Total pages in book: 106
Estimated words: 98961 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 495(@200wpm)___ 396(@250wpm)___ 330(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 98961 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 495(@200wpm)___ 396(@250wpm)___ 330(@300wpm)
Bringing the books over one at a time, I stack them on the coffee table and sit on the couch, arranging Juliet on my chest. Maybe there’s a clue hidden here if I look at where Julian was looking. The books were all open the night he died, and Lucas bookmarked them so we could go back and reference everything. Given all that went on after Julian’s death, and then the arrival of this little one, we hadn’t really gotten a chance to sit down and scour these books as much as we should have.
Not all the books are about the Egyptian Gods, and after going through three books, I start to think if there was something obvious, we would have seen it or Julian would have said something about it.
“Though he wasn’t exactly forthcoming,” I say, flipping Juliet so I’m holding her with my other arm. She nurses while I look through another book, jotting down messy notes. It’s not easy to write and hold a baby at the same time.
Two hours and three diaper changes later, I’m losing focus and starting to feel tired. I spread a blanket on the floor and put Juliet down for tummy time. I lay down next to her, looking into her pretty blue eyes. I never knew I could feel so much love for someone I just met before, and I used to think babies were kinda cute but ultimately annoying little poop machines, yet here I am.
“All right,” I sigh and sit up so I can grab my Book of Shadows. I blink several times, trying to will myself awake, and randomly flip to a spell that Kristy and I got in trouble for using back in our senior year at Grim Gate Academy. We argued it technically wasn’t cheating, since all this spell did was make us hyper focused and wide awake for twelve hours so we could study, but it still wasn’t allowed. It’s been so long since I’ve cast this spell, I forgot about it. Randomly opening the book to this page has to be fate.
“You’re coming with me.” I pick up Juliet, go upstairs to get the baby sling, and strap her to my chest. I haven’t worn her yet and it takes me a while to get used to moving with a two-week old baby attached to my body.
Back in the library, I get rosemary and cloves, grind them up, and then sprinkle the mixture on a yellow candle. “Elementals lend your power, keep me awake until the twelfth hour. Clarity of the sun, I bring you to me, keep me focused, so mote it be.”
I feel the spell take over and get to my feet, pulling down books and cross-referencing what I can online. An hour later and I’ve actually made headway. Thanks to the spell, I’m able to focus on one thing at a time and I started with trying to figure out what Julian meant by the oracle. I tear out my pages of notes and tape them along the wall, needing to see them at once.
Standing back, I keep one hand on Juliet’s head and whisper different theories out loud to myself. “Okay, so the missing part of the scroll gives us a big clue to what this oracle is,” I start, biting my lip as I use magic to unroll the scroll and have it hover in the air above me. This thing is ancient and probably worth a decent amount of money. “A museum would kill to have—” I stop with a gasp. “Museum.” I hurry back to the coffee table and sort through random notes and crumble pieces of paper for my phone. The Field Museum in Chicago has an ancient Egypt exhibit, and Lucas was talking to someone who had expertise in that area.
Rushing through the house, I go into his office and open his laptop. “Fuck,” I say when the bar to enter the password pops up. I know the passcode for his phone but never had a reason to ask what it is for his computer. Trusting him completely, I didn’t feel the slightest need to look through his files or anything of the sort.
I try the same numbers he uses on his phone—the date we met—but it’s not it. “What else? Maybe I love Callie?” I ask as a joke and try it.
It’s not it either.
Lucas wouldn’t pick something obvious, though at the same time, he didn’t think anyone would break into his office and try to get onto his computer. Several passwords later, I’m locked out for a minute. I rifle through his desk as I wait, hoping to find some sort of clue.
And I do, well, sort of. He printed out an email correspondence between himself and an Egyptologist. The date of the last email was the day Julian died, and if anything else was said after that…I need to get into his email.