Page 26 of Serpent and Shadow

In the end, I looked for clothes in Bones’s part of the closet.

I didn’t let myself think about why I wanted his clothes, and not mine.

I eventually picked out a jumper, a long-sleeved shirt, a pair of soft joggers, and a clean pair of knickers. I entered Bones’s tile-walled lavatory and shut the door.

It was too cold to linger by the sink, so I turned on the shower after dumping the pile of clothes on an in-built shelf. I set the temperature hotter than I would normally, and immediately began to strip off every article of clothing I wore.

I was only halfway through shedding everything when a sparking, rippling signal shivered through my magical aura, lighting up the sun primal over my head.

It was like a small chime had gone off.

Bones’s equivalent to a doorbell.

Or maybe the Praecuri had done that, tweaking whatever Bones previously had in place.

Either way, someone was there, outside the door.

I’d frozen in place at the tower door’s warning system, my shirt and bra already off, my trousers halfway down my thighs.

I glanced in the direction of the door.

My monocerus, which naturally followed me into the bathroom, stamped its foot and snorted, pawing the tile with a hoof. He didn’t seem overly agitated though, or alarmed at whatever he felt through my magic.

Like me, he was just reacting to someone being there at all.

I didn’t want to put my clothes back on, much less deal with another person in my personal space, so I felt a bit like stamping my foot and snorting, too.

Had Forsooth come back? Could he have heard from Blackstone and the Praecuri already? It seemed unlikely. Only a few moments had passed since he left. Morag had to fly all the way to Exmoor and back, didn’t she?

My magic snaked out, looking for more information, and immediately found Forsooth in his tower on the other end of the castle. I retreated rapidly from his magical aura, hoping he hadn’t felt me, and aimed my presence at the door at Bones’s tower’s base.

I looked at the witch or wizard who’d triggered the chimaeras.

They stood patiently outside Bones’s front door, waiting.

After a bare pause where I wound my way through the new security layers around the tower for the first time, I found I recognized him within seconds.

Alaric.

Relief made me close my eyes, mixed with a disappointment so intense, it felt like a metal hand clenched viciously around my lungs and heart. The realization that nothing had changed, that no one was coming with good news about Bones, much less to tell me he’d been rescued and was on his way back, caused me to crash so intensely I let out an involuntary groan. I hadn’t even known the hope lived there until after it got crushed.

Then I just stood there, mostly naked, my fist pressed to the middle of my chest between my breasts. I fought to breathe, to control my galloping heart.

Gods-damn it.

As much as I desperately wanted a friend there, especially Alaric, who wouldn’t be shitty to me about Bones, all my impulses brought back a hard no. No, I didn’t want to talk to anyone. No, I didn’t want anyone to talk to me. No, I didn’t want company. No. Just no.

If it wasn’t Bones, I didn’t want them. I wanted everyone who wasn’t him to go away and leave me alone unless they had Bones with them.

But that initial reaction didn’t last long.

That maddeningly practical part of my mind and magic insisted on seeing Alaric through the lens of how he could help me bring back Bones, too.

I would need someone who knew Bones, who knew the grounds of the Bones Estate, and especially a detailed layout of the Black Tower. I needed someone who knew about the types of chimaeras wealthy people used, especially the older, more entrenched variety, like the kind you’d find on a royal estate, particular a royal estate close to the King’s lineage.

I needed someone who knew about arcane, highly-illegal forms of magic.

I needed someone who knew about Dark Cathedral.