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“Inferno.” Dom nodded in encouragement, though he looked as lost as everyone else likely felt. “Inferno, okay. I hear you. What about these other ones here?”

Lightly, she tapped her index finger on the third one. “Yellow. Aether.” Her eyes settled on the fourth. “Green. Terra Firma.”

Max glanced at Darien, but his expression gave nothing away.

She paused, gesturing to the gap of black velvet between the green cylinder and the purple one. “Missing,” she whispered.

Dominic said, “Blue….” He asked her a question in Ilevyn that Max thought he understood the gist of, and when she replied, he found that he was right.

“Blue,” said Blue with a firm nod. “Mist. Missing.”

Malakai tried to ask a question. “Why would blue—”

“Shut the hell up,” Dominic interrupted, dark hair swaying as he glared at Malakai over a shoulder. “Can’t you see that she’s speaking?”

Malakai’s lip curled back over his teeth as he pointed toward the kitchen. “If you want to pick up where we left off, Dominic, I see a meat cleaver on the counter—”

“Please,” Darien said in a voice as tired as he looked, “shut up. Both of you.”

Dominic said, “I didn’t—”

“Shut. Up. Please.” Darien blinked heavily. “I am tired.”

As soon as their grumbling quieted down, both Malakai and Dom uncurling their fists, Blue moved onto the purple one. “Aether.”

Next was white. “The Eye.”

This time, Darien looked at Max first. Max could tell from the look on his face that Darien’s mind had drifted to Loren. Loren—and the aura she’d poured out of her body on Kalendae, shielding the whole city from the explosion that would’ve leveled every building and killed every person, leaving nothing standing.

Whenever Loren’s aura wasn’t white, it was rainbow. Aside from black, it was every single color in this briefcase, and then some. Whatever these cylinders were, it seemed they might be connected to Loren. Possibly. Max just wasn’t sure how.

Last was black. A liquid so dark, it looked like bottled ink. There was less of this shade—and the white—than there were the others.

Blue paled, her lips parting. “Void,” she said shakily. Her hand hovered over the glass cylinder, as if she feared touching it. “The Void.”

“What are they?” Darien asked. “Do you know?”

Dominic started to translate his question, but Blue had come far this last while, and she was able to understand Darien’s question on her own.

“Magic,” she said. “Spirit. Soul.” A pause. “Hellseher magic.”

Darien was staring at the containers again. Looking but clearly not seeing. “Auras,” he said, face smoothing with realization. “Aura magic.”

—

Darien snapped the briefcase shut. “We need to get these back to the warehouse before Gaven notices they’re gone, but first I want to find out where they came from, what they’re for…” He looked at the others. “And who’s buying them.” He pulled his phone out of his jeans and scrolled through his list of contacts.

“Want to fill the rest of us in on where your brain’s at?” Malakai asked, watching with crossed arms as Darien paced by the island.

“I’m calling Arthur,” Darien replied. “I want to see if he knows anything about this.” He found Art’s name and hit CALL.

From the moment Blue had identified the contents of the briefcase as aura magic, dread had curled in Darien’s stomach. There was nearly a complete spectrum in that briefcase. Where they came from, he didn’t know. Or maybe who they came from was the better way to put it.

Loren had a rainbow aura. Loren—

Darien forced himself to breathe. Loren was fine; this magic did not belong to her. Blue had said it was hellseher magic. Hellseher.

Three rings later, and Arthur’s voice drifted through the speaker. “I was beginning to think you’d dropped off the face of Terra.”