ARCANE

I haven't forgotten about this one. Still working on it and there will be some major changes yet again!

Areion simply looked at her, his right brow slightly twitching up, just like the corners of his mouth.

It took her a moment to process and then her expression paled.

"Because you don't plan on letting me live", she answered her own question.

so I have published a different book a few days ago, something that does not have anything in common with this project of mine.

However, I keep working on this book and I have come to a few decisions that I want to share with you loyal followers.

this series will be called ARCANE from now on

I will publish it with my real name

there will be three novels: ARCANE, OBSCURE, OPAQUE

maybe a fourth, but we will see

For a long moment she just looked at him, trying to be a grown up about this and not to snap at him. It wasn’t his fault that everyone in her life, everyone she loved, seemed to have the habit of lying to her: Daniel about being in love with Katie, Reggie about the book and apparently her mother about her father’s disappearance. Now she couldn’t help but wonder what everyone else was lying about.

She looked at him blankly and eerily calm, because there was a lie hidden in his words. She simply felt it and he knew. He had just the same expression in his face like her, yet it slowly, pleadingly turned apologetic. Whatever it was, Reginald just couldn’t tell her. Ayna was aware that she should probably be scared, terrified even, but all she managed to sense was anger and annoyance.

The book felt so heavy in her arms and yet she wasn’t able to let go of it. She didn’t care if it was dangerous. She would never let go of it. Right now it seemed to be the only anchor she had left. All of this was so similar. Daniel being gone just like that, it reminded her so terribly of her father disappearing. No matter how often her mother had explained to her that it had nothing to do with Ayna or her sickness that had hospitalized her when she was ten, it just sounded like a lie. Just like the statement that Daniel had committed suicide. Both were lies and no one could convince her otherwise. Ayna’s father hadn’t left them, he had been taken from them. Just like Daniel.

She felt numb all of the sudden. Probably her father had not only disappeared; someone had killed him as well. Just like Daniel. Trying to calm her shallowly breath she looked at Reginald again and the way he responded to her glance he turned pale as well. All of this wasn’t only too much for her, but for him as well. For Reginald however being pulled to the surface of reality after diving in the pool of his own university was probably not so bad than Ayna drowning in this new and darker one.

“He had been doing research for you”, she merely whispered. “You were working on something new, but you never published it. This one”; Ayna gestured towards the book that was still lying on the table,” was your last publication. You were disgraced after that. I remember. And Dad was helping you out. I remember him telling me that he was going to make it right, for you. And then he was gone. Just like that. And now you want to make me believe that Daniel’s book has nothing to do with all of this? You were just telling me that Enochian is a hoax, that it was copied from another language. This language. All these years you were lying to me, to Mom. And now you are lying to me again!”

Reggie could have said everything. He could have used his husky, rough and yet warm voice trying to calm her down, or to reason with her. He could have reached out to her, gently rub his hands across her arms to do so. Yet he did nothing like that. As a matter of fact he did nothing but look at her in defeat. Still there was more written across his face.

“Your father leaving had nothing to do with this book”, he said after a moment of consideration that felt like torture. “Yes, he was trying to find new evidence for my work after it being sabotaged but that was not the reason why he left. You should ask your mother about that. I am not the one to tell you. But what I will tell you is that him not coming back…. This had everything to do with what you see in that book and that’s why I never published anything again. He disappeared because of me, but he left for something else.”

Ayna realized that she had been holding her breath as her lungs started aching: “For what?”

Ayna knew he was lying. Even though he had spoken that quickly, too quickly for many people, she had understood him perfectly. And according to him this was the real deal. Even more: the dangerous deal. Probably that was the only reason why he had a change of heart all the sudden. Her uncle believed that she was in danger because of having this book in her possession. It was just an old collection of papers, wrapped in leather, written in strange arcane characters that seemed to have been the inspiration for something he had claimed to be a fraud years ago. This was the real deal.

“Yes, you are right, it’s a forgery”, Ayna decided to lie as well. “It’s some fake we made for art class. I just didn’t know how to get back in contact with you, I’m sorry”, pressing the book against her body she made one step back and even though Reggie tried, he had to let go of the leather if he wouldn’t want to ruin it. And with that he just proved her suspicion right.

“Ayna”, of course he knew she was lying but with calling her out on it he admitted that he was doing the same, so he didn’t continue, but ran his hand through his hair again. All of the sudden the wrinkles of his face appeared to be deeper and his hair greyer, or hadn’t she noticed before? It was just like she sensed how an invisible shadow slowly consumed him.

“Since when do you have it? When did you take it? And when did your friend die?” those weren’t the questions she had expected and exactly that was the reason why she was close to freaking out all of the sudden. The sickness in her stomach as back and it tried crawling up her throat again. She swallowed.

“This morning and Daniel was found in the park….”, she was answered but comprehension hit her godfather like another electric current: “He’s the occult suicide…”. It wasn’t a question, it was a statement and Ayna could feel the goose bumps crawling up her back; even more as she saw that blank expression on the professor’s face. Reggie didn’t continue, and she wished that he had, because her mind started racing, making her head spin.

Of course the police or the FBI would have called him if the rumors about the circumstances how Daniel’s body had been found were in fact just like the radio had said. Although an expert in archeology and anthropology, he was the closest they could get to interpret something occult. And now she was coming here with that book. How much coincidence was possible? Did he know that she would take the book to her uncle? To solve this mystery? Did this make any sense at all?

“Do not take it back. Leave it here. I will make sure …” she heard Reggie’s voice from far away and already had started shaking her head stubbornly like a little child that was unwilling to part from her beloved stuffed animal. “Ayna, please…”

Her eyes were burning even before she was aware of that thought in her mind that rationally made no sense. How could someone be killed because of an old book no one could read? No one apart from her uncle maybe. Why would anyone disappear into thin air while researching for just this uncle?

“This isn’t Enochian and there is no way that anyone being your friend is capable of writing these characters,” he muttered, definitely being appalled.  

“But look at these signs, these sweeps!” Ayna accidentally smacked the book she was holding down onto the table next to Daniel’s and pointed at the letters that seems to be handwritten, unlike the graphic from what her uncle had published, just to hesitate: the similarities were uncanny and yet oddly the characters some self-acclaimed spirit medium named Edward Kelley stated were of angelic heritage looked more like typical modern ones in comparison to what Daniel had written; if he had written them. Ayna tilted her head.

“No, no, no!” her uncle almost yelled, throwing his hands up in the air, combing his hair with one of his hands now, while the other one formed a fist against his own hip. “Have you forgotten everything I taught you?”, he flung around, “Echochian is made up! I wrote it in here”, he was trying to stab his own scientific work with his index finger, “even worse they possessed the audacity to use this original arcane language to create it!”

Ayna’s eyes followed his hand to the book she had brought to him and the professor froze for a moment before his body was electrified. Hastily he shut whatever it was that Daniel had hidden in his stash, it couldn’t have been written by him. She got that now. But it wasn’t helpful at all. Even worse Reggie pushed the heavy burden against her chest and with it the air out of her lungs.

“Where ever you took it from, bring it back, I do not want this in my office. I never want to see it again and you should stay as far as possible away from it!” he shouted tonelessly and Ayna feared that she somehow, after all these years, had accidentally managed to break his sanity after all, yet her mind was wildly processing what he had spilled.

“So he was killed because of this book?” she asked frowningly, and his reaction was a set of choppy movements and grimaces before he himself remembered what she had told him: “You said your friend killed himself”, Reginald sounded awfully rational, yet he only needed to look at his godchild’s face to connect the dots and his flushed face turned pale in the blink of an eye.

All of the sudden, he grabbed the book again she already was pressing against herself and tried to tear it from her grasp, managing to leave her completely puzzled. Ayna didn’t let go, just like she wouldn’t let go of the reality that Daniel didn’t kill himself. He might have been dead, but he would never end his own life just like that. She could feel the blood flee from her own face now.

“Ayna, let go.”

yes, you gave me an insight and perfected what I had in mind.

“Yes….” She cut off her uncle just when he was opening his mouth, exhaling to retort. “I found something, but it is written with characters I can’t read, or at least cannot remember to read them, but I swear that I have seen them before. Either here or in Dad’s notes”, her words followed her thoughts trailing off, when something buried in her mind tried to drag itself in front of her inner eye.

“Your spirit of research has awakened again?” Reginald Peterson sounded delighted and at least ten years younger; he put his glasses back to where they belonged and walked towards his best friend’s daughter, holding up his palms, ready to receive.

Ayna responded automatically, and opened up her bad to grab the heavy leather-bound book, yet she didn’t look at the Professor for Archeology and Anthropology, as her eyes were still searching the shelves – at least those which were hit by the lights so that she actually could read the titles. It was the loss of this weight that told her he had taken the book and she unconsciously heard him walk to his desk along with it. Still her attention was drawn elsewhere because she had found something that was strangely and magnetically familiar.

“Enochian”, she murmured to herself and reached out to take the book from its place, to read out its cover. “Divine language of angels or hoax by Reginald Peterson.”

“Ayna!” her uncle yelled fear drunken, and almost made her drop the book he apparently had published years ago, making her turn around towards him rapidly.

“What’s wrong?” she couldn’t help but worry and haste down the aisle towards his desk, from which he had moved away, pressing himself against the cabinet behind him as if he just had opened Pandora ’s Box, yet as she checked it was still that old book with characters that looked somewhat like Enochian.

The moment her head moved to face him again, he already had grabbed her by her shoulders so tightly that it hurt, but it was the almost crazed expression in her face that rather confused than scared her. Ayna knew that Reggie would never harm her, that he was passionate close to madness when it came to his work and this just seemed to be normal for him, if there wasn’t true panic in his eyes.

“Did I damage it?” she asked weakly and uncertain.

She could watch how his mind went blank for a mere second, because obviously she got it entirely wrong. However Reginald seemed to calm down a bit.

“Where did you find this, Anya?” his tone made her bones freeze. “Did someone give it to you to bring it to me? Or where did you find it? If you took it, you need to bring it back right now.”