Page 36 of Disabling Relics for Dummies
“So, her thing is books, and this is mine. Key is an expert on the cult, and relics are my specialty. The cult didn’t make this box. It’s too advanced. We have this theory that since they weren’t witches, they wouldn’t have been able to call the elements to open it.”
Gabriel ran his finger over the copper puzzle box.
“Ripley told me you think Valentine is under the influence of the cult. How do you know someone didn’t come along later and plant this who also got whispered to?”
That was also a theory, but I doubted it. Necromancy didn’t need an eclipse. If someone had gone to the site with that intent, the spirits would have killed them because the time wasn’t right. They didn’t want to be noticed or raised until this eclipse.
“No one knew about the underground chamber until Valentine was able to get close enough to the ruins,” Key said. “This site isn’t like other haunted sites humans flock to for entertainment. The locals don’t advertise and try to cash in on the ghosts like many places. The only reason they let Valentine do an excavation there was that he signed a contract in blood promising the rites would be done and they’d be rid of the ghosts.”
“How didwerethe rites done?” Gabriel asked. “Lilith said they weren’t witches.”
“I drink, and I know things,” Key said.
“Dude, you are the only person I’ve met that is as tall as a god. You can’t quote Tyrion Lannister with no context,” Gabriel said.
Key just shrugged.
“The Cult of the Aether Sisters were hybrids. Bastardizations of shifters and witches, but not the same because the god that created them was different. You would literally never need the knowledge to do the rites for them because it’s already been done. Can we focus on the box?”
“Yeah, sure, but if anything crazy pops out, you tell your sister I had my reservations about doing this.”
“Nothing is going to pop out,” I said. “This is just the first puzzle. They’ll get more complicated the more we unlock.”
“Shall we pick elements?” Ravyn said.
Here went nothing.
Chapter28
Ravyn
Iknew Gabriel didn’t get a scholarship to a magical academy, even though he should have. People were dicks. I didn’t know Key’s first name, much less where he went to school, and that should have bothered me, considering he was sleeping in my bed, but it didn’t. Still, I knew every person in this warehouse was proficient at calling the elements.
No one was going to blow shit up, calling fire, or cause a thunderstorm in here like what was going on outside. Some of my classmates did that at the academy. Our Elemental Magic professor had patience in spades because some people did it more than once.
“I get fire,” Key said.
Everyonewanted fire. It was badass and the hardest to master. Only seniors were allowed to play with the elements in their dorm rooms. If you needed to light candles or incense and you weren’t old enough, you had to use a lighter like a human. Way too many freshmen nearly burned the dorms down trying.
Everyone thought fire was the best, but I liked air too. It was also difficult to control. You could call a gentle breeze and blow out your candles, or you could uproot an entire tree. I claimed wind.
Gabriel played well on my sister’s team, and he was a good fit here too. He didn’t argue with anyone about an element or brag about his skills. Killian took earth, and Gabriel grabbed water.
I wasdyingto know what would be revealed with the first puzzle, but my phone rang, and it was my twin. She didn’t keep her men on leashes, and she never called during work hours. We texted all the time, but phone calls never happened unless it was an emergency. Unfortunately, my twin sister had been having a lot of those lately.
“It’s Ripley. I have to get this.”
“She’d better be okay,” Gabriel growled.
If she was calling me and not him, it wasn’t a library emergency, but something was up. I went to one of the side rooms for privacy,
“What’s up?”
“Girl, I fucked up. I think I’m in trouble.”
“Tell me what you did, and we’ll figure out how to make it go away. Reyson is probably better at making corpses go away than I am, though.”
“I don’t think there’s a way out of this. So, Reyson let it slip he sees babies in the possibilities for my future. I was thinking pretty far in the future. We hada lotof sex to celebrate the victory in Hell. Like, many orgies, and we broke out all my good toys. Bram did this thing with his tongue piercing that—”
