Page 147 of Cherish

I fire off a quick text to Remy, but I have no idea when he’ll answer. I groan. It really never occurred to me that Remy might be wrong.

“Thisis where the Curator is?” Jaxon asks, looking around the ruins skeptically. “Did we get the wrong Serapeum?”

“This is the only one in Alexandria,” Heather replies, her phone in her hand as she scrolls through information about the city. “There’s another one in the south of Egypt, but, like…he dropped a pin. It’s gotta be this one.”

“No, this is definitely it,” Macy says, walking straight toward the crumpled ruins. “Can’t you feel it?”

“Feel what?” Flint asks, looking intrigued.

“The magic.” Macy holds out her hands in front of her, like the ruins are a bonfire she’s warming herself in front of. “It’s everywhere in this place, but”—she pauses as she walks around the relics—“especially here.”

The place she’s standing doesn’t look like anything special. The ruins are no more impressive here than anywhere else—just large white bricks dented by time and weather and more than two millennia of people touching and marveling over them.

They’re cool to look at, absolutely, but there’s nothing magical in them that I can see. Nothing that remains of the early power and potential of this place.

That doesn’t mean Macy’s wrong, however. Her magic is very different than my own earth magic, and who knows what she’s picking up here? I hope it’s something, hope we can somehow follow it to where we need to be. Because otherwise, it feels like this is a bust.

I’ve seen how the Bloodletter and the Crone live, in houses that reflect who they really are. Even the ice cave my grandmother trapped herself in for a thousand years was loaded with her personality. I have no idea where Jikan lives, but I’m sure it’s the same for him. So why on earth would the Curator choose to live here?

Plus, on a purely logistical level, where? There isn’t a building in sight that might actually act as a home for anyone.

“Any ideas on where we should knock?” Eden asks, looking as unimpressed by the place as I am. “Because I’m not seeing a front door, let alone a welcome mat.”

“Well, we need to do something,” Heather says, her usual practicality ringing in her voice as she scrolls through her phone. “Because according to the site I’m on, this is it. The ruins here, the Victory Pillar there, and the catacombs down below. The temple is long gone, as are the statues to the twelve Olympian gods that once stood here. We’re not going to find anything else, because nothing else is here. Some of the most noted historians in the world have signed off on that fact.”

“They don’t know what they’re talking about,” Macy says. “They can’t feel the magic the way I can.”

“Is it possible the magic you’re feeling is coming from the ruins?” Eden asks. “Places like this, where so much has happened throughout history, have their own energy to them. But it’s the energy of everything that’s happened there rather than—”

“That’s not it.” Macy shakes her head, then walks in a small circle right in front of the pillar. And does the same thing again. And again. And again.

“This is it,” she repeats after several long, silent seconds have passed.

“This is what?” I ask, glancing at Hudson to see what he thinks of this whole thing.

But his narrowed gaze is focused on Macy as she holds her hands straight in front of her and murmurs something I can’t quite make out.

“What’s she doing?” Heather stage-whispers to me.

But I just shake my head because I don’t have a clue. This is the first time I’ve ever seen Macy do something like this.

Seconds turn into minutes as Macy continues to say what I can only assume is a spell under her breath. But nothing happens for what feels like the longest time, and I’m about to give up. To start trying to figure out where the other temple to Serapis was built in the south of Egypt and head there instead. Maybe we really did get the place wrong.

Except, just as I’m about to turn away in defeat, the air in front of us begins to shimmer with what looks an awful lot like a cloud of gold dust.

79

A-Muse Bouche Me

“What the hell is that?” Jaxon asks as we all scramble back as one. Everyone but Macy and Eden, that is, both of whom walk closer to the shimmer.

“I’d say it was a mirage,” Eden comments quietly. “But we’re not in the middle of the desert.”

“This isn’t the mirage,” Macy tells her as the dust solidifies into a gorgeous building. “The ruins you saw when we first walked up are the actual mirage.Thisis what’s really here.”

What “this” is is a huge, circular building made almost entirely of gold and silver. At first glance, it sort of looks like an arena or a coliseum, with its high walls and round shape.

But that’s where the similarity ends. A closer inspection makes it obvious that nothing else about the building is made for fighting—or for trade.

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