‘Where are you?’
‘At Leila’s flat,’ she admitted. ‘I thought it might help to be in the place she died.’
‘Oh, Freya. I’m so sorry.’
There was a moment’s silence during which she thought Grant might let her down, but he wasn’t about to.
‘I can’t help you decipher over the phone. You’ll have to come back to the library.’
When Freya didn’t respond, Grant continued. ‘I think I know the volume you need. Leila expressed an interest in it a while back. It contains a variety of the less common runic scripts. Maybe that’s the one she used.’
Grant was right. She would have to go back.
‘Okay,’ Freya conceded. ‘I’ll be half an hour.’
‘I’ll look it out and have it ready,’ Grant said.
Freya repacked her bag, taking particular care of the Book of Shadows. She’d been so certain if she came here, the place where Leila died, that she would be able to decipher what was written there. She’d been wrong.
Rhona hadn’t arrived back with the coffee yet.
Rather than wait, Freya decided to leave a note instead.
Rhona can’t help me with this anyway.
Freya stood for a moment in the ever-darkening room, wishing she could hear Leila’s voice again. Watch her bright figure in the library. Hear her laugh with Shannon, the blonde and auburn heads close together.
She recalled the intensity of Leila’s expression as she’d spoken of sexual magick and the power of the spells it generated. She’d been intoxicated by it. Had she in casting those spells forgotten the Wiccan Rede? Had she been courting the darker side of magic?
As she moved to close the window, opened earlier to aid her concentration, Freya heard a movement behind her and turned to discover a pair of green eyes observing her from the doorway.
The big black cat held her in its gaze for a moment, before opening its mouth and emitting a high keening sound that cut Freya like a knife. In that moment she was back in the room Rhona had so vividly described with the twenty-seven dolls clicking and clacking against one another in the draught from the open window, all eyes focused on her as they swayed like the pendulum of a clock. Telling Freya that time was running out and that she must hurry.