner. What do you think you're doing?"

I pulled a face at her. "Do you really think I'm hanging around down here?"

"I thought you were going to be civil?" Laura asked. "Isn't that what you said?"

"Yeah, but I'm going to do itmyway. If anyone expects me to greet him at the door like some dog he left at home while he was out working, they deserve a slap." I flicked the kettle on and leaned against the counter next to Laura's bubbling pot.

Edward sighed so loud that his papers fluttered under the force of it.

"So how will you meet him, then?" Laura tapped a little salt into the pot.

"We'll pass awkwardly in a corridor in the next few days," I said. "Then we'll ignore each other as best we can for the rest of it."

"Sounds like you've given it a lot of thought," Edward said, a taunting edge to his words.

I picked an apple out of the fruit bowl and threw it at him. He batted it off with his arm and bared his teeth at me.

"All right, do ityourway," Laura said, shooting me an exasperated look. "I'll let him know you said hi."

"Don't do that." I grabbed the kettle once it finished boiling and poured it into the cup. "If you must tell him anything, tell him to shove-"

"Okay,I won't tell him anything. I'll save you some stew if you want some later."

I bid them both goodbye, stirring my noodles and headed upstairs. Hecate was fast asleep when I got back up to my room, so I slipped into my work space. I put my noodles on my desk to stew, the room alight from the rows of jars along the far wall. Some of the stolen powers within them drifted back and forth, bouncing off the glass walls. Others stayed perfectly still,flickering every so often. They looked like luminous jellyfish if I squinted my eyes.

I stirred my noodles a little more, my gaze drifting up to the top shelf. The eight powers contained up there were the first I had ever taken; the powers of the Bishop family. At the earliest opportunity I had changed my name from Bishop to Silver. Not a shred of me belonged to them anymore. Not in name or anything else.

Grabbing my soundproof headphones, I turned my back on the shelves and sat at my desk. Noodles in hand, I hunkered down at my laptop to do some digging. For hours I scoured every public register and a few less than public ones, too, in search of someone with the power I sought. Someone out there had to have the ability to track people; to find someone with a magical power. But no matter where I looked, I couldn't find anyone.

This power was either rarer than I thought, or government agencies had snapped these people up already. Either way, that left me with a non-existent pool to draw from.

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