Page 43 of Kiss of Smoke

But something else caught my eye.

It was a lamp about a foot tall, topped with a silver filigree dome and handle. There was no candle in it, its pale blue glass panes dark. Like the stone and spoon, red warning labels to not touch were posted all around it.

I frowned at it, cocking my head as I stared.

I’d seen a lamp like that before…and it had been lit up. But not with a candle, with glowing, phantasmic white orbs.

Where the fuck had I seen it? It scratched at the back of my mind, and I looked at the red warning tape lining the shelf the lamp sat on…and finally reached out and carefully picked it up by its handle. I couldn’t hear the guys talking anymore, so they probably wouldn’t hear me unless I shrieked my head off.

I held the lamp well away from my body as I walked, concentrating extremely hard on not running into anything or jostling the dark lamp unnecessarily.

Once or twice, I came across working pixies—who looked at me, then at the lamp, and took off as fast as their wings would carry them.

Robin was going to besopissed.

I finally found the spinning wheel again and turned right, and within a few minutes the guys were back in view.

They’d sorted most of the first box, and had moved on to a second. Jewelry was scattered everywhere in shining mounds.

“Robin,” I said.

They looked up at me, all of them with predatory gazes at the sound of strain in my voice.

Then Robin saw what I was carrying. He swallowed so hard I actually saw his throat move from fifteen feet away, then he held up his hands. “Briallen. Put that downvery carefully.”

I looked down at the lamp, then sat it on an empty end table. The vault seemed oddly silent, every movement echoing, and I realized it was because all the working pixies had completely vanished.

Robin breathed an actual sigh of relief as I delicately rested the handle on the filigree top, and stepped away from it.

“King Arawn’s balls,” Gwyn said weakly, grabbing me as soon as I was out of range and pulling me away from it.

“What is that?” I demanded, pointing to the lamp.

“That’s a soul lamp,” Gwyn and Robin said at the same time. They gave each other a dry look.

“Where did you get a soul lamp, Goodfellow?” Gwyn asked lightly, but there was definite concern under the question. “King Arawn doesn’t just give those out to anybody.”

“I took it from Black Annis’s hoard when we arrested her,” Robin said, still a few shades paler than usual. “It was supposed to be in the Dark Archives, where certain people wouldn’t be able to just reach out and pick it up.”

He said that in a very pointed way that felt a little personal.

“What does a soul lamp do?” I asked, looking at it even more curiously. It was pretty, sure, but didn’t look overtly dangerous. On the other hand, most dangerous Fae artifacts didn’t.

“You can keep souls inside them to use as fuel for the darkest magics,” Gwyn said, his arm tight around me. “Instead of carrying them on to the Otherworld. Like necromancy, it’s a hanging offense around these parts.”

“With good reason,” Jack said, circling the table with the lamp on it. “Why do you ask, Briallen?”

“Because I’ve seen one before.”

They all stopped what they were doing and stared at me, barely breathing.

“Where?” Jack asked sharply.

“I don’t know. I don’t remember.” I closed my eyes to ignore those stares, trying to think of where I’d seen it.

Darkest Night? No…there had been torches, but nothing like this.

Maybe in downtown Avilion…but if a soul lamp was so deadly and illegal, nobody would’ve been carrying one of them around…

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