Page 10 of Romancing the Orc

No, now I can read them as easily as if they were English.

I gasp, my heart racing as shock courses through me. How can I suddenly read them? My eyes dart across them, picking out individual words that hold no cohesive meaning, because each picture shows only a fragment of a sentence.

“Ah ha! I knew I was right.” Elton jabs a finger toward me. “Theyarethe same symbols.”

God, who even says “ah ha” these days? What did this guy do as a teen? Take classes on how to become a Bond villain at some fancy prep school?

He snaps his fingers, and the goons enter the tent. At Elton’s imperious wave, they pick me up, chair and all, and carry me over to a large desk. More photographs cover its surface, carefully laid out until their overlapping shapes make a poster-sized picture of a wall carved with the runes.

“Where’s this from?” I ask, desperate to know anything that will help me better understand my family’s history.

“An ancient building in the center of the island.”

There’s an entire building inscribed with the same language as my family journal? This language has been one of the biggest mysteries of my life. To be this close to a place that might have answers… “Can I see the building?”

“That will not be necessary.” He points at the photographs and says in the plummiest of tones, “You’re going to translate this for me, so I can use the magical artifact it explains.”

I can’t let this asshole discover I can read the text easily—anyone willing to kidnap a woman because he thinks shemightknow something isn’t the kind of guy you can trust to let you go if you give him what he wants.

“There’s no way I can do that! How am I supposed to work like this?” I jiggle from side to side, emphasizing my tied-down limbs. “Besides, I don’t have any of my reference materials,” I lie. I don’t need anything to read the photos, but I also don’t want to give in to this asshole.

He snaps his fingers again. God, even his finger snaps sound obnoxiously imperious. I never knew it was possible to hate the sound of a finger snap, but here we are.

One of the goons sets a small table beside me, and the other places a brown, leather-bound book on top. The old journal is scuffed, the edges worn to soft beige by constant handling.

Another zip of shock goes through me, this one tinged with fear. This is my ancestor’s journal, the one that should be safely back at my childhood home in Ferndale Falls.

“What? How? If you hurt my parents—!” I don’t even know how to finish that sentence.

“Now, now. No one’s been hurt,” Elton says. “Klaus here is surprisingly light on his feet. Aren’t you, Klaus?”

Goon number two grunts, and says in a German accent, “Their back door wasn’t even locked.”

“Of course it wasn’t!” I blurt. “That’s the whole point of living in a small town full of people you know and trust!”

A wave of homesickness washes over me. I left Ferndale Falls for New York City a few years ago, hoping on-site networking in the biggest city in the publishing world would help my career. But I miss my hometown, with its gingerbread-trimmed houses and adorable Main Street. These days, I spend so much time holed up inside my apartment writing that I could live anywhere. I’d have moved back already if the town wasn’t shrinking, losing young people each year. I took a hard look at the dating-pool options when I visited for Christmas, and let’s just say the pickings were beyond slim—they were downright skeletal.

They weren’t Brokk, a little voice whispers in the back of my mind. I tell the voice to shut up. It’s not as if a hot-shot model from the big city would tank his career to live in a small town.

Goon number one—still nameless—flicks open a knife and cuts the zip tie holding my right wrist. Then Klaus sets a blank pad of paper and a pencil on the small table beside the journal.

“There now.” Elton rubs his hands together. “I think that’s everything you’ll need. Let’s get cracking, shall we? I want my name plastered across all the news headlines by the end of the week. We’ll see what dear old Dad has to say about my ‘hobbies’ then.”

As if I care about his daddy issues. I glare up at him. “What do I get if I do this?”

“Money.” He eyes my pissed-off face and ups the ante. “Freedom.” When I don’t change my expression, he adds, “Your family journal back.”

Want flickers through me, and he sees it, grinning. God, I’ve got such a shit poker face. My old friend Hannah used to beat me constantly every time we played games. There’s no point in hiding that he’s won.

“Fine. I’ll need to refresh my familiarity with the language by reading something I already know.” I touch the front of the journal. It’s a lie. I’m dying to see if this new ability to translate the runes means I can finally truly understand my ancestor’s story. In the past, I gleaned hints of meaning, but I could never tell if I was actually reading or making up my own tale.

“Fine.” Elton parrots my word back to me, letting me know that it’s not actually fine, but he’s not going to argue… for now. “Klaus, you’re with me. Vito, watch her.” He strolls from the tent, the blond goon following him, while the dark-haired one takes up a wide-legged position in the doorway.

I guess they don’t consider me much of a threat, even with one hand untied. Which is accurate, if I’m being honest. Even ifI got free of this chair, what could I do? I’m on an island in the middle of nowhere.

I pull the journal toward me and flip open the cover. Spidery handwriting in beautiful calligraphy covers the first page:

A True and Accurate Accounting

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