The Magic of Shadows

Chapter 9

Helaine's POV

The library had all but turned into those basements you see in movies when the main character is hunting for someone. Cork boards scattered around with pictures pinned to them, connected by red string on maps to clipped out newspaper articles. While it wasn't quite that extreme, it felt just as complex.

Most of the pictures were spread across the table, forcing all of the guys to hold their mugs in their hands as they watched me wander around the table, going through every picture with excruciating detail. The house had returned the coffee and teapot around the same time that Kota had given up trying to keep track of the web of connections in his head and had started scribbling it down on whiteboards, fighting to keep up with the endless information that I was sharing.

Some of the others added their own details from time to time, but it was most Kota's hand traveling across the board at lightning speed. Lines zigzagged between different bullet points, linking different pieces of my memories to others in a way that I never would have thought about.

The information itself was outdated, but there were enough faces that I recognized that I could link them back to different factions that had been through Charleston back when I was still living with my aunt and uncle. Most of it the Academy already knew, but we'd never bothered connecting it together like this.

I had already taken them through a crash course in information about my uncle, things that wouldn't likely come up in Academy briefings even though I had shared everything I knew. There was simply too much to nicely sum up and hand over to all of the teams who needed it. Where he'd grown up, the dynamic between him and my aunt, the way he'd interacted with both his equals and his superiors. What Owen had seemed most interested in was how he behaved after the other members of the Council had left—his demeanor, a habit, anything I could give him.

He drank. He always drank, especially when Elias had been over. But he was also prone to checking his safe. It was locked and no one knew the combination except for him, but he'd go check it every time they left, like he was worried someone had stolen his things. There was a lot that could be said about the Council of Salem, but they weren't a united brotherhood the way that Academy teams were.

I hadn't thought about that in years. It had never occurred to me that it might be an insight into his relationship with his fellow Council members, an indicator of his level of trust with those he was working closest to. I'm not sure I even told Phil about it when I first joined, and Axel had acted like it was news to him. They'd known about the safe, and that he'd emptied it out when he left, but not about his habit of visiting it after meetings.

I picked up a picture, squinting at it as I lowered myself into my chair for the first time since I stood up to start linking everything together. "I feel like I should know him," I said, my brain itching as I tried to dig deeper into memories that had begun to fade with time.

Once upon a time, I'd thought that would never happen. That those memories would always be fresh and frightening. Forgetting them had seemed impossible. I'd never considered I'd be disappointed by it when it did happen.

There was so much left to cull from my mind, from my dreams. More than what I could discuss in a single afternoon without losing my mind. It seemed remarkably unfair that the memories that would be helpful were dripping away like water from cupped hands while the ones that were better left forgotten clung to me like thorny vines embedded in my skin.

"Which one is it?" Axel asked as he dug through a stack of extra photos, either duplicates or ones I'd discarded because I didn't recognize them. There were a few I had pulled aside because I recognized what could be the small tattoo that indicated their involvement in the Council, but with it being on the upper shoulder near the neck, usually hidden under clothing, it wasn't always a reliable method.