Page 42 of The Grip of Death
He shrugged. I frowned, but this time for real. I understood if Reza was a little tipsy — it was a party, after all — but howstrange for him to completely forget about Gertrude’s oven. I mean, he was sitting at her desk, drinking tea and nodding along to everything.
“There you are,” Niko hissed, both their heads poked between us now. “I’ve been looking all over for you, Reza. Sorry, you guys. I’m sure you were enjoying your privacy until Mr. Fifth Glass of Champagne over here so rudely interrupted.”
“I only had six glasses,” Reza protested, grabbing Niko’s face in both hands, cooing contritely. “C’mere,habibi. I wanna kiss you.”
“Oh gods, Reza. Stop.” Niko had gone red in the face, as much from embarrassment as from anger, I imagined, but maybe from a little bit of titillation, too. He dragged Reza from our table, shaking his head apologetically. “Let’s leave them be. We have to go sign the guest book. Big, boozy baby.”
Reza stumbled after him, eyes all googly, love drunk and also regular drunk all at once.
“Thanks for the cake!” Xander called out, his portion already half gone. I was about to get started on mine when I noticed something about the guest book and the podium.
I should have seen it before, but it only came clearer to me now that Niko had stepped up to it. I’d watched other guests sign the book, but he had a way of holding himself that reminded me so strongly of Xander, how the Grayhaven boys had a particular posture. A straight back, a confidently raised head. He riffled through the book, selected an empty spot for him and Reza to sign, then smoothed the pages down on either side.
A chill ran down my spine. The way he stood there, the way both of Niko’s palms lay flat on the pages — all I could think of was Xander assuming his position to harness the power of the arcane engine. He’d stood exactly this same way, his hands pressed against the control panel, the slab of crystal that we’d intentionally carved into the shape of a book.
Why didn’t I think of this sooner? The external design of the arcane engine, the crystalline book, those had all been improvised, little customizations that I’d made with Preston, Giuseppe, and Master Vikhyat to make the machine our own. Otherwise, the device functioned similarly to its predecessor in every other way.
It had the main body of the machine, then a control panel for magical input, mounted on a pedestal. It was meant to channel and amplify the essence of the mage who used it. Lobelia, Kaoru, Beatrice, and Xander had all tested our version of the arcane engine, to varying degrees of explosive effect.
But the explosion at the Halls of Making, the one that had actually destroyed the guild the first time — who was the mage who stood at the pedestal?
Who tested it and caused the blast heard around the Black Market?
“Jack?” Xander waved his hand in front of my face. “Hey, Jack? Something wrong with your cake?”
Someone screamed, followed by a wet splat. I stared, bewildered, at the table that held our wedding cake. Buttercream and bits of cake had splattered everywhere, like it had exploded from the inside. A great, ragged split had appeared down the center of the cake, from the bottom all the way to the top tier.
Glassy globes spilled from the inside of the cake, tumbling from the table and shattering to release their unholy payload of purplish crystal. My stomach tangled in knots.
“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.”
Chrysanthemyst petals. And Chrysanthemyst petals stored in the very glass grenades that Niko and I had designed and manufactured, too. I clenched my teeth as the wheels turned and turned in my head.
“This is impossible,” Xander breathed. “I thought we were done with this. Queen Titania is dead. There’s no one left to continue her awful work.”
I shook my head. “I think we’re wrong on that one. Remember, she said she was working with someone from our side of the portal. We just never put it all together.”
My fists tightened as I watched the chaos unfold at our wedding, of all places. The mutilated cake couldn’t possibly contain that many glass eggs, and yet they kept rolling out from its insides like they were issuing forth from a secreted pocket dimension. Which they probably were! This had been planned from the start.
“Arma grandia,” Xander muttered, twin bubbles of red light forming around us, then settling into our skin. I nodded gratefully as the warmth of the shielding spell took hold over my body.
“My masterpiece!” Lore cried, his crystal zipping between our heads, weaving the path of a distressed bumblebee. “Someone destroyed my masterpiece! Oh, Jackson, Xander, why?”
Xander pursed his lips, fingers curling as he prepared his spells. “Sorry, Lore. It was so beautiful, too.”
“Guess that rules you out, Lore.” His bawling blue crystal glowed a threatening red. “I’m kidding! Sorry. Bad joke. Someone clearly gained access to the cake and stuffed it full of these godsforsaken grenades.”
Lore’s crystal flashed blue and red, vacillating between despair and fury. “But who would do such a thing?”
I knew he was only in denial. He knew. Xander already knew, too.
“The cake was stored in your workshop at Mother Dough, wasn’t it?” Xander began kindly. “And the guild did commission several crates of Jack and Niko’s glass eggs.”
The colors drained from Lore’s body, leaving his crystal an eerie, milky white. “Gertrude Goodness. She used me. Did I ever deserve my place at the guild? Was I ever worth — no. She will pay for this.”
“Provided we can find her,” I said, searching the crowd, itching to punch something, or someone. “But what if she has something else in store? And we need to nullify these Chrysanthemysts before they take over the gardens.”
They were just as unstable and virulent as before, the petals taking root and almost instantly erupting into jagged, twisted vines, the crystalline segments as terrible as they were beautiful, designed to cut, maim, and corrupt.
