Page 38 of Road To Runes

Hecate waved her paw in our direction and we both held out our hands so she could lay her paw on both of our fingers at the same time to communicate.

"They're memories,"she told us."Stolen from their owners, most likely against their will."

My first instinct was disgust. There were few reasons that anyone would want to steal people's memories and that was to keep quiet anyone who threatened the Franklins. No wonder they were so good at covering up their crimes.

But then, hadn't I sneaked in here to steal something of Troy's? No, that was different. I took dangerous powers from people too stupid or too malicious to wield them properly. The two acts were different in too many ways for me to feel any guilt.

"Wait," I said. "If these areallmemories..."

I looked up at the endless shelves all stuffed with jars. There had to be thousands of memories in here, if not tens of thousands; centuries worth of stolen moments that didn't belong to the Franklins.

Thatwas how they kept such a tight lid on all the crap Troy pulled.

"We can't let them get away with this," I muttered. This wentwaybeyond Troy's stupid recklessness with his powers. This was corruption on another level.

Asher grabbed my shoulders and whisked me around to face him. His stare bore into me so intensely that I felt it deep in my soul.

"We are not getting involved in this," he said, his tone dipping so low that his voice reverberated between us. "I supported you breaking in here because of what it means to you, but we can't meddle in something this dangerous. There's no coming back from something like that, but if we get out of here now, we can escape and they'll never know it was us."

His eyes pleaded with me, and I couldn't help but allow the feelings to wash in. The need to make him feel heard, and to keep him safe overpowered any pride that demanded a place at my decision-making table. He was right. I couldn't put him in danger like this all because I wanted to go full-vigilante on this stupid family.

"Yeah," I said, trying not to let anything I felt leak into my voice. "Okay. So what do we do?"

Asher let go of my shoulders and turned around, grabbing a handful of his hair like he did whenever there was a riddle he hadn't quite solved. But as I looked over to check on Hecate and watched her batting a jar toward the edge of the shelf, an idea struck me.

"They would probably be pretty concerned if they heard their precious memories shattering, wouldn't they?" I said.

Asher turned back around, his face a blank slate.

"Hec, can you break a few while Asher and I wait next to the door?" I asked. "If you break enough to get their attention, then they could come running in here and give us a chance to sneak out of here before they realise."

"That's not a bad plan," Asher said.

Of course it wasn't, it was mine.

"Can you do it, Hec?" I asked. She was the one taking all the risk if we went through with it.

Hecate swished her tail and thrust her head in the air."Who do you think you're talking to?"

"I'll take that as a yes, then," I said.

As Asher and I headed for the door, I offered him my hand, which he took without hesitation. After tonight, I would miss it.

We pressed ourselves to the wall on one side of the door and waited. The siren continued wailing outside, the memory room a pocket of silence in which I could hear myself think. But as we waited, I realised that a low hum reverberated throughout theroom, almost so low that I couldn't hear it. Were the memories making it?

If this didn't work, we would end up buried underneath this place along with a bunch of other skeletons of people who had pissed the Franklins off. At least I might get to haunt these assholes if that happened, though.

A jar flew off the shelf and smashed on the floor, sending the cloud of memory spilling across the stone. It rolled around like an incoming storm until it dissipated into the air, with only a few crackles of lightning left to pepper the atmosphere before they vanished, too. When I thought about it, I wondered how much energy a pent up memory stored, especially if it had been given time to stew in a jar.

Another several went flying, smashing all over each other, and two of the memories collided in a cascade of sparks. They rolled into each other, almost as if they were wrestling until they melded together into one larger cloud.

Oh hell yeah, this was about to get interesting.

Hecate, as usual, didn't do this task by halves and knocked at least two dozen jars off the shelves before a whole group of people either dressed in robes or pyjamas flooded into the room. Just in time to watch several of the memory clouds join the first two and expand into a raging ball of lightning the size of a trampoline that hovered in the air.

The members of the Franklin family held up their hands to shield their faces as lightning burst from the brand new vortex of memories. Voices shrieked and muttered in the air, echoing around the room as the memories took on a new, audible dimension.

As distractions went, this was good.

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