Page 45 of Malcroix Bones Academy (Bones and Shadow #1)

The first compartment was the furthest from the gravel path, and when I reached the door, I lifted my hand to knock.

Then, hearing students approaching through the trees, laughing and talking loudly, I tried the handle, found it open, and slipped inside.

I locked the door behind me, without really thinking about why I did that, either.

Only then did I look around the dim space.

He was already there.

He hadn’t turned on the overhead lights, but chose instead to surround himself with floating lanterns filled with green and yellow flames, conjured by his own hand.

He gave me a bare glance, then went back to staring at the papers spread out in front of where he sat cross-legged on the floor. I walked over to him and folded my arms.

He glanced up at me finally, frowned, then returned his gaze to the open file in front of him.

“Sit,” he said absently. He glanced to his right, and my eyes followed his to a basket laying on the floor. “I brought food. And coffee. There are cushions over there,” he added, motioning at a few towers of thick pillows stacked along one wall.

I frowned back at him, partly in frustration, but eventually walked over and retrieved a green cushion from one of the stacks. I returned to where he sat, found a clear space to his right, tossed the cushion to the floor, and sank down on top of it.

I pulled my legs into a cross-legged position and waited.

“You don’t want coffee?” He didn’t look up from the file. “I thought you drank it.”

I stared at him. “I do,” I said. “Why would you know that?”

He ignored the question. “Well, have some, then. I’ll be with you in a minute.”

I felt my jaw slowly clench. I reached for the file in front of me. He shocked me by smacking my wrist. Lightly, but sharply enough I jumped.

“Ow.” I glared at him.

“Just give me a bloody minute, will you?” He looked actually annoyed. “I have it all organized. I was going to give you an overview, but I just got this report I’d requested. It’s the latest Praecuri filing.”

I kept my hand on the file a second longer, then slowly withdrew it as my mind ran over what he’d said. The Praecuri were still filing reports on my parents’ death? It had been nearly ten years. That had to be odd, didn’t it?

After the faintest pause, I leaned to my right. I opened the basket, found a large thermos with two mugs, placed both mugs on the stone floor, and unscrewed the thermos’ top.

“You want some?” I asked.

“Yes,” he said, without looking up.

Biting back a sarcastic comment that was at least partly nerves, I poured us each full mugs. I had to admit, the coffee smelled divine. He’d already added milk and sugar, so I simply took one mug and placed it by his hand.

I sipped mine while I waited for him, and it tasted even better than it smelled.

I was about a third of the way into my cup, and had nearly lost patience again, when he placed that last paper on a stack to his left, and picked up his own mug. He took a long couple of swallows, then cleared his throat.

“All right,” he said, business-like. “I already know you’re going to want to read through every detail of this, but there are a few things I wanted to tell you to save time.”

He looked at me, and the expression there threw me. I don’t think I’d ever seen him look at me so guilelessly, other than right after he put his magic in me. He’d certainly not done so for a single conversation we’d attempted.

“A few weird things.” He motioned gracefully at the stacks of paper. “I managed to get personnel files from that day. I’ve narrowed down everyone on it who could have been there, in that same part of London where you and your parents came up from the Underground.”

He set down his mug and leaned over the stacks, plucking out a piece of paper that looked like a list. He placed it in my lap, and I blinked down at it.

“That’s the roster for the day your parents got killed.

” He took another swallow of coffee. “The starred names are the ones who conceivably could’ve been in London.

I have the full list of everyone listed as an employee of the Praecuri during that time, also,” he added, laying several clipped-together sheets of paper on top of the first. “And I’ve got transcripts of some of the back and forth between the various teams and central command. ”

He picked up another file, paused, and looked at me.

“First weird thing,” he said, laying the file carefully on my lap. “There was a confidential informant. That’s how they found out your parents would arrive in London that day. They must’ve kept that detail from the press, because it’s the first I’d ever heard of it.”

My throat closed. “An informant? I thought there was some kind of trigger? Or a trace on her?”

“I saw no reference to either thing,” he said.

My jaw tightened. “Who was the informant?”

He slowly shook his head. “I don’t know.

I haven’t been able to find that out. Which makes me think it must be someone well-connected.

They managed to keep their name off absolutely everything.

” He studied my face when I remained silent.

“I can make a few guesses about who it wasn’t, based on who they interviewed and the nature of some of those interviews, but it would only be a guess.

It’s possible the informant had an interview conducted purely to throw suspicion off their involvement. ”

I stared down at the file, frowning without opening it.

“But it would’ve had to be someone who knew they were coming?” I clarified.

“Likely, yes.”

“So someone my mother trusted?”

“Possibly, yes. Or someone who found her on their own.”

“What are the other weird things?” I asked.

He exhaled, looking back down at the files.

“There’s two. One is how the hell they never found your parents in the first place.

” His gold eyes met mine, probing. “It’s fucking amazing your mother was able to hide all of you so well, given how the Praecuri operate, and especially since she didn’t seem to have suppressed your magic.

It’s impressive to the point of being downright odd.

” His eyes flickered to my throat. “Do you know anything about that? How she did it?”

“No,” I said. “What’s the other weird thing?”

He looked at me a second longer, then averted his gaze.

“The spell they used.” He combed his hair out of his face with his fingers, then motioned with the same hand over the papers.

“It’s not registered. I can’t find record of it anywhere.

Which means it’s likely an old family curse, something that never made it to the books after they passed the registration laws. ”

“Why a family curse?” I asked. “Why not just something no one registered?”

“Curses leave imprints,” he explained, no hint of the usual condescension in his voice as he rifled through papers.

“Generally speaking, if a curse is new, it’s easy to trace.

There are direct lines to the beings used to implement the magic, and those can be traced to specific primals.

It’s really hard to scrub a direct line to a Magical or group of Magicals on a new curse.

For older, familial curses, there are far more primals involved, more Magicals, more beings, which muddies the origin.

The more a curse has been used, the harder it is to trace. ”

He raised an eyebrow, glancing at me. “It’s why they passed the registration laws, to get as many as possible on the books. Both to regulate them, but also so they’d get a ping any time a particularly dangerous curse got used.”

I couldn’t help but find this fascinating, and pursed my lips.

“Couldn’t they trace the family?” I asked. “Don’t most of the old families use familial primals?”

“Yes,” he shrugged. “Not all, but many do.”

“But they couldn’t trace this to a particular family?” I clarified.

“No,” he said. “Not that the Praecuri documented, at least. But honestly, even if they could, that wouldn’t necessarily make it easier to trace to whoever used it for this.

Confusing one family member’s primal with another is common with familials.

More common than with ordinary primals. And it might not have been a member of the family that used it. ”

I opened my mouth, but he cut me off.

“It’s complicated, Shadow. Tracing curses is a nightmare at the best of times. If a curse is older than a few centuries, unregistered, and buried under a dozen generations of use, without any trail of origin, it’s near-impossible. They’re ghosts.”

“So likely a family curse, then,” I muttered. “And old. And that’s unusual, I take it? Someone pulling out an old, unregistered curse to kill someone?”

The seriousness in his eyes bewildered me all over again.

It was like talking to a completely different person.

“The use of a familial curse isn’t that strange, in and of itself,” he said.

“Especially given who was likely behind these deaths. Everything about this points to Dark Cathedral, and their membership skews heavily towards the oldest families in Magique… the ones most likely to hide behind ancient murder curses.”

His eyes returned to the pages in front of him.

“But the fact I’ve not even found rumors of this exact spell is strange,” he admitted.

“I’ve looked through the records, everything they’ve got in the library here, and nothing fits.

I even wondered if the Praecuri deliberately mis-described the curse and what it does, to make tracing it harder.

But, frankly, what they describe is what I remember, too?”

Seeming to realize what he was saying, he stopped. When he went on, his voice was more subdued.

“You’ll have to tell me if the same is true for you,” he said.

I felt my hands grow cold.

When I opened my mouth, he spoke before I could.

“Either way,” he said, brusque. “Barring the possibility of tampering by the Praecuri, I’m guessing our murderer isn’t one of the obvious culprits. They could still be involved, of course?”

“Obvious culprits?” I asked. “Who would those be?”