He bit his slice in half and swallowed. “I do not know that word.”

“A child. She’s feeding you like a child.”

“I am not that young.”

“Obviously, but she’s treating you like you are.”

His gaze flicked to me. “Giving food, this is a thing for hh’ainun young?”

“No.” I glared at Amalia. “I’m giving you food because you enjoy it, not to be patronizing.”

Socks jumped off his shoulder and onto the island. I shooed her away, angry with Amalia for casting such an unpleasant light on one of the few things I could do for Zylas to make his days in this unfamiliar world a little better.

“Hnn.” He considered his apple, then shoved the second half into his mouth. “I like it when you give me food.”

“Good. That’s—”

“It is not a thing young do in my world.”

“What do you mean?”

A strange glint sharpened his eyes as they fixed on me. “In my world, males give food to females.”

I blinked.

“They do this when they want to make young with the female.”

My mouth fell open. Make … young?

He licked a smear of peanut butter off his thumb. “We do not need food if we have warm sun. Food is an extra thing to enjoy.”

I couldn’t react. My brain had frozen, gears locked.

“Males give a female rare or special food. If she eats it, she is thinking maybe he is a good sire.” He paused thoughtfully. “Or she is luring him closer to kill him. But if she wants to make young too, she will—”

“Wait!” I gasped wildly. “No! No, no, no. That is not why I give you—I’m not—I wasn’t—”

“I know.” He wrinkled his nose in annoyance. “I am not zh’ūltis. I know hh’ainun do different things.”

Faint relief cooled my embarrassment—until he leaned in, bringing his face close to mine, his hickory and leather scent tinged with the nutty tang of our breakfast.

“But it is fun, na?” His cocky grin flashed, revealing sharp incisors. “Keep giving me food, vayanin.”

My jaw was still hanging open as he ambled away from the counter. I stared mutely as he disappeared into my bedroom, my eyes wide and glassy—and my face burning.

Again.

I flipped slowly through the grimoire, an unpleasant ache building in my forehead. With no idea what Myrrine’s entries might look like, all I could do was skim the faded letters for her name.

Anthea had begun her career as a sorceress, though I had yet to figure out her specialty. I wasn’t familiar with whichever branch of Arcana she’d focused on, and everything being in Ancient Greek only made it more difficult to pin down.

On top of that, Anthea had begun experimenting early on. A quarter of the way into the grimoire, she’d fixated on a particular type of spell, and by the halfway point, she’d been working on a single array—testing, revising, testing again. I wondered how long she’d worked on it—what timeframe the dozens and dozens of iterations represented. Had she spent months on it? Years? Decades?

She’d eventually begun a new array, the one that preceded the lost amulet’s illustration. I turned past the drawing, chin propped on my hand and elbow braced on the breakfast bar. Another two dozen pages passed—more spell experimentation, the arrays marked with notes and corrections. Copying all this out would take me months.

As I turned over another fragile sheet of paper, the sketch of the First House demon appeared. Had Anthea begun summoning at this point? Were all those experimental spells her first attempts to summon a demon? I made a mental note to show them to Amalia when she returned this evening and see if they matched modern summoning arrays.

I flipped past the Twelfth House description, after which Anthea had begun inventing a new spell. I rubbed my aching temple as I skimmed a heavily annotated list of spell components. A short, dense set of paragraphs written in a cramped script filled the bottom quarter of the page, and I almost missed the two tiny words at the end.

Μυρρ?νη ?θ?να?

Myrrine Athanas.

Finally! I grabbed my notebook and woke up my laptop, the screen already open to an Ancient Greek dictionary. My pencil scratched across the page as I translated the paragraphs.

The minutes ticked past, my headache forgotten. Sitting back, I read over my completed translation.

Is it wrong of the scribe to add her thoughts to this book? I have dutifully copied every word as it lies upon the page, but I can no longer keep my pen from wandering.

I wonder: Why would Anthea forbid summoning of the Twelfth House? Why warn us of the retribution of their descendants, but fear not the vengeance of any other House? Why is the Twelfth House different?

And thus I wonder: Could it be a false warning with a deceitful purpose?

Perhaps I will discover the answers our brilliant and recondite foremother withheld when, tomorrow, I summon a son of the Twelfth House for myself. Should the warning be true, this will be my only addition to Anthea’s legacy, and I pray you will forgive my foolish hope, sister.

– Myrrine Athanas

Breath held, I read over my translation again. Myrrine had tried to summon a Vh’alyir! She must’ve survived the attempt since my mom’s notes said Myrrine had left at least five entries in the grimoire. Had she succeeded in her summoning?

I swiveled on my stool. “Zylas!”

Sitting cross-legged on the floor, he was pondering the five-thousand-piece puzzle I’d brought home for him yesterday. I’d hidden the box in my dresser, and without knowing what the finished puzzle was supposed to look like, it’d kept him occupied for the better part of the day—his slow progress helped by Socks, who was walking all over everything and batting the pieces around.

Uncoiling from the floor, he strode to me. I almost managed not to blush as he stopped beside my stool.

I pointed at my translation. “I found Myrrine’s first entry, and she says she planned to summon a Vh’alyir demon.”

“We are never summoned.”

“It sounds like she tried, but maybe it didn’t work.” I studied my neat printing. “Myrrine wondered if the warning not to summon from the Twelfth House is deceitful. But in what way … and why?”