Oblivion Heart (Darkling Mage 4)

Uh-oh. He used my full name. He was definitely mad. I promised to make it up to him. I dashed through the Dark Room, setting my exit point somewhere the next block over, far enough away that they couldn’t chase me. As I ran through the ethers, I pulled my phone out, ready to dial Herald’s number as soon as I reentered our reality.

A high security Prism, huh?

Chapter 12

“I don’t see why you’re in such a bloody hurry to find this Mona woman, Dustin.” Carver’s eyes were dark, his voice almost on the edge of a growl. “Indulge me. Why is it so imperative that you find her now?”

I threw my hands up. “Because she might have a clue about what’s going on. Her mind was clearly not in its right place. Isn’t that what we figured? She was being controlled. Possessed. So she might have something to tell us before whoever’s pulling these attacks off strikes again.”

Carver steepled his fingers, then bent deep over his stone desk. The enormity of his office, located on that strange, stone platform in the Boneyard that seemed suspended in space, already made me feel small.

But the way Carver looked at me like he thought I was hiding something? The way invisible hooks started digging in my skin, his cat’s eyes penetrating me like they were flaying my very soul to shreds? That was when the world truly shrunk into nothing. It was like a silent interrogation. But who else was I going to turn to for help?

“Why don’t you tell me what this is really about, Dustin? Why are you so worried?” When Carver spoke again, his voice was silken, so soft and open that my instinct was to immediately stiffen and clam up.

I swallowed thickly. The hell else was I supposed to tell him? No point hiding the truth from Carver, of all people. I don’t know if it should have upset me to realize, but it felt, the longer I lived at the Boneyard, that I was growing to fear him more than I ever feared my father. Norman Graves would tell me he was di

sappointed, but Carver? Carver would tell me that, and also that I was stupid, and that what I really deserved was to be strung up by the short and curlies while being pelted with fireballs.

Or maybe that was all in my imagination. So I took the risk.

“I have reason to believe,” I started slowly, “that the massacre at the Gridiron warehouse had something to do with a grimoire.”

Carver’s eyebrow raised into a deadly curve, like the blade of a wicked knife. “Oh?” he said smoothly. “And which grimoire might that be?”

I took a deep breath. “The Tome of Annihilation. The one that vanishes after you use it.”

“I’m well aware of the book’s nature.”

I hated when Carver did this, when he would speak with only his lips, the rest of his face remaining stony, not a single wrinkle in the corner of his eye. It felt like the calm before the storm.

“And well, the night of the massacre, the demon that I contracted to reforge Vanitas appeared to me, asking for its end of the bargain.”

Carver squeezed the bridge of his nose. In a dark corner of my mind, a miniature version of me hid, and whimpered.

“So, going by logic,” Carver said through clenched teeth, “one might conclude that this demon read from the Tome of Annihilation. And now that the grimoire has vanished, it needs your help locating it again.”

“That’s right.” I stared at my thumbs, tangling my fingers together, my eyes determined to look anywhere but into Carver’s deeply disappointed face. The air was still. Somehow, his office felt colder, too.

“Now. I believe you’ve already told me once before, but do humor me, Dustin. Refresh my memory. What was the demon’s name?”

My eyes swiveled slowly upward, only just daring to look Carver in the eye for the glimmer of a second.

“Mammon.”

“Gods above, Dustin.”

“Look,” I said. “I needed Vanitas back, and – ”

“And you decided to contract demon nobility to fulfill your purpose. You could have gone to any other lesser demon, but no, you needed a prince of hell to do your dirty work.”

“The Fortune 500 of infernals,” Sterling drawled.

I whipped about. Sterling stood at the entrance to Carver’s office, leaning against the wall, the look on his face best described as smarmy. Also infuriating. Also: extremely punchable.

“You’re not supposed to be here,” I said. I thrust my finger at him, then looked at Carver beseechingly. “He’s not supposed to be here.”

“The point,” Carver said, his voice very much approaching a bellow, “is that you’ve made another of your lovely little impulse decisions, Dustin. If I could burn that trait right out of your skull we’d all be the better for it.”