The silence that followed Alaric's command was heavier than the shop's dust. Kael didn't question. He moved, a blur of efficient motion. The sound of multiple, heavy bolts sliding home black iron, cold-wrought, interlaced with silver filigree echoed through the cluttered space like gunshots. The mundane world of Mayfair was sealed out. The supernatural world, with all its looming threats, was now locked in with them.
Alaric did not look away from the grimoire. The sickly green luminescence had faded from its cover, but the whispers from the other artifacts had not fully subsided. A Celtic torc in a nearby case emitted a faint, metallic hum. A shard of what was labelled as 'Byzantine glass' but was in fact a frozen tear of a banshee, clouded over with frost.
"Who is 'he'?" Kael asked, returning to the desk. His posture was no longer that of a security consultant but of a pack beta on a contested border. All relaxed readiness was gone, replaced by taut vigilance.
"Lucian," Alaric breathed the name like a curse. "It can only be him. He has always coveted the old magics, the sources. He believes power is a thing to be owned, locked away, or consumed." He finally looked up, his ancient eyes meeting Kael's. "This," he gestured to the book, "is a primer of Progenitor magic. Not the diluted, bastardized forms we use now. The root language of it. From before the schism, before the curses were fully set."
He picked up the slip of parchment again, focusing on the pressed bell heather. "But this warning, this is not Lucian's style. He does not send warnings. He sends Hungarian Death Knights in tailored suits. This is from someone else. Someone who knows Lucian is moving, and knows I am vulnerable here."
"The Scottish connection," Kael said, nodding at the flower. "My territory. My problem." He picked up the heather, bringing it to his nose. He inhaled deeply, his eyes closing. When they opened, they held a stormy, lupine understanding. "Not just Scottish. Black Isle. This was picked within a mile of the pack's northern ridge. Recently. The scent of the moors is still on it."
A cold knot formed in Alaric's gut. His exile had been a protective gambit, a way to draw no attention, to keep the ancient wars away from those he cared for. The thought that the conflict had already seeped into Kael's homeland, that his friend's pack might be in danger because of him, was a fresh blade of guilt.
"The courier," Alaric pressed. "Describe her again."
"Young. Pale. Red hair like rust. The tattoos here," Kael traced a line from his own temple to his jaw. "Old markings. Not the fashionable neo-pagan stuff you see in Camden. These were clan marks. Protection wards. She was scared, Alaric. Not of me, but of what she was carrying. Her hands shook."
"A witch, then. But one serving as a messenger, not a principal." Alaric's mind, a library of millennia, sorted through possibilities. "The message says 'what was ours'. Not his. Not mine. Ours. A collective." He looked back at the Dacian script on the grimoire. "This implies an alliance, or at least a shared history, that has been fractured."
He made a decision. With a resolve that cost him, he closed the lid of the case, cutting off the grimoire's influence. The ambient whispering in the shop died to a discontented murmur.
"We cannot stay here," Alaric said, rising. His movements were fluid, centuries of practiced grace. "This shop is a vault, but not a fortress. If Lucian's agents are already in Britain, this will be their first destination. And we have drawn attention by locking the iron wards. The magical signature will be a beacon to any who are looking."
"Where to?" Kael was already gathering a few select items from behind the counter: a long, narrow case that didn't hold umbrellas, a worn leather satchel Alaric used for acquisitions.
"The British Museum. Its public face is for tourists. Its private heart holds the Arcanum the supernatural archives of the Council. If there is any record of this grimoire, of its maker, or of a Scottish connection to Dacian magic, it will be there. And we need someone who can read the atmosphere without setting off every alarm in the place."
Kael paused, a skeptical brow arched. "You're thinking of that Welsh curator? The one who nearly blew up the Roman gallery last year with an 'atmospheric resonance scan'?"
"Elara Thomas," Alaric confirmed, a ghost of something that wasn't quite a smile touching his lips. "Precisely. Her explosive sensitivity to magical artifacts is a liability to the Council's desire for quiet curation. But for us, it may be the only way to understand what we're holding before it understands us."
He moved towards a section of shelving filled with mundane-looking atlases. With a precise press on a carved fleur-de-lis on the oak, the entire unit swung inward with a soft sigh, revealing a narrow staircase descending into darkness. The scent of old stone and damp earth wafted up.
"The back way," Alaric said, taking the lead. "It emerges in the basement of a Georgian townhouse two streets over. I own it under another name. From there, we take the Night Tube. Even Lucian's spies cannot watch every camera in London."
Kael followed, casting one last look at the silent, shrouded shop. The safe, stagnant exile was behind them. Ahead lay the damp tunnels of London's underworld, the secrets of a museum, and the sharp, unpredictable magic of a Welsh witch.
As the bookcase swung shut behind them, sealing the shop in profound darkness, the case on the desk gave one last, almost imperceptible thrum. The message, the heather, the book they were not the end of a trail, but the first knot in a net being drawn tight across Europe.