Page 44 of Deadly Reckoning
Van nods, “Okay, so if it floats and turns black, then the information is a lie and it's been tampered with, but if it just turns black, then no one has messed with it, and the information was written down as a lie?”
Ransom nods, “Yes.”
“Well, I’m glad we cleared that up,” River smirks. Adding sarcastically, “This has no chance of becoming confusing at all.”
I chuckle, and his smile gets wider.
Raiden takes charge of writing down the things that we need, and then we all watch as Ransom does his thing.
Magic sparks at his fingertips as he concentrates on the pieces of paper. Each one does what it’s supposed to do.
“Looks like it works,” Coen says.
Ransom nods, “Yeah, everything did what it should. I’m actually pretty surprised it usually takes me a couple of rounds of tweaking things before I get it right when I try a new spell.”
Doc grins, “I’m not surprised, you’re the best when it comes to this sort of thing.”
“Let’s test them then,” Reed says, sounding impatient. “I want to see what else Neith is going to be capable of.”
Griff nods, “Me too.”
“I think it would definitely be smart to get a heads up, just in case I accidentally nearly set everything on fire again,” I reply worriedly.
“Oh, maybe the books will have information about your different colored fire?” Raiden suggests, looking excited to get some answers to some of the questions that we have.
“That would be great,” I agree. “Especially since it seems that it’s a lot more playful than normal fire.”
Griff grins, “I might get my scorched pants framed.”
I burst out laughing, “Hey, at least it didn’t burn you.”
“Good point,” Griff chuckles.
Ransom grins, “Oh, before I forget, I’ve added a fireproof spell to your room, so if you do go all firery goddess on us again, you won’t need to take a midnight swim in the kelpie lake.”
My heartbeat picks up pace at his compliment. I like that one, and I blow him a kiss. “Thank you,” I tell him.
“No problem.” He grins. “Alright, let’s lay all the books out on the table and get them tested.”
We quickly do as he’s asked, and this time, when he does the spell, it’s a hell of a lot more powerful. The hair on my arms stands up as the static from the magic charges the air, and he guides it to do what he wishes.
“Huh,” I mutter. “I wasn’t quite expecting them to all be wrong. I thought at least one of them would have some information in it that was going to be helpful.”
“Me too,” Ransom says with a disappointed expression.
“So that’s five books that have been altered and have lies in them, which obviously makes sense if someone has gone to the effort of altering them in the first place,” Doc says thoughtfully as he looks over the floating books.
“Yeah, and then it looks like three of them were written with false information to start with,” Reed says. He picks one up, “Which is interesting because they appear to be quite old.” His eyes widen as he opens the cover of the book he’s holding and adds, “Really old, this one is nearly a thousand years old.”
“Whoa,” River mutters, reaching for it. “That’s pretty cool.”
“So false information has been spread for a long time about angels, then,” Raiden summarizes. “If they were hunted, then that kind of makes sense. Not that we know whether they were hunted or not. All we know is that your mom was the last known one alive. I would find it hard to believe that they just all died off naturally, so my mind immediately assumed that they had been hunted. We’ll have to ask Sully about it.”
“There’s a lot that we don’t know, and a lot that we need to know. Sully should hopefully know why your mom was the last one alive. That should be a fairly universal thing to know,” I say. “I think we should see if we can find any books about angels elsewhere and do the same spell. If we can’t, then I’m going to suggest the Obsidian Market again.”
Van frowns but nods, “Okay, we’ll exhaust all of our options first and then go to the Obsidian market.” He looks around at everyone, “Agreed?”
“Agreed,” Coen says, not bothered by the suggestion at all, but then again, why would he be? He’s dealt with them almost as much as I have. Hell, he has his own contacts there. However, I’ve probably used my contacts a lot more recently than he’s used his.
