Page 7 of Soulbound

"The first."

She eyed his ridiculous brown attire. "Are you trying to tell me you're over three centuries old? If so, you're wearing the wrong era. You should be in something Elizabethan."

"I left it in the Renaissance."

Cleo cocked her head, and then drew the hammer on the pistol back. He smiled at her as if he hadn't a care in the world. "Farshaw died in 1562. He'd just written Sidestep Through Time, and he claimed the information within it could destroy the world. He died and the book vanished. Only fragments of it remain."

"Did he?" An eyebrow cocked. "Someone must have forgotten to pass that along to me."

She breathed out a laugh. Her truth senses weren't tingling. Her divination believed him, even if she didn't. This was ridiculous. Perhaps they too were no longer working correctly, along with her Visions. "Even if you were Quentin Farshaw, what on earth would possess you to wait for me here? To pass a book along? I assume it's a piece of the book?"

"No, it's the entire thing." Farshaw looked down. "And you need it so you can stop what is to come. Or the skies over London will blacken, and this fair city will be destroyed." He looked up, staring directly through her. "You know what I speak of. I know you do. You've seen it. We've all seen it."

Cleo's blood chilled. London's doom was her Vision. The one that had been haunting her for years. "What do you mean we've all seen it?"

"I am part of a collective who watches over England's safety. Every seer, from my bloodline down, sees the same thing. You have to stop it."

Sebastian. Her husband was always at the center of her prophetic doom. The darkness originated with him, weighing down upon his shoulders as the skies above them split open. It was only when she was near there was any sign of hope in her Vision. A stream of light erupted between them, driving away the darkness... but it was never enough. The darkness always overcame the light, and with Sebastian avoiding her these days, it wasn't as if she could try to stop it before it even began. Cleo's breath caught. She'd been hoping she'd have more time.

"How do I stop it?" she whispered.

"With the Blade."

"The Blade of Altarrh was destroyed," she said, though she knew that wasn't true. Morgana had cast an illusion so an innocent kitchen knife took the brunt of the magic that "destroyed" it.

Only an ally of Morgana—or someone who'd been there—would know that.

"And you need to find the black queen."

Cleo's breath exploded out of her. "How?"

"To find the black queen you need to go back to your past. Take the book. Perhaps it will show you how." He pressed it into her hands. "My time with it is done."

She caught a swift glimpse of the cover. There'd been a book in the dream the demon had pulled her into. Was this it? "What do I do with it?"

Farshaw stepped back. "I wouldn't want to spoil the surprise. But you should hurry up and read it. You don't have much time. You need to reach the full potential of your gifts, and quickly. The mirror will help to guide you, but you'll need the book for what is to come."

What's to come—? The mirror? "Sir," she called, taking a step toward him as he retreated. "None of this makes any sense."

He checked his pocket watch, frowning faintly. "Good luck, my queen."

Then he vanished into thin air.

Chapter 2

CLEO WAITED UNTIL night fell over Lady Rathbourne's home. She'd been staying here for the past month, for the simple reason that she’d had nowhere else to go upon her father's death.

The return home had been uneventful, though Jeremy couldn't quite get over the fact "he disappeared into thin air." Cleo herself had been more dubious. People didn't just disappear. Sorcery didn't work like that. The only person who seemed to have the ability to translocate was Verity Hawkins, and she was completely untutored in the laws of sorcery, enough so that her conscious mind didn't know it shouldn't be able to teleport. It didn't stop Verity, however, and it hadn't stopped the man she'd encountered.

Unless....

The other possibility was that he was telling the truth. Had she actually spoken to Quentin Farshaw? Had he somehow survived whatever had happened to him that night?

He'd be almost... what? Three hundred and fifty years old?

If so... how had he suddenly appeared in Balthazar's Labyrinth, at precisely the right time to meet her? Knowing of the mirror, and her vision?

He'd been the first sorcerer to see through time, but was there more to it than that?