Neil pursed his lips and exhaled a long stream of purplish smoke that twisted into a spiral shape before disappearing. “Well, at least the Grimoires are safe,” he reassured me. “Nobody can bind your snookums against his will without it.”

“Where are they?” Riley demanded. “We must be sure. We cannot take the chance that cultists will find one before the peak.”

Neil puffed out a perfect ring of smoke. “One of them’s locked in a vault in a ruined city at the bottom of the Atlantic, and it’s been there since the day I threw Atlantis into the sea. Unless your cultists have a deep submersible vehicle, it’s not going anywhere.”

I looked up from my knees, startled. “Atlantis is real?”

“It was for a while. Then the King tried to backtrack on a deal he and I had, and—”

“Where is the second book?” Riley interrupted.

“Down in the Big Apple, locked up at Port Authority.”

I jumped up from my seat, and Riley groaned. “It is sitting in a rental locker just a couple hundred miles away?”

“Would you think to look for an ancient eldritch artifact in a bus depot?” Neil puffed up defensively. “It’ll be fine. Nobody but the three of us know it’s there.”

“Not good enough.” Riley set his jaw, his eyes flashing dangerously. “The safest place for it is right here, with me or you, until the Alignment passes.”

Neil sat back in his chair and sighed, exhaling a long puff of smoke that clung to the likeness of a teardrop before vanishing. “If you insist. I guess I can make room for it in the shop safe. You’ll have to go get it yourself, though. I’ve got a booster draft tonight.”

“We will,” Riley said, taking my arm with a gentle squeeze that made me feel all gooey inside. He met my gaze and I could only look into his green eyes for so long before the hammering in my chest became too much to bear. “We will find it, and keep it safe until the time of danger has passed. I will not be used to harm these humans.” He brushed a strand of hair out of my face.

An abrupt clanging sound from behind the counter made me jump out of my trance. Neil dropped a set of car keys onto the wood in front of Riley. “Take Cleo,” he said generously. “She hasn’t been driven enough lately.”

Riley snatched up the keys. “Which locker?”

Neil gave him the number. “Oh,” he added as an afterthought as Riley took my hand and we ran for the shop exit. “I left a briefcase in there too, could you grab that for me?”

As the door swung shut behind me, I heard his fading call. “I mean it! Don’t forget the case!”

Chapter Eleven: Cleo