Ice Hot|| Rewriting

Chapter Four

Chapter 4

It was the next day when I finally mustered enough courage to go give my answer to Nik. I waited until Alyssa showed up before leaving. I walked over to Nik’s house. It was faster to walk than anything else during rush hour. Even then, it took me a good forty minutes to reach his house.

Nik’s house was the size of a city block. Sitting in the spot where there used to be a warehouse in North Beach, the house portrayed the magnificence and wealth one would expect from one of the oldest magical families. The house sat in the middle of the property surrounded on all sides by a stone wall and iron gate. Inside the walls was a lush green lawn and carefully pruned trees and shrubs. The house itself was brick wrapped in long tendrils of green ivy and made one think of the grand, old estates in the West Eurasian Sector territories of England and France. I walked up stone steps to a grandiose oak door and rang the bell.

A maid opened the door, “You must be Ms. Hall. Please, follow me.” The maid led me through a door to a room with just stairs. We walked up two flights to the top floor and she led me down a hallway to a set of double doors. She didn’t bother knocking before leading me into an office. It was plain, with just a desk and bookshelves behind it. But the man behind that desk, oh, that was another story. He is not hot, he is not hot I chanted to myself. I sat down in one of the chairs in front of the desk.

Nik dismissed the maid before speaking to me, “I see you’ve made your decision Vera. We’ll start as soon as Fallon gets here.”

I raised an eyebrow. “Aren’t you going to ask me if I will help you?”

“You’re smart. You knew you didn’t really have a choice.”

We sat in silence until the maid walked in again, this time with Fallon following her. The maid left again as Fallon sat in the other seat. “I would have preferred to do this in neutral territory.”

“Not enough time. Have the others responded?”

“The angels and demons are okay with us going into their territory. The godlings and dragons are demanding that a representative helps us look. What about the fae, vampires and skinwalkers?”

“They are also demanding for representatives.”

“Are we going to let them?”

“We have to.”

I decided to interject. “What is so special about this book that every species in San Francisco wants in on the action?”

Fallon was the one who responded to me, “Part of it is because they don’t want us invading on their territory, but the book also contains some very specific spells that really never should have been written in the first place.” The first part was clear; San Francsico was a divided city. But the second part…

“What kind of spells?”

This time it was Nik who gave me an answer, “Trust me, you don’t want to know.”

“Excuse me? I have been coerced into finding something that I would not have helped you find if I wasn’t backed into a corner. And now I find out that the book has a spell that’s incredibly dangerous and you’re refusing to tell me what that spell does. I deserve to know what that spell is.”

Fallon and Nik stared at each other for a long minute before Nik finally spoke, “The spell is supposed to be able to allow a magic user to decimate a square mile without running out of juice.”

“Why would you write a spell that does that? Who on their right mind…?” I trailed off realizing with a start that both my dad and mom’s families had spell similar to it in their grimoires. I had both grimoires.