Page 41 of Samhain Savior

“Go to the house, Archer. Rest. I’ll see you after the service. All will be clear then. All will be made clear.”

He fled the office, a whirlwind of black cloth and what smelled like terror, leaving me blinking in his wake.

I wanted to follow him. I wanted to snatch him by his hair and drag him back into the office and force him to tell me what the fuck was going on, but as I glanced out the door, I could see that the gift shop had opened, the store was busy, and the street beyond was filled with tourists and worshipers alike.

Discretion was the better part of valor, they said, but in my line of work, it also kept people from asking some pretty uncomfortable questions.

So instead of following the Guardian who was acting exceedingly suspicious and demanding my answers, I would wait. I’d let Nathaniel conduct his service. Allow the crowds to go home for the day.

And when the sun set once more, I’d get my answers.

One way or another.

But first, I was going to read that fucking journal.

Making my way over to the desk, I bent down and examined the drawer. The lock was old, the desk itself a relic of a bygone time, and it was nothing for me to slide twin prongs of shadows into the keyhole, press the tumblers, and spring the lock.

Looking over my shoulder at the closed door, I pushed down the guilt over breaking my friend’s trust, then quietly slid the drawer open and pulled out the book.

Taking a seat, I spread the pages, the thick, leather-bound parchment feeling heavy in my hand as I opened the first page and began to read.

At first it was nothing unusual, notes on sermons Nathaniel planned to write, or bits of information about members of his congregation whom he wanted to help or spend more time with. All mundane, and normal, and boring as hell.

But as the pages turned, the content began to change, the neat, orderly handwriting turning to a chaotic scrawl.The words swam on the paper, no longer written in tidy lines, but sprawled across the book as though at random. Words that appeared to have no particular meaning or context thrown into the middle of a sentence or scribbled sideways in huge letters across an entire page. Heavy-handed and underlined multiple times, these words were repeated over and over, like a mantra.

Balance.

Veil.

Samhain.

Savior.

Desperate.

Final.

Both enthralled and horrified, I turned the pages, trying to make heads or tails of Nathaniel’s rambling, incoherent words.

It was all too similar to what Asmodeus had said to be a coincidence. But Samhain was less than a week away and I was still chasing down the pieces of the Fallen Key. Here I was, following blind leads and spending far too much time thinking of a sassy little witch when I should be focused on doing my job.

Narrowing my gaze on the journal pages again, I tried to see if Nathaniel had left any clues as to his involvement in all of this. He was hiding something, that much was clear,but was he hiding it from the Order of the Broken Veil…or me?

And of the two, which was it that had caused him to literally quake with terror?

Turning to the last page, I could see that it was the one he’d been writing in when I’d arrived, the splash of ink across the paper staring back at me like an accusation. The words he’d been writing were obscured now, the letters lost to the stain, but above the spill, underlined twice for emphasis, was a single sentence.

One that I couldn’t help feeling was more true than any other in the whole journal.

Running out of time.

Chapter eighteen

Delilah

I’d done a lot of things in my life that I wasn’t proud of. Embarrassing things that I probably wouldn’t do again if I had the opportunity.

Like that time I’d tried to snare my own rabbit without Heidi’s help and ended up snagging my own foot instead.