19. Jaiyana

CHAPTER NINETEEN

JAIYANA

W e gathered on one side of a metal table in the not-so-simple grey interrogation room. If I had my magic, the runes stitched into every seam of the padded space wouldn’t bother me. I could break all of them. Without my magic, the runes, which prevented shifting and created a negative magic void, much like the air king’s quartz, made a cold sweat bead on my skin.

The bright lights bounced off the table between us, and my dragon's blurry figures reflected off the edges, making us look like a busy cluster in front of the single, stoic superintendent.

I controlled myself and looked at the older, fatter version of the man I’d spent over two years working side-by-side with a lifetime ago. He’d been classically handsome back in the day, like a cop out of the shows in the eighties. If I was being honest, he still was but softer, with a lifetime of experience etched into his features. A wedding ring dug into his finger. He’d found love and embraced it.

I couldn’t look at my dragons. I’d done the opposite. My mind still spun from Rehan and Ogden’s interrogation. But I stood by what I said. Emotions weren’t tangible, just like the little fucking voice in my head that never shut up. I couldn’t fix either, but I could fix missing memories. Supposedly. So, I focused on the problem at hand.

I, apparently, saw my old friend less than a year ago. And I stole something before or after doing something similar but worse in England.

I leaned forward. “Tell me everything. What did I steal? Do you have any videos?”

The superintendent spun his wedding ring, eyeing me suspiciously. “Prove you’ve lost your memories.”

I held my hands up. “It’s better. Whoever stole my memories cursed me. I can’t use my magic either.” I pursed my lips. “If I had my magic, I would have already ripped the information from your mind. I wouldn’t be sitting here asking, you know this. You know me.”

A spark of memory passed across the superintendent's gaze. He reached forward and placed a hand on my arm, resting on the table. Twenty years ago, a stranger's touch would have set off protective spells with shocking results. Today, the weight of his hand settled on my skin without even a hint of magic.

Tyson stopped pacing at my back to growl low in his throat. Lux rested his metal hand on my shoulder, ready to pull me close. The superintendent sat back, lacing his fingers together over his stomach.

“Ah, they're a bit protective.” Heat rose to my cheeks, loving it despite how unnecessary it was.

“Dragon shifters.” Superintendent Kelly let out a humorless grunt. “Mythical magic in the world of magic. Why does it not surprise me in the least it’s you who found them?”

I turned my palms to the ceiling.

“It’s rhetorical.” Superintendent Kelly narrowed his eyes. “The demon pods floating in the Ley Lines, does that have anything to do with all of this?”

My hands floated as I weighed the pros and cons of answering his question. Technically, dragon shifters were still hiding on their island. An island no one knew about, so talking about our situation would get tricky fast.

He held up a hand. “I don’t want to know. Unlike further south, we’ve only got a few of the pods up here. We’re keeping an eye on them.”

I nodded, tucking away the fact that the pods were not evenly distributed across the Ley Lines for a later date.

“You would have done more than just take the information from my mind.” Superintendent Kelly rubbed the stubble on his chin. “Who are you without your magic?”

My stomach squeezed. “Really, that’s your question?”

The superintendent frowned. “Two years you worked with my force to clear out a ghoul infestation. You were good, really good, but in that time, your only focus was magic. Your day trips took you to Ley Lines and ancient sites of power. I don’t remember you making a single friend.”

Lux’s hand on my shoulder squeezed, and Ogden rested his palm on my thigh under the table.

I wrinkled my nose. “I mean, I talked to you.”

The superintendent shook his head. “Barely, and when I made a move, you introduced me to another woman.”

That sounded like me. “How did that work out?”

“We got married. We have three kids and our first grandbaby on the way.” The superintendent chuckled. “So, good. Really good.”

I smiled, honestly happy for my old acquaintance. The tension in the air eased, though the mention of kids brought back Tyson’s words during our walk to Scalehive. I shook my head, trying to physically free myself of the intense emotions these dragons brought out in me. I needed to focus.

“So, yeah, that’s my question.” he reiterated.

I very pointedly did not look at my dragons. “I’m a growing girl, still trying to decide what I want to do when I grow up.” Although my words sounded playful, my delivery was flat and bitter. I didn’t know who I was without my magic, and everyone in this room knew it .

I wrinkled my nose unhappily.

A uniformed officer entered and set a laptop on the table before exiting.

“I didn’t actually speak to you a year ago,” the superintendent said. “No one did. You were in and out fast.”

He opened the laptop. A video waited for someone to press play. With a click of a button, a portal opened in a dimly lit museum. Two figures stepped out of it. My favorite high ponytail swayed down to my hips, and the shield enchantments I used to keep on my back glowed with my powers.

The second figure was more challenging to make out. Though I willed him to turn and face the camera, he never did. Dressed in jeans and a grey long-sleeve shirt, he honestly just looked like a dude with a rolling gate. He stood at my height, but his build was bean-pole thin. A hat hid his features.

In the video, we wandered shelves for a few minutes before the man presumably called me over. We stared at a case before I waved my hand, and then we left through the same portal.

“You took this,” the superintendent handed me a picture.

What looked like the corner of a textured yellowy-white box, three sides of it covered in intricately carved pictures and runes, had been photographed from a few different angles. The measuring tape in one picture showed it to be precisely 12.3 centimeters long, 5 centimeters wide, and 18 centimeters tall.

“Is that bone?” Ogden asked.

“It is,” Superintendent Kelly answered. “Whalebone. It’s part of Gorm’s Casket, a prolific Viking believed to be a god. Vikings burn their dead at sea. After Gorm took his final sail to Valhalla, a mermaid collected his physical ashes in this casket and buried them deep on the ocean floor. Only, as we now know, God’s can’t die. Fast forward a few hundred years, and the casket was found here in Ireland on the altar to a neolithic sun god… broken.”

I chewed on my lower lip and drummed my fingers on the table, having a vague memory of that.

Rehan narrowed his eyes. “What did you do?”

“It was the power of a god, just sitting at the bottom of the ocean. I was only two hundred years old.” I batted my eyes innocently. “What do you think I did?”

Ogden giggled and nodded encouragingly while Rehan rubbed his hand down his face.

I leaned toward Superintendent Kelly. “More importantly. In the present, why did I take a piece of the casket out of your museum, and why don’t I remember doing it?”

“Who was the guy?” the superintendent leaned forward.

I wrinkled my nose. I didn’t know.

“Could it be your ex?” Tyson asked.

“My ex looked to be in his eighties. This video is from just a few months ago,” I tapped my pointer finger a few times before flattening my hand against the table. This wasn’t just a few missing memories; I’d used my magic, and a lot of it, based on the video.

“But it fits, right?” Lux added. “How much power did this casket give you.”

I scowled. “It didn’t.”

“What?” Og blinked at me in disbelief.

“I wasn’t always badass.” I rubbed the edge of the metal table. “My ritual salt wasn’t pure. Gorm, the god trapped in the casket, got stuck in a power loop before the casket split into three pieces. At the time, I didn’t have the raw magic to fix the vessel to try again, so I scattered the pieces.” I scowled. “It took me months of evaporating sea water to get enough salt for that ritual, too,” I added before perking up. “Never made that mistake again.”

“Again?” Rehan asked. “How many caskets did you do this to?”

“This was the only casket,” I said before fanning my fingers between us, ticking them off one by one. “But, I mean, there was a sarcophagus. The god stuck in a ferret. Not to mention a few sacrifices… no people, promise.” I wiggled my eyebrows. “I gave away my firstborn, but the joke’s on the Marduk cuz I gave away my uterus first. It was all just more power. I like power. There’s nothing wrong with that.”

“You have a problem,” Rehan stated.

I grinned. “I do. All the best people do, anyway. I haven’t gotten a boost since the late eighteen hundreds. Technology made me cool my magical heels. So.” I popped my lips. “Water under the bridge.”

Rehan pointed at the picture. “That you remember.”

I held my hands up. “I broke the casket eight hundred years ago.”

“And didn’t have the knowledge or the power to fix it at the time ,” Og stressed the last three words. Lux and Rehan leaned in as if waiting for a lightbulb to fire in my head. Tyson paced behind us, his steps loud in the too-quiet room.

“At the time, I did not,” I said awkwardly. “But at this time, I do.” I hit my forehead with my palm. “Shit.”

Tyson let out a growl. “I don’t get it, and I don’t like being left out.”

“The video implies Jay was collecting the pieces of Gorm’s casket,” Og explained while I pulled up every fact I knew about the ancient Viking god. “But she doesn’t remember. Now, the Ley Lines are filled with demons, and she’s cursed. It heavily implies she fixed the casket and released the god.”

“Why would I do that?” I moaned. “Gorm was a bloodthirsty god of war, and after spending all that time trapped in a broken vessel, I doubt he’s even sane.”

Lux squeezed my shoulder.

“You don’t know you did that,” Lux smiled encouragingly. “Technically, we don’t even know if you actually released Gorm or if this man in the video absorbed the God’s power like you were planning to do. Or if Gorm was even in the casket at all. We don’t have enough information. Don’t start blaming yourself before we’ve gathered all the facts.”

I put my hand over his metal one and squeezed it.

“I think our best bet is to retrace your steps, Jay.”

I nodded. “We need to check in with Oliviarose, but yeah. If I can’t remember, then we need to figure this out fast.”

Superintendent Kelly cleared his throat. “I believe the situation has escalated above my pay grade.”

I snapped my attention to the superintendent, having completely forgotten he was still here. “No shit, Sherlock.”

Tyson snickered while Rehan let out a disappointed grunt.

Superintendent Kelly scowled. “Someday, your smart mouth will get you into trouble. Fortunately for you, today is not that day.”

He typed into the laptop before turning the screen back to us. Green dots speckled a map of the world. Although only a few hovered over the Americas and Australia, the dots became denser until they were almost a solid color directly above the dragon’s island. The letters DPT were written above the map, and along the left was a graph of some sort of active energy reading. On the right was an open chat filled with speculation.

My dragons focused in on the laptop. Tyson swore while Lux started reading the chat out loud. Og and Rehan put their heads together and whispered about their secret island now with a big sign saying ‘problem here.’

I rubbed my neck, feeling the ribbon of Ley Line magic, which pushed me out of the gym and started this whole mess. When I woke up on the island, the ribbon was gone, and I assumed the Ley Line had moved on. What if it hadn’t? The Ley Lines weren't capable of thought, but when they needed help, they nudged the world. That nudge pushed me onto an island, literally creating a blood clot in the Ley Line’s circulatory system that was now the center of demon activity.

The Ley Lines were incapable of setting up my car accident. That had been whoever cursed me and trapped me there. But what if I ended up exactly where I needed to be?

“DPT: Demon Pod Tracking.” Superintendent Kelly stated.

I shook like a dog as I pulled myself out of my philosophical pondering. At the moment, the mysterious workings of the universe didn’t matter. I had to focus on what was tangible, and the demons filling the Ley Lines just became an actual texture in the world.

“The pods of inert demons appeared in the Ley Lines a few weeks ago, about a month after you stole the casket. And now you’re here.” Superintendent Kelly twisted his wedding ring. “I’m not a man who likes to make assumptions, but my gut tells me there’s a correlation here.” He let out an unhappy breath. “I don’t have the manpower or budget to help you. In addition, you knocked out the dominant pack’s alpha. Dragons or not, they’ll be out for blood, and you’ll find no help with that at your back.”

I nodded. “You mentioned England?”

“They had a piece of the casket,” Superintendent Kelly confirmed. “I don’t have any details, but I can spare you a portal.”

I nodded again and stood.

The Superintendent's gaze scanned up and down my body for the first time.

“You’ve not aged a day.” He stood as well. “Good luck. We still need our piece of Gorm’s Casket, or you can take Ireland off your friendly list.”

I sighed. “No rest for the wicked, I guess. Any idea where the third piece is?”

He shook his head. “We know you spent some time in Malta, but the current government wasn’t very forthcoming with our requests for information, and I lost track of you after that.”

Malta. Although the island had a crazy number of temples dating all the way back to the Neolithic time, I didn’t have a connection to it.

That you know of.

This is already old.

Superintendent Kelly opened the door to the interrogation room, and a wolf’s howl pierced the air. Goosebumps peppered my arms, making my hair stand on end.

“Why couldn’t you leave the werewolf alone?” Rehan asked.

“And let him transform and chip a tooth on my scales? That’s more your style, Minnow.” Tyson laughed.

Their banter eased the stone trying to sink my gut. We had a plan now, and we knew more. We were heading in the right direction.

“My men have already gathered your things,” Superintendent Kelly said. “Let’s get you out of Ireland and out of my hair.”

“I couldn’t agree more,” I said. “Heigh-Ho. Heigh-Ho. It’s off to England we go.”