“I know. I’ve managed to make a mess of everything.” Finally, she explained about the runes, though they seemed so trivial compared to Willoughby’s death. “Do you think you can help?”
“I can certainly try,” Kiara said as they settled on the sofa in Aurelie’s lab. “But something tells me you left out a few details of your week so far.”
“What details?”
“Details about you and Des.”
Aurelie avoided Kiara’s eyes. “I told you everything.”
“Aurelie.”
“Fine, almost everything.”
A grin spread on Kiara’s face. “You really like him, don’t you?”
Aurelie had told Des as much, just the other night. But nowlikeseemed much too simple of a word for what she felt. It wasn’tlove, of course. But she could imagine how easy it would be to fall into it, into him.
Her silence must have been all the confirmation Kiara needed, because she didn’t press further. Instead, she began to practice engraving on a sheet of copper. She promised she’d replace them all without her father knowing.
Already, she was better than Aurelie. She felt terrible for dragging her best friend into this mess, but having Kiara here was grounding. In Des’s presence, she was untethered; if she wasn’t careful, she could float away altogether. But here, in the moment, was where she belonged. Nothing could matter more than saving her uncle. Nothing could matter more than this.
When Kiara was confident she could carve the runes, they made their way to Aurelie’s other workshop. She spent a few minutes searching for Mephisto there, but the demon was still nowhere to be found.
“What is this made of, do you think?” Kiara asked as she studied a metal plate. “It’s not gold or copper. I’ve never seen a metal like it, in fact.”
“I know,” Aurelie said, peering over her shoulder. “I couldn’t find anything about it in the books I read, either. I suspect it’s some type of alloy, electrum perhaps.”
“Electrum?”
“Green gold. A gold-and-silver alloy.” With the metal plates already affixed to the stone, Kiara had to work with them vertically. Some runes were far more complicated than others, and with thirty-six of them, it was going to be more than she could handlealone in one day. “I’ll try one of the simpler runes,” Aurelie said, glancing at her translation. “Hopefully we can get most of this done today, and then I can finish when Everard comes.”
They worked for hours with painstaking slowness, lest they make a mistake and ruin a metal plate. There were no spares, and Aurelie knew Everard wouldn’t accept failure, despite the impossible task he’d set before her.
By dinner, they’d finished all but the last of the runes. They stepped back to look at the portal, Kiara’s chin on her fist, Aurelie pushing her magnifying spectacles up onto her forehead.
“It doesn’t look magical, does it?” Kiara said. She was wearing coveralls and a kerchief to keep her hair out of her face.
“Of course it doesn’t look magical yet,” Aurelie countered, but inside, she’d been thinking the same thing. It was large, bulky, and it was rather evident which of the runes Aurelie had carved, because they looked like they’d been scrawled by a squirrel. “Once we finish the last rune, it will work. It has to.”
“And you still don’t have it translated?”
Aurelie shook her head no. She’d gone to the postbox by the front gate at midday to check, but Professor Sheldrake hadn’t written. The mail wouldn’t come again until after Yule.
“Aurelie, it’s not too late to stop this, you know. Your uncle wouldn’t want you to put yourself in harm’s way for him.”
Aurelie was exhausted from having this conversation, but she also knew that Kiara would want to have it at least one more time before she left today. “I know. But I refuse to let him die for me.”
“And your parents?”
At that, Aurelie turned to look at Kiara, stung. “What about my parents?”
“Do you think this is what they would want for their only daughter?”
The words caught her off guard, stealing her breath. She didn’t often consider what her parents would think of her life now, because she had always believed they would approve of it. She was a scientist, like them. She worked and studied hard, and she was a dutiful niece, aside from the whole illegal inventing bit.
But would they expect her to sacrifice Uncle Leo to save herself?
She knew the answer instinctively. They were her parents. Of course they would put their child above all else. That didn’t mean it was right.