Page 93 of Dragon Fires Everywhere
“Pretty sure?” I ask.
She looks at me with her bejeweled Revelare gaze. “He was in the window. He was real.”
And she can’t lie out loud. So that means it’s the absolute truth.
We stare at each other. Then at the crow, who is standing there, half in shadow with his head tilted to one side, staringright back.
Rebekah and Frost appear then, and Zander reappears next to Ellowyn. “Jacob is trying to maneuver Emerson out of an impromptuspeech. Apparently the vote has almost gone in Azrael’s favor. She just needs two more,” he says, his gaze on me. “Then they’llcatch up.”
He’ll be free. He’ll befree.Once he is, I can deal with all the Azrael-ness of it all, but for right now, I have to think about this violet-eyed bird.
I hurry a few steps forward into the alley because the bird has started hopping again. He’s almost out of sight.
We reach the end of the alley at a fence line. On the other side of the fence is a parking lot. It’s not the most beautifulsetting—except, when we arrive, something sparkles around us.
Magic, but not a magic I recognize.
If I have to describe it in terms of anything I’ve seen, it’s a little bit like Azrael’s smoke.
And a little army of crows sits along that fence line, there at the end of the alley.
They’re not justsitting, I realize. Not the way crows do all the time, all over the place. There’s a certainintent. Apurpose, even, as if theyarrangedthemselves there—
My breath goes a little shallow. Are these crows magical creatures? A different sort of fabulae?
But how were they freed if they are?
The biggest bird among them flies forward. It has something in its beak. It sets the envelope down in the middle of all thatsparkling magic, on something like a tiny podium. Then it simply... flies away. And the others follow, one after the next.
Like a parade of crows.
And then there are no more birds and no more swirling magic. Only the end of an alley and an envelope. I move forward to touchit, but Ellowyn holds me back.
“This feels like an epically bad idea, Georgie,” she mutters.
“Cosign,” Rebekah agrees from behind us.
“By all means,” Frost says with scathing sarcasm, “pick up the magic envelope delivered by a full murder of crows in a darkalley in midwinter. What could go wrong?”
“I hate agreeing with him,” Zander practically growls. “On anything. But give me a break, Georgie. At least wait for Emersonand Jacob before you jump into the next suicide mission.”
But the script on the front is a looping, fancy calligraphy. And it says my name.
Not my nickname.
Georgina, it reads.
Jacob and Emerson appear. Emerson is clearly worried, but she’s listening. “It was on the book cover this morning,” I tellthem.
I describe the scene in detail and the necklace the crows gave me in that picture.
“I know this is an envelope, not a necklace,” I say before anyone else can, “but I think I’m supposed to read it. It has myname on it, after all.” I look back at my coven, especially Emerson. “This book has been nothing but a positive force forus,” I remind her. “Your—ourgrandmother wrote it.”
Eventually she nods at me. A green light.
I pick up the envelope and open it carefully, then pull out a card.
It’s ornate. Beautiful drawings of trees and many crows, with purple-and-green gems along the top. Along the bottom, there’s an intricately painted scene from the cemetery across the way.
