Shadow of the Locked by Keary Taylor

Author:Keary Taylor [Taylor, Keary]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2020-08-17T22:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twelve

The following four weeks passed in a blur.

France proved difficult. Very, very few people were willing to talk to us, and Borden’s French wasn’t good enough to get us very far. Others were just plain rude to us.

We scanned libraries. Followed the history and the leads. But in the end we found only one book in the entire country.

However, the French were very excited about my golden rocks. When we had little luck in finding resources, Borden and I began shifting our efforts to alchemy and selling the gold.

By the time we hopped on a plane bound for Switzerland, I knew I had enough to buy Asteria House.

Still, that didn’t keep me from selling a large amount of gold once we arrived.

To my relief, we found several leads there, and found two books at one library, and then three at another. There wasn’t an Agnes or Otto to talk to, but still, we found great information from the museums.

The witch hunts were not purely religiously motivated in Switzerland. Often, they were the result of political differences. And they truly liked to torture their witches. Beheadings and drownings. Beatings and lynching. Some six thousand people met their end in Switzerland, accused of being witches.

My stomach turned, the more I learned.

These were our ancestors. Our grandmothers and grandfathers. They were people. And they’d been brutalized for being different. For being able to do things that others could not.

We had to be careful.

I would never, ever forget that.

“This is going to be one of the most important classes we teach at our school,” I said to Borden as we looked at a gruesome painting in a museum. “Our history. The staggering numbers. The cruelty of man.”

Borden nodded. “Time and peace make us forget,” he said. “But we can’t afford to. As soon as we do, the world will try to destroy us again.”

I nodded in agreement.

We walked out of our last lead in Switzerland with one book.

Somehow, we had truly pulled it off. These four weeks, Borden and I had spent every single day together, all hours of the day, and somehow, we were okay. Both our feelings had been put out there in the open. We had met them head-on. But somehow, it made everything easier. We’d each said what we needed to. Now, I felt as if our friendship was more solid. And we were okay.

So it was an easy silence we sat in on the airplane that took us back to Scotland. It was easy friendship as we rode the shuttle to the hotel just outside the airport.

And we were just a couple of close friends who were both excited to see my father standing in the lobby.

“I swear you’ve both come back as full-grown adults,” Dad said with a huge smile as I bounded across the room and hugged him to me.

“Well, I guess that’s what happens when you’re twenty-two,” Borden said with a chuckle.

“You’ve gone off and seen the world, and now I don’t feel like I

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