Luminary {Book 2 ✔️}

Chapter 38

Harry broke the silence.

"Yeah, he'd definitely beat me in a fight."

***

Despite the slightly interesting start to our sleuthing, the rest of the time we spent digging through the hunters' belongings hadn't served to be very fruitful. A vast majority of the items in the boxes didn't pertain to anything regarding my father. Slightly disconcerting, however, was the discovery that the hunters had been watching all of my friends and me for a very long time.

There were photographs of Tilly and me at Enigma, of Ben at the festival, and of Tucker getting into his truck. A few photographs were even taken of Mara and the other fair folk. I didn't understand the point of the photographs.

If the hunters knew where we all were, why weren't they attacking?

My thoughts drifted to the worst-case scenario. If they were working for Johnathan, then they were waiting because whatever he had planned affected us all. I didn't like that idea so much.

Eventually, all four of us gave up. Our eyes were tired from scanning meaningless forms, receipts, and even homework assignments that the hunters had kept in their little base of operations. My mom had come home and ordered pizza for all of us, happy to see her house so full. Tilly and Harry had long since gone upstairs to watch a movie- even though the best television was downstairs, but I digress. Ben and I, however, were lounging on the carpet.

"I still don't understand why my mom would do something like that," he murmured after I'd told him of the visions I'd had at the hospital.

"I don't understand how you all never knew about the laws."

Ben shook his head. "You know us as werewolves that are fully-immersed in the supernatural world, but we weren't always like this, you know? I hadn't even turned before my mom disappeared. Tucker had just gotten control over his transformation. Before she disappeared, we were just...normal."

I thought affectionately of the five boys who lived next door. It was difficult to keep the smile off of my face.

"I doubt that you guys were ever actually normal."

Ben cracked a sad smile, thinking of his mother. I ached to tell him that I knew how to fix it, but I didn't. Not alone. Delia's memories had been stolen by my father and I didn't know if I was capable of restoring them. I'd reached out to her ley line already, but every time I tried to listen to it there was no sound, just a dull and empty buzzing. I tried to whisper to it, but it seemed to fall on deaf ears.

Loud yelling and a crash came from upstairs. Ben and I barely glanced at each other before we shot to our feet. Tilly came running down the stairs frantically, a big smile on her face with Harry trailing behind her. She was breathless by the time she reached us.

"I found it! I know what it is!"

Ben and I blinked at her as she waved her phone back and forth at us. I snatched it from her and peered at the tiny photo on the screen. It was a photograph of a photograph of an old book with complicated scribblings written throughout it. Ben squinted at it.

"Tilly, what the hell is this?" I questioned, my voice quiet as to not alert my mother of our subject matter.

"The Codex," she breathed, "this is one of the pages! I took a photo of it when we took it out of the box because I thought it looked weird. Then, while we were watching the movie I tried reading the inscriptions and-"

"This is in Latin," I interjected, peering at the writing, "you can read Latin?"

"This is what you were doing upstairs?"