Chapter 46

“Yes. Thank you.”

He picked up the cigarette along the way, then moved it, presumably, to the other hand and reached for mine. I took it. How did I know the hand was there? I wasn’t sure how. I just did.

* * * *

“Help yourself to anything you find interesting,” Artemis said once we arrived in his bedroom.

There was a bed and a shelf, a wide, tall shelf that took up one wall, just like the one that had magically appeared in the replica of my bedroom.

The real reason I’d come, the thing I’d come after, I spotted it right away. It didn’t say Book of Shadows. It might have. I couldn’t see the cover or the spine. The tome was open on Artemis’s bed. I recognized it. Somehow, like with the hand I still held, somehow I just knew.

“I will leave you to yourself.” Artemis released me from his gentle grip.

“Wait.” I tried to make mine as gentle when I took back his hand. “Are you sure you don’t mind us being here? We could go.”

“No. Please, stay. I will tell you…”