Free Shadowstorm (The Shadow World Book 6) by Dianne Sylvan Page B

What about college? A job? A boyfriend?”
    “Did you tell him you’re sleeping with a vampire Elf who’s been teaching you magic?”
    A giggle. “Maybe I should—he’d probably stop asking then.”
    Nico closed his eyes. “Even though it isn’t really true.”
    “It is true! We are, literally, sleeping together, and you were teaching me magic. You will again soon.”
    He tried to agree with her, but all he could get out was, “I hope so.” Hoping to change the subject, he asked, “How is Lark?”
    “She’s doing great, actually. Foxglove promoted her to manager of the store, and she met a girl at the last Full Moon potluck—a geology teaching assistant at the university. Lark’s even writing again. She says hi, by the way.”
    Nico smiled. He quite liked Lark, whom he had met several times on her visits to the Haven. The two young women had made a concerted effort to spend more time together, so Stella was often in the city for a few days at a time—a relief, he imagined, from playing nursemaid to a languishing Elf.
    “Anything good tonight?” she asked, indicating the Codex with one foot.
    “Actually, yes…I seem to have finally reached the part of the book that is relevant to our current situation. This, for example, is the beginning of the story of the original Circle. There appear to be three separate accounts, but I could only read one of them. That first coven was led by two of what we would call Thirdborn, though they weren’t named as such. It’s hard to say exactly what made them different besides being stronger—the text alludes to other qualities that set them apart, but it’s not specific, at least not yet. They aren’t named, but the author of the story, Galatea, was one of the Circle’s Primes, and her Consort was named Cybele.”
    “Galatea…you mean they were both women?”
    “They were.”
    “I’ll be damned,” Stella said, a smile in her voice. “So it’s not as novel as we thought. You should tell…”
    She trailed off, and he had to smile a little himself at that despite the ache it caused in his chest. “You can say his name, you know,” Nico told her. “David does the same thing—like it’s a secret invocation.”
    Stella laughed and kissed his ear. “It’s more like Voldemort at this point.”
    “Who?”
    “Never mind. Anything else interesting?”
    “There’s a ritual…” He held the Codex at an angle so she could see it and turned to a page covered in a complicated diagram of circles and spirals. Like everything in the Codex it had an Elvish feel to it, but was still distinctly its own creature. “When the entire Circle is complete, they can then dedicate a room—one in each Haven if they like—to communicating with Persephone. All eight together have to consecrate it, but after that any can use it alone or in groups. I just got to the instructions tonight, but I was too tired to continue.”
    “So as soon as we find Olivia’s Consort, you guys can finally get the rest of the way across the bridge and find out what the hell Persephone wants from you.”
    “The ritual does something else, too. Apparently after it’s performed, we’ll be able to translate dialect number three. What we see here is supposed to look like nonsense. It’s not encoded, it’s bespelled. That’s how the Order ensured that only the next Circle would be able to read their secrets. The book will only allow those who have stood in that dedicated room to know what it says.”
    “But they are assuming we can figure out dialect number two.”
    “So it would seem. And I will—it’s just taking forever.”
    Nico leaned back against the Witch, giving up on the need to be vertical for a while. Her arms wound around him, along with her legs. He thought back to the night he’d first met her out walking the grounds of the Haven—she, like all of them, had changed so much in these months. The power in her had put down roots and was growing upward; she was still brightly colored