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)
I speed upstairs and take his phone off the charger. There’s a notification on the screen from a baby development app Lucas downloaded. If I wasn’t hyper focused thanks to the spell, this would have caused me to break down. I swipe it away and open his email as I walk back to the office. He has several different email accounts and one of his business accounts already has a ton of emails. I’d love to help try and answer, but I’ll just end up making a bigger mess to deal with in the end, I’m sure. I’m business savvy enough to own my own bookstore but know nothing when it comes to buying and selling real estate.
I’m back in the library by the time I find the email thread from the Egyptologist. Her last email was sent three days ago, along with an apology for the delay, but it took a while to track down someone who could help translate.
“Translate?” Madly scrolling back in the email, I see that Lucas sent several pictures. One is of the scroll, and another looks like a page out of the book. As a human, Lucas wasn’t allowed to learn how to read or write. When he became a vampire, he made it a point to learn as many languages as he could so he’d be able to read anything. But hieroglyphs weren’t on the top of his list, and I remember him saying something about translating a translation and things getting lost along the way.
“Holy shit,” I say as I speed read through the rest of the emails. Springing back into action, I write down more notes, taping them to the wall along with all the emails. Not stopping, I keep magically flipping through pages while I feed and change Juliet, and then lay her down for another five minutes of tummy-time while I flip through a book Julian had been looking at.
Once Juliet is back in the sling, I go over to my wall of notes and magically swap some around, finally coming to a plausible conclusion. A smile breaks out on my face right as the library doors open.
“What the bloody hell is going on here?” Eliza asks, stopping short before entering the room.
“Research. Lots and lots of research,” I say quickly. “And I made a breakthrough. You gotta follow the notes and the pictures. They’re not good pictures because I’m not an artist but you’ll see. Come here.”
Eliza doesn’t move but instead narrows her eyes at me. “How much coffee have you had?”
“Hmm…” I look at my cup. “I didn’t even finish one cup.”
“You look like you’re tweaking.” Eliza’s brows go up.
“I’m not, but it doesn’t matter, because I think oracle was a translation issue.”
“Come again?”
I rapidly shake my head, swaying side to side to keep Juliet asleep. “Julian was looking for some sort of oracle. Typically, oracles are people, but the way he talked about it made it sound like an object. But it’s both!”
“What?”
“Both. In Egyptian mythology, an oracle was more so a request to have a question answered, not a person with the gift of sight. That’s where the translation issue started. But then it goes on and that’s why I think it’s a person and an object in a way.” I raise my eyebrows, expecting her to understand, but to be honest, I don’t really understand it quite either. “Remember the night War attacked Chicago?”
“Kinda hard to forget that.”
“Melinda met me at the bar because she found a magical object and was worried it was cursed. It wasn’t, but it was still creepy, and I think this oracle is kinda like that.”
“What’s the creepy object, Callie?”
“It’s like a witch friendship bracelet, but with blood.”
“Go on.” She raises a perfectly filled in brow.
“This oracle, so to speak, is an object that’s linked to a deity in the Underworld. I’m guessing Osiris or maybe Anubis. If I can find the other end of it, so to speak, a locator spell could tell me exactly what realm the Underworld is hidden on.”
Eliza’s eyes meet mine. “And then you can get Lucas.”
“Yes.”
“Okay, but are you any closer to figuring out how to find this thing?”
“Yes and no,” I say, rapidly shaking my head again. “The woman Lucas had been talking to said there had been a scarab bought at an auction years ago and believed it to actually be cursed. It brought so much bad luck and harm they actually contacted a “professional” to help deal with it.” I let out a snort of laughter. “The Order of the Mystic Realm.”
Chapter
Nine
“Didn’t the hunter who tried to kill you belong to the Order?” Eliza asks.
“Yeah. He did. It’s a shady as fuck organization. Not even Easton or Melinda would join because it’s that extreme.”
“And let me guess, you’re just going to walk right up to them and demand to see, what, their inventory?”