Page 47 of Malcroix Bones Academy (Bones and Shadow #1)

Confidence

“Anything?” he asked, combing his hair out of his face with another swipe of his fingers.

He now looked hot, sweaty, and slightly annoyed. The space felt close, and too warm, after being in there for so long. Pieces of my long hair stuck to my neck and face, even after I’d put most of it up in a makeshift bun.

Even our primals seemed grouchy.

Caelum’s dragon clacked its jawbone from his shoulder, and made clicking and chuffing sounds in his ear, like it wanted him to know it was both bored and irritated. My monocerus paced all over the magical compartment, and occasionally rammed its horn into one of the cushions along the wall.

“I’m still looking at their attempts to trace the spell,” he added. “The two mallachti they had working on the case documented everything they tried. But they have their own shorthand, and I didn’t think to look for a key that might explain their terminology.”

“Mallachti?” I asked.

He glanced at me, his eyes catching the light.

“Professional curse-breakers,” he explained.

“I think the Praecuri hired these from the private sector, likely for political reasons. Given the outcry at your mother’s death, they probably didn’t want anyone accusing them of falsifying evidence, so they hired out, instead of using their own.

They probably preferred that to letting G.O.R.E. take over the investigation.”

I was still struggling to keep all the names straight in my head.

G.O.R.E. was the Guild of Regulatory Enforcement, wasn’t it? That was the group that oversaw magical enforcement internationally? Or only within Europe?

“International,” he answered, not looking up from his reading. “Europe has a different one called Europa Authority of Magic Enforcement, or E.A.M.E. British Magical Enforcement is ours. That one’s just initials, usually.”

“I told you to stop doing that,” I muttered in grouchiness.

“You’re loud.” He still didn’t look up. “Think quieter, and I won’t.”

His bone dragon made a chuffing noise that sounded like laughter.

I put down the file I’d been reading, which was yet another set of interviews of the Praecuri who’d been on the scene.

The names had all been stripped out, and a good chunk of their answers magically blacked out, as well.

The particular praecurus I’d just read mentioned the confidential informant at least twice, but both references were too vague to be helpful.

“What’s with all the blacked-out areas?” I asked.

“No idea.” He grunted. “I don’t make it a regular practice to snoop around in official murder investigations, Shadow.”

I frowned, staring at him.

“I remember something else from that day,” I said. “Something not mentioned in any of these interviews, which strikes me as odd.”

“What’s that?” He sounded bored.

“At the end, after my parents were gone…” I hesitated, bit my lip.

“…Someone attacked the people who murdered them. The robed figures were coming for me and my brother. Before they could reach us, someone… or maybe something… blew them back. It stopped them, and they left not long after, through a tall mirror in the station entrance wall.”

“Stopped the Praecuri?” Caelum scoffed. “Not likely.”

“Except it did stop them,” I argued. “And I didn’t say they were Praecuri.

I said whoever killed my parents. The murderers left after that.

Or maybe they only backed off, and someone else arrived before they could finish the job.

Either way, me and my brother survived, and I don’t think we were meant to. ”

“What makes you think it wasn’t the Praecuri who stopped them?” he asked, still bored-sounding. “You don’t think a few highly-trained, adult Magicals might balk at killing a couple of kids? Even if they were okay with killing your parents?”

My throat tightened unexpectedly.

Maybe I’d hoped he would remember the same thing as me, and agree with my memory of how it happened.

I’d at least hoped we could talk about it.

But it was possible he was right, of course, and I was wrong.

Maybe no one had saved us. Maybe I’d made that part up, or misunderstood the order in which it all happened.

The thought made my throat tighten more for some reason.

I swallowed it down with an effort.

“Possibly,” I said. “I don’t think it was the Praecuri, though. The hooded figures who got blown back seemed really surprised. I don’t remember any words being exchanged, either. Anyway, it seemed to come from somewhere else.”

Bones didn’t answer.

I stared at him for a few seconds longer, then gave up. Clearly, he didn’t find the possibility that someone else might’ve been there particularly compelling. Then again, maybe I shouldn’t be telling him every single thing I remembered from that day.

In either case, gods, what was wrong with me? I could usually think about my parents’ death rationally when I needed to. Hell, I’d been keeping it together for Archie for as long as I could remember. Why was all this feeling coming up now?

And why here? Why in front of him?

My monocerus walked over and sank gracefully down by my leg. It rubbed its horn on my thigh where it leaned. Of course, it was made of light, so like with the cushions it had been ramming, the horn only passed through, but I found it strangely comforting, anyway.

Clearing my throat, I motioned around at the dark space, still lit only by the gold and green flames inside his conjured lanterns, which clustered around us so we could read.

“How is it you get this entire space all to yourself?” I asked. “Do you just call someone up, mention your last name, and they give you a key?”

He grunted.

“Something like that,” he muttered.

Both of our eyes had returned to our files when he spoke again.

“You asked me before what I’d do without you?”

My ears pricked. I glanced over. “With your overloads, you mean?”

He nodded, then gestured around, his eyes still mostly on the text in his lap. “This is basically it, sweetheart,” he said.

Something in him using that word brought a disturbing shiver down my spine.

He went on after a pause.

“My father made arrangements with the headmaster prior to the start of term. And, as you pointed out,” he added dryly.

“The administration can’t exactly refuse when my father makes a personal request. My family still funds a massive endowment here.

We also technically own the land, and most of the buildings, including Malcroix Mansion.

So yes, mongrel, I have the only key to this particular compartment.

I can use it whenever I want… for whatever I want. No one else is allowed in here.”

“So why not use it?” I asked, puzzled. “Why make this deal with me?”

His eyes flickered in my direction. So did the eyes of his dragon.

A faint tightness came to his mouth as he studied my face.

“I told you why,” he said, his voice patient, if the slightest bit terse. “It doesn’t work as well. Sometimes it doesn’t work at all.”

I frowned. “Why wouldn’t it work, though? Offloading magic is offloading magic, isn’t it?”

“Not exactly, no.”

I thought he would say more about that, but he didn’t.

“What do you mean, ‘not exactly’?” I prodded.

He looked up with a put-upon, impatient exhale.

“I meant precisely what I said. It doesn’t exactly work that way.

” His eyes returned to the pages in his lap.

“I hadn’t fully realized it myself, to be honest. Not until I used you to do it.

My magic seems to want to…” He hesitated.

“…hit up against something. It wants an opposing force. Just expelling it doesn’t really satisfy it.

And only doing that here, with nothing to push back, was satisfying it less and less as time went on. ”

I glanced at him, quirking an eyebrow.

He wouldn’t return my gaze.

“Huh,” I said only.

Before I could add to that in any way, he changed the subject.

“Oh. I nearly forgot. I have something for you.” His voice switched back to brusque. “I meant to give it to you this morning, but I’d left it in my room.”

He handed over a worn, leather-bound book with a soft cover.

Something about the lavender and green patterns, the vines and flowers etched into the leather on both sides and the spine, struck at something deep inside me. My hands trembled where I held the book in my lap. I remembered this.

How did I remember it?

Sunlight flashed behind my eyes.

My mother’s back blocked part of it, where she sat at a painted, sky-blue table, in a fenced backyard in Southern California.

The sound of waves crashing filled my ears, and sea gulls’ arguing drifted through the bamboo wall that separated us from a brick path down to the ocean.

My mother bent over the notebook with a funny pen that had a green feather at the end, her fingers tracing glass beads embedded in the table’s sides.

A green crystal hung from a bronze chain around her neck. It caught glints of sunlight, moving with the motion of her writing hand.

She wrote seriously, and looked up periodically to gaze at the sky.

Her eyes were pale blue, unlike my green ones.

Her high cheekbones looked like mine, as did her mouth, her jawline, even her hands.

Sleek black hair hung down her back. A smudge of green ink on her finger matched the green of her nail polish, and a snake pin stuck in her hair to keep some of it off her face.

The image was there and gone, a blink of a past so full, so teeming with color and life, the immediacy of it squeezed something in my chest. It shocked me, the familiarity of every detail, despite how distant it all felt.

It had all slipped past my defenses, leaving me hollowed out.

I’d been alive then, really alive. Some part of that version of me felt dead now.

“What is this?” I whispered.

When I glanced up, he was watching me, an unreadable expression on his face.

“Your mother’s journal.” He cleared his throat. “I didn’t feel comfortable opening it,” he added. “But there’s a decent chance something in there could be important. The Praecuri never got their hands on it, as far as I know. It’s not in any of the reports.”

My fingers tightened on the leather cover.

“How’ve you got it?” I asked.

He shook his head slowly, his eyes unreadable.

His dragon clacked at me, as if trying to explain without Caelum’s help.

“Someone gave it to me,” he said, after the dragon quieted.

“What?” I stared at him, uncomprehending. “Who gave it to you?”

Even more slowly than before, he shook his head.

“I don’t know, Shadow,” he said. “I really don’t.

They left it in my room. I have no idea how they got past my multiple chimeras, including tripwires that should have dropped them to their knees before they got a foot through my fucking door…

” At something in my expression, he averted his eyes, gesturing vaguely.

“…Or how they’d know to give it to me in the first place,” he added, voice subdued.

“But from your reaction, I’m guessing it’s likely authentic?

I admit, I almost didn’t want to give it to you until I’d at least verified that much?”

“It’s authentic.” I cleared my throat. “I remember it. I feel her on it.”

Realizing both things were true, I fell silent.

That silence stretched as we stared at one another.

The dragon was making softer, more agitated noises where it clung to his shoulder.

“Someone knows we’re working together,” I said numbly. I fingered the cover of the leather journal, the familiar engraved patterns. “On this. On my parents’ deaths. They know you’re helping me.”

I looked at him, and saw the worry in his eyes.

It sent another of those strange, disquieting shivers down my spine, but I didn’t know what to think about that, either.

I stared down at the journal instead, my fingers clutching the worn leather.