Chaotic Souls: Realms Unleashed: Red Angel Book Four by Medina Isa

Author:Medina, Isa
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2022-11-10T00:00:00+00:00

FIFTEEN

A man lay there, dressed in some sort of robe, arms by his side, feet bare. Two huge golden coins covered his eyes, and different types of quartz lay tumbled around on the satiny bottom.

Jonas jumped down and swept up the coins.

“Dude!”

He looked up, confused. “What? He doesn’t need them anymore.”

“Oops,” said the Archivist. “Someone took his eyes.”

“What?”

We looked down. Sure enough—there were dark holes where his eyes should’ve been.

Sol shivered. “Gross.”

I thought of the single eyeball floating in the jar I’d given the Archivist. No way…right? Mentally shaking myself, I refocused on Warner’s dead body. “Poke it,” I told Jonas. “Make sure he’s dead.”

“Sure.” Showing no hesitation, he crouched over the body and shook its shoulder roughly. When no twitch or groan followed, Sol and I released a collected breath.

“What are we looking for?” Jonas asked.

“Search him for everything,” the Archivist intoned in a scary-story voice. “I’ll know when I see it.”

Wonderful. While Jonas poked around his head, I slid down and began searching the feet area. There was something deeply unappealing about searching a dead body in a coffin. It wasn’t just the sense of wrongness, but something about the physicality of it, of touching embalmed dead flesh and lifting a limb to check nothing was hiding underneath. And no matter how many times I repeated Jonas’s he doesn’t need them anymore motto in my head, the repulsion refused to abate. If we didn’t find what we needed soon, I was going to puke all over the pristine white satin.

As I made my way up his legs, Jonas made his way down Warner’s chest, opening the robes as he searched inside. Something shiny glinted in the navel area.

“What’s that?” the Archivist asked sharply.

Pinching the fabric of the robe with my fingertips, I opened it the whole way to reveal an old-fashioned watch lying over Warner’s bellybutton, its short chain running off to the side. I picked it up, careful not to touch the skin, and held it up to the light. It was one of those old pocket watches out of a period movie, perfect to slip into a vest’s pocket with the chain dangling outside.

As I rotated it for the Archivist’s avid gaze, I studied the decorations. It was a beautiful piece, with a tree etched on one side and flowers on the other.

“Open it,” the crone ordered.

I found the tiny clasp and opened it carefully. On the left, the cover lay concave and empty. On the right, a simple white clock stared back, its black dials stopped at a quarter past seven. Something about the way they and the hours looked was wrong, though. Further examination told me there was an extra layer of glass. “There’s something here,” I said, my pulse quickening. I pried at the extra ring of metal and glass, and it snapped free and into my hand.

“Is that it?” Sol asked, as breathless as I was.

I peered at her through the lens, but nothing seemed amiss other than the view of looking through an old piece of glass.

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