Page 72 of Demon with Benefits
“But that’s not saying much.”
Marie nodded. “He came around the counter and—” She swallowed. “He grabbed me. He told me to open the ward over the cellar door or he would kill me.” She looked at her hands. “I did what he said. I was so scared. I should have fought—”
“No.” Suyin spoke firmly enough to make Marie’s gaze flick back to her. “If you fought, he would have killed you, just like he threatened. You did the right thing. Then what happened?”
“After I opened the door, he went into the basement, and I was too scared to follow. As soon as he was out of sight...” Again, she looked away. “I ran. I’m so sorry, Suyin—”
“Why are you apologizing? You ran and you saved yourself. You were smart. You survived.”
Tears welled in her eyes. “I feel like I failed you.”
“You’ve been practicing for barely three years. What would you have done against a demon that powerful?”
“He was powerful?” Her voice hitched. “How do you know?”
Suyin didn’t answer. “Did you see what he took?”
Marie-Thérèse shook her head. “After he went downstairs, I left the store and called you. I was too scared to come back until after you arrived.”
“All right. I’m going downstairs to have a look. Do you want to stay up here or come with me?”
“I’ll go with you.”
They descended the cellar stairs together. The first thing Suyin checked was the cloaking spell that kept Iris and Lily safe from Valefor. She should have been surprised to find it untouched, but she wasn’t.
She turned and went to the bookshelves. She didn’t need to search the entire room. There was a tingling at the back of her neck that told her exactly what was missing.
It’s the fucking dream.She’d known this was coming. This was precisely why they’d started working on those wards, but apparently, the effort was too little too late.
At the end of the last bookshelf on the bottom row, there was space between two faded leather-bound texts that confirmed her instincts.
Suyin sank into a crouch and stared at the empty space, a million questions running through her head, the predominant one beingWhy?
She’d held onto this book for most of her life, and now it was gone. When her mother had given it to her, she’d told her to guard it with her life, and Suyin had done her best, though she’d never fully understood its significance.
It may have been written by the father she’d never known, but to her, it was a bunch of gibberish. The ramblings of a lunatic. Diagrams, graphs, charts, and formulas that didn’t make sense. Spells that didn’t do anything. Sketches of human anatomy that weren’t accurate. Pages of text written in the Sheolic language, the tongue of black magic that a witch was never to dabble in.
Suyin had never bothered to translate more than the first few chapters. The book was huge, and what she’d learned from those pages hadn’t made any sense to her.
But then the dream had come.
And now the book was gone.
“What does it mean?” she murmured to herself. “Why now?”
“Suyin?” Marie-Thérèse’s voice drew her back to the present. “What is missing?”
Suyin stood and faced her. “A grimoire. An old one.”
“Which one?”
“The Book of Gamigin.”
Marie frowned. “I’ve never heard of that one.”
“It’s very obscure, and there was only one copy of it ever made.”And I just fucking lost it.
“It wasn’t scanned into the computer system? We were very careful when we updated the files last summer.”
