Silver at Midnight: A Paranormal Romance Urban Fantasy (The Keepers of Knowledge Series Book 5) Bridgette O'Hare (ebook offline .txt) 📖

sly smile. “That, m’dear, is why my trip took longer than anticipated. I’ll let you do the honors.” He placed the tattered, yellowed parchment in my hand.

The paper was dry and withered, but still soft and pliable beneath my fingertips. I pushed aside the books spread out in front of me and slowly unrolled the parchment, laying one of the nearby books just over the top edge to hold it in place. Handwritten in Aramaic across the top were the words The Tribe of Kanna.

I caught my breath—for a completely different reason—for the second time tonight. If this was what I thought it was, it might give some information on the Kanna Stone. I stared at it for a moment in awe, lightly tracing a finger over the handwritten words, and that’s when I noticed the drawings partially hidden within the curl at the bottom of the paper. Pushing my fingers carefully across the center, a dagger was revealed.

“Cian.” My voice trembled his name. “Cian . . . look at this.”

He moved around the table to stand behind me. Uncle Lachlan and Darek moved closer as well. The tension of my voice no doubt had alerted them that I had found something significant on the parchment.

“Is that what I think it is?” Cian uttered in disbelief.

I nodded. “Aye.”

“How long will it take you to translate this?” Cian asked.

I looked it over, recognizing more words than not and noticing a few phrases that got me a little more than excited about hunting down the Kanna Stone. “A few hours, if all goes well.”

“What can I do to help?” Uncle Lachlan inquired.

I scribbled a quick note on a sheet of paper, tore it off, and handed it over along with the list of questions I had jotted down while going through his notes on the second Silver Scroll. “If you could help with this,” I pointed to the note, “and offer some clarity to my questions on the list, I can get this translated. That might put us in a great position for locating the Stone. It’s easily the closest we’ve been so far. I feel like the pieces of this puzzle are starting to come together.” It was all I could do not to stand up and jump around with excitement.

Twenty-Two

Nailing down information on the artifacts The Saiad had in their possession quickly became secondary to translating the document from The Kanna Tribe. Being the only one with a background in dead languages, that job fell to me. Somehow, Uncle Lachlan had sensed the tension created by being confined with both men, and he gave Cian and Darek the task of gathering material surrounding the remainder of the list. He’d sent them to the research area on the first floor and also written down precisely where to find certain reference books dealing with a few particular artifacts he felt might be of significant importance. I was grateful for the reprieve.

Just over halfway through completion of the translation, Uncle Lachlan scared the cac out of me with an outburst that could have woken the dead even without an artifact. He leapt to his feet and slammed a hand down on the table. “Ha!”

Naturally, my head snapped up and I stared in his direction. “What’s wrong?” I asked frantically.

“Absolutely nothing! Somethin’ ya asked in yer list gave me an idea, so I started searchin’ for one thing which led to another and then another. And I do believe I’ve actually found a startin’ point for locating the Stone.” His smile widened ear to ear. “We have a startin’ point, m’dear. Do ye know what that means?” Enthusiasm laced his every word.

“If we can trace it, we can find it,” I responded flatly.

“Precisely!”

“What’s the location? I can be packed and ready t’ go in thirty minutes.”

“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. We have a starting point, a ground zero. There are still many avenues we can travel. Let’s see what we can trace from here. No point in going on a wild goose chase and wastin’ time if we don’t have t’.”

“Of course. I’m just a little excited.” I knew he was right. Deep down, my fight or flight reaction was trying to take over, and flight wanted a fast track out of my current conflict between the past and the present.

“As am I,” he expressed. “As am I. Ground zero is Cairo. Nira is quite familiar with that area and has several contacts there. I’m going to go locate her now and see what I can find out while you complete your translation. Maybe she can steer me in the right direction.”

“Let me know as soon as you learn anything at all!”

“Aye, of course,” he assured. Within a matter of a minute, he had gathered what he needed and was gone, leaving me alone with my thoughts and my work for the first time all day. I stared down at the parchment on the table and my eyes gravitated to the drawing at the bottom.

The Tartaros Blade.

Why’d it keep surfacing? It had to mean something. Cian had said the night before that he didn’t believe in coincidences. I wouldn’t go that far, personally. But when something continued showing up, I had to trust that there was something more going on. Three times is more than a coincidence. That’s significant. The fact that I had first seen this item cutting a life short also played heavily into my reasons for wanting to find it . . . and take it out of play.

I had to get it translated, because I knew this document had more to say than information on the Kanna Stone. This document was going to help me save a life. Cian’s life.

Sometimes an hour seems like an hour. Sometimes an hour can drag by and you’re convinced it was at least half a days’ time. That is how the last hour of my life felt as I had translated the final line of