Nickamedes glanced at his watch, then arched his black eyebrows at me.
I sighed. “I know, I know. You were expecting me here ten minutes ago.”
The librarian sniffed. “More like fifteen, actually. Really, Gwendolyn. This is no time to dawdle. And Aurora, I expected you to hurry her along, at the very least.”
“Oh, it’s not Metis’s fault,” I said in a snarky tone. “She couldn’t wait to come down here and see you, Nickamedes.”
His eyebrows drew together, and he looked at Metis in confusion.
“What Gwen means is that I couldn’t wait for her to get started,” she said in a smooth voice. “The sooner she identifies the artifact, the sooner we can figure out what the Reapers want with it and how to keep it safe from them.”
It was a nice save, and I was the only one who noticed the faint blush that stained her bronze cheeks. Still, I wasn’t about to let her get off that easy. I nudged Metis with my shoulder, but she shook her head and moved away from me, going to stand next to Nickamedes.
“Tell him,” I mouthed. “Tell him now.”
She shook her head at me again. Linus looked back and forth between the two of us, obviously wondering what was going on, but he didn’t comment on it.
Nickamedes shuffled over to the far end of the table, his cane tap-tap-tapping on the floor again. He picked up a thick notebook and an ink pen, then pulled out a chair and sat down.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
He peered up at me, his blue eyes bright with excitement. “Well, since you’re going to be using your magic to flash on the artifacts, I thought it would be an efficient use of time and resources to have you describe their properties to me in detail. It will save me a great deal of time researching them later on if you can tell me about them and what they do now.”
I eyed him. “That sounds suspiciously like research to me. And I’m not working today, remember? Um, hello, I battled a group of Reapers. I think I’ve been helpful enough for one day. For several days, actually.”
Nickamedes sat up straight in his chair and gave me a stern look that I knew all too well. “A librarian’s work is never done. You should know that by now, Gwendolyn.”
I rolled my eyes, but I knew there was nothing I could do but go along with him and his obsessive need to catalog every single thing in the entire freaking library. And not just because I still felt guilty that he had been poisoned instead of me. Once Nickamedes sank his teeth into something, he wouldn’t let go of it.
“Fine,” I muttered. “But this totally gets me out of one of my shifts this week.”
Nickamedes raised his eyes heavenward, as if asking all the gods and goddesses above for patience to deal with the likes of me. “Oh, very well. But just one.”
“Anytime you’re ready, Miss Frost,” Linus chimed in. I took off my jacket and scarf, pushed up the sleeves
of my sweater, and got to work. Once again, I went down the two rows on the table, picking up and touching each one of the artifacts in turn. I started with the weapons I’d already examined at the airport, doublechecking to see if I might have missed anything, but the vibes I got off them were the same as before. Images of battles, warriors, and blood everywhere. Not the most wonderful memories, but sadly, nothing that I hadn’t felt before with my psychometry or experienced in real life, given all the fights I’d been in recently. Vic, on the other hand, would have enjoyed seeing and feeling all of the memories, all of the harsh victories and brutal defeats. The sword would have probably demanded that I get him some popcorn and a giant soda, so he could experience a right proper show, as he would put it.
After I finished with an artifact, Nickamedes would ask me about what I’d seen and felt, and I dutifully answered all of his many questions. He scribbled down page after page of notes, his face creased with concentration and his eyes bright with pleasure. Nothing made him happier than research, even if I was the one who was doing all the hard work. But I knew he would put his extensive notes to good use. No doubt some of the information he was recording would be used to make the identification cards that would be placed with the artifacts once they were put on display on the main library floor.
Minutes passed, then turned into an hour. And still, all I did was touch artifacts, get sucked into memories of the past, and then regurgitate everything for Nickamedes.
I’d gone through about half of the artifacts when I stopped and looked over at Linus. “Are you sure that what the Reapers want is on this table? That nothing was left behind at the airport? Or lost somewhere along the way? Because there is nothing here that justifies the sort of massive, full-scale attack they launched this afternoon.”
Linus’s thoughtful gaze moved from one artifact to another. “This is everything we recovered from the Reaper ski lodge in New York, as well as a few more items that we discovered and confiscated from other hiding places. It has to be here somewhere.”
I nodded, sighed again, and reached for the next artifact.
Another hour passed, and I still didn’t have any luck. I put down the latest sword I’d flashed on and looked down. Five more objects lay on the table. I sighed, a little louder and deeper this time. The way my luck was going right now, the mystery object would be the very last thing I picked up. Naturally.
So I shuffled forward and grabbed the next artifact, a small, slender, half-used candle made out of white beeswax that had belonged to Sol, the Norse goddess of the sun—
And I immediately knew that I had finally found what the Reapers were after.
For a moment, my vision went absolutely, blazingly, blindingly white, as if I were staring straight into a star. Then, heat blasted over me, so hot, searing, and scorching that I felt like I was holding the sun itself in the palm of my hand. The intense light dimmed down to a single spark—white-hot and beating steadily, almost like a heart. In fact, it seemed as if that single, solitary spark contained all of the candle’s magic, condensed down to one bright, glistening point. But it wasn’t only heat and light that the candle offered. It was power, it was strength.
It was life.
All I could do was stand there, clutching the candle, and let the intense rush of power wash over me again and again, each wave a little hotter and brighter than the one before, and sweeping more and more of me away with it, as though the violet spark at the center of my being was melting like the white wax of the candle should have been. It took my breath away. Still, try as I might, I couldn’t make myself let go of the candle, I couldn’t unwrap my fingers from the smooth wax, and I knew that I was in serious danger of falling so far down into the artifact and the immense power it contained that I might never come back to myself again. I felt like I was drowning in the heat, being burned alive from the inside out . . .