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“Knitting?” Alec asked me, perplexed.

“Yes, knitting.”

Alec could barely keep a straight face. “You can knit? You, the Angel of Chaos?”

“That’s right,” I said defensively. “And I’m getting pretty good at it. Right, Stash?”

“Indeed.” Stash nodded. “Leda has improved greatly. She no longer gets her whole body tangled up in the yarn.”

This time, Alec did not succeed in keeping a straight face. Enthusiastic laughter poured out of his mouth.

“Watch out, Stash, or I’ll find some way to incorporate my knitting into my dirty fighting,” I warned him.

Stash smiled. “Oh, but you’re not supposed to be fighting.”

“I wouldn’t be fighting. I’d be knitting. You’d just happen to get trapped in my yarn.”

“That would be some pretty messy knitting,” Arabelle said.

“Or some pretty precise knitting,” Octavian added.

“Your friends from Heaven’s Army talk too much,” Nyx told me.

“That’s what makes them so fun,” I chuckled. “But I guess we should start looking for the grimoire.”

“Yes. We should,” Nyx said seriously.

Apparently, she wasn’t going to kick off her boots and get her feet wet. I wondered what the First Angel did for fun. Probably something really wild, like reorganizing her filing cabinet. Or optimizing the contents of her refrigerator.

Nyx and I walked along the sunny Silver Shore, our boots firmly on our feet. Bella and Harker came with us, along with my trusty guards from Heaven’s Army. And Arina came too. I didn’t think she’d truly relax until her children were safe. I wanted to help her accomplish that. Children didn’t deserve to be caught in the middle of this power struggle between deities and Guardians.

I glanced at Arina. “Do you sense the grimoire anywhere nearby?”

“No, but there’s something else. A weird kind of magic. Magic that’s concealing something.”

“Maybe it’s the grimoire,” I said, feeling optimistic. “River, that rogue Guardian I met in the Vault, told me there are other secret stashes around the world. She confirmed that the Silver Shore is one of them.”

“Where is this concealing magic coming from?” Nyx asked Arina.

Arina pointed at one of the smaller lakes.

“In the lake?” Bella asked.

Arina nodded.

“Well, it looks like we’ll be taking off our boots after all,” I said to Nyx, triumphant.

Obviously, she was positively overjoyed.

“So it would seem,” she said drily.

I pulled off my boots. The moment my toes dug into the sand, I smiled. It really was as velvety-soft as it looked. Everyone else was removing their shoes as well.

“I wonder if there’s a sea monster inside the lake,” Punch said hopefully.

“Unlikely,” Patch told him. “Something at the Silver Shore repels monsters.”

But Punch wasn’t giving up hope just yet. “Then maybe just a really big shark?”