Page 56 of Malcroix Bones Academy (Bones and Shadow #1)

The words and letters didn’t match any cypher or language I’d found in Bones Library. I’d been through nearly a dozen books on magi-cryptography and ancient ritual keys by then, but hadn’t found anything that looked remotely like them.

Sometimes it even looked like English to me, only warped in some way.

It didn’t help that the journal, along with two interviews conducted by the Praecuri after my parents’ death, were all I had of the documents in Caelum’s shed. I hadn’t made it even halfway through all the materials he collected before our falling out.

Gods, I really needed to break our impasse.

I had to figure out some way to get him to talk to me again.

He’d be a prick about it, most likely, given it obviously angered him when I’d refused to speak to him.

Maybe I could tell him it had been my birthday, and the anniversary of my parents’ deaths, and I couldn’t really deal with working on the project then.

But that was a half-truth at best, far less than half at worst, and I doubted he’d buy it.

No, I probably needed to give him some measure of the truth.

I should just admit I’d been embarrassed, and maybe apologize for the dream itself. If his crack about me “summoning” him had any validity to it, I probably owed him one. Although maybe that wouldn’t go over well, either. Maybe it would just make things awkward, and push him away even more.

Maybe I should ask Alaric for advice on how best to approach Bones.

Exhaling as I shook off the thought, I turned to the next set of misshapen symbols in the journal. Wraith, who’d just leapt onto my lap, took that moment to attack my moving hand with both claws, digging in so quickly that I yelped, and jumped up in my chair.

“Bloody hell, Leda!” Jolie complained. “I’ve just completely fused two braids together! Now I have to start all over again on this part…”

I barely heard her.

I was still trying to extract the cat’s claws from my skin.

“Ow, ow, ow… you little beastie,” I scolded, pulling the cat’s talons out of my skin.

I carefully removed Wraith’s sharp little teeth from my wrist, as well.

“Look at what you did!” I showed the kitten my ravaged arm.

“I’m bleeding! Is that what you wanted, you little menace? For me to bleed all over my clothes?”

The cat meowed at me, and stuck its tail in the air.

It batted a paw at the diary, making it clear it wanted it removed.

“No, you don’t get my lap now,” I informed her. “You’ll just have to go sleep on that cushion I got you, and think about what you’ve done.”

Wraith meowed a final time, then leapt off my lap and stalked away, looking more than a little offended. She went to her bed in the corner, curled up in a ball, and looked at me balefully with emerald green eyes.

“Vicious little Wraith.” I winced as I looked down at my arm. One of the cuts was deep enough to be welling blood. Tooth marks and scratches also decorated my wrist. “I might need one of your patented healing concoctions later,” I told Jolie ruefully.

“I’ll make more of the cream,” Jolie promised. “As soon as I’m finished here.”

I nodded. A drop of blood fell then, and landed on the open diary before I could pull my arm away.

“Drat.” I tried to dab up the spot with my finger, but it only spread. The open page absorbed my blood like a sponge, pulling it across the paper as if it was thirsty.

The odd symbols in my mother’s diary began to glow.

I stared as they swiftly changed position, then altered shape, and finally sharpened into clear, readable English on the page.

They turned green and continued to glow as I read the new text.

The signs are irrefutable now. We are being watched.

Clearly someone found a way around the stone, something I never would have believed possible before now.

If the stone no longer protects us, we have no choice.

We must go back. Even Robert agrees with me now, although he’s understandably reluctant, given the risks.

I’ll talk to cousin Racyth. Of course he might feel obligated to arrest me, but he and I always got on well.

He might listen before he did anything drastic.

He warned me before, when the Praecuri were coming for me, and promised me Robert wouldn’t be hurt if I ever turned myself in.

I blinked, shocked, but read on, greedily wanting more.

All this time, I believed it was about what Robert and I figured out, about the infiltration that’s already underway.

But now I think it’s more personal than that.

Dad always said there were those who never accepted our great-grandfather’s edict against Dark Cathedral and their “Project of Worlds.” Now I fear someone in Dark Cathedral has broken Argus La Fey’s curse altogether, or found a way around it.

They seek to bring the La Fey line back under the blood vows made by Morticia herself.

It’s the only explanation that makes sense. It’s the only reason I can think of why the necklace would be entrusted to me… to get it out of Magique entirely.

My throat closed. I flipped back a few pages, looking for the encrypted section before that one, but the symbols inside the rest of the diary remained warped and unreadable.

I understood the key now, though.

Blood. It was my blood, and presumably Arcturus’s, that unlocked the cypher.

Each section must need to be fed separately.

I glanced at Jolie in the mirror, but my friend remained single-mindedly focused on my hair.

Even so, I would wait until I was alone to translate the rest. I had no reason to think Jolie would read even a word of it over my shoulder, but everything in me told me to keep this a secret, to tell no one, not even my closest friends.

As much as it frustrated me, and depressed me, even, there was really only one person I wanted to show the unencrypted text to. It was maddening that I trusted him with it over Draken or Miranda, and even over Jolie or Luc, but somehow, I did.

That fact alone pretty much proved what an utter idiot I was.

I bit my lip, staring at him from across our Seeing Arts class, even though he’d told me at least a dozen times not to do that.

Gods, I really need someone to look at this who wasn’t me.

I’d translated and read all the passages in my mother’s journal now, and I had even more questions than I’d had before.

I had this strange feeling that he felt my stare, and it annoyed him.

I also suspected he’d heard at least some of my thoughts, if not all of them, and that he was annoyed by having to hear those, too.

If any of that was true, he didn’t turn his head, or give me so much as a glance.

Professor Underwood walked back and forth at the head of the classroom, her back to us while she wrote in the air with her finger. Numbers and geometric figures appeared as she wrote, some on the chalkboard and some floating in the air above our desks.

So our deal’s just off, then? I thought at him, before I could decide whether it was a good idea. You don’t need me for your magic anymore, either, I suppose?

He continued to stare straight ahead. From his expression, every word Underwood spoke held every part of his attention.

My frustration turned to annoyance.

You’re being a prat. An utter child. An immature, childish, ridiculous brat-child.

He surprised me by speaking into my mind.

If you’re going to attempt to insult me, he sent back, his thoughts empty-feeling, even of anger.

Could you at least try to make the insults marginally more interesting?

Or at the very least, less painfully redundant?

You’re already like a yammering, nagging, bitchy harpy in my ear.

You could at least make an attempt to sound less stupid.

If you answered me, I wouldn’t have to insult you, I sent back, weirdly relieved he was speaking to me. But I’m happy to take pointers from you on how to be a bigger prat. You definitely have more experience in that department than me.

And yet I’m the immature, bratty one? he thought back. Right. Got it. Keep screaming at me, Shadow. It definitely makes me want to do you a favor.

I fell silent, feeling the real stab of anger off him.

He was talking to me, which was more than I’d expected, honestly. But was he really interested in talking? Or was it just another attempt to get me to stop looking at him? To leave him alone for real?

Yes, he sent coldly.

I bit my lip. I could feel the warning in his magic.

I could feel the wall there, too.

If I was smart, I’d probably listen to both things. Then again, we’d already established I wasn’t smart, especially when it came to him.

I figured out the code, I thought at him stubbornly. The one I showed you in my mother’s diary. It turned out, it only needed me or my brother’s blood, and?

Good for you, he cut in. Why the fuck are you telling me?

I blinked, then stared at the back of his head.

What on Earth are you so angry about? I asked finally. Is it really just because?

Magique, he threw at me. What on Magique am I so angry about? Are you ever going to get that right, mongrel? Because it’s tiresome having to correct you all the time.

I bit my lip. Frustration roiled my gut, and more shame.

Against every impulse in me, I considered doing as he said, just leaving him alone.

Obviously, this wasn’t working. If I wanted his help, antagonizing him wasn’t going to get me what I wanted.

I should be listening to the professor, anyway.

I should be taking notes. Underwood was explaining the exercise we’d be doing in probably five minutes or less, and right now, I had no clue what that even was.

My eyes returned to the back of his platinum blond head, anyway.

Will you just talk to me, you giant weirdo, so we can get past this? I thought at him in frustration. I’ll apologize to your face if you want, Bones. You have to know I didn’t do it on purpose. It was just a stupid dream. It didn’t mean anything.

His shoulders stiffened.

Really, his whole body clenched. I saw it from five rows away.

My anger turned to puzzlement.

What? That makes you mad, too? I asked, even more confused.

I was embarrassed, all right? I’m admitting that I was embarrassed.

Even before you threw that poor cat in my face to rub it in, I was embarrassed.

I’m apologizing for how I acted, all right?

Can we just forget it? It’s not like you sullied your royal body with any part of mine in person, or?

He rose abruptly to his feet.

His chair squeaked, loud enough for heads to turn.

I watched him, my jaw suddenly loose as he stalked rapidly across the rows of desks to the classroom door. He was leaving.

Gods, I thought in horror. He was really leaving.

I should have asked Alaric. I shouldn’t have tried to talk to Bones until I’d asked Alaric what I could say without making it worse.

Bones didn’t say a word to the professor, despite her questioning eyebrow. He didn’t so much as look at me, or anyone else in the room. The male mage he’d sat with, presumably for the Sight exercises we’d be doing in a handful of minutes, gaped after him.

“Bones!” Eggers hissed. “Hey. What gives?”

He didn’t look back.

He pushed his way through the classroom door.

And he was gone.