Nightfall Curse

chapter 5

Two days later, Jisung announced that his program was finally starting to show some results. He didn’t have anything definitive, but it was starting to parse out typical ingredients and at least somewhere that they could start looking instead of twiddling their thumbs.

Minho bought them all breakfast after his run as they convened at the table for a war meeting. He passed around a bag of bagels and placed a cardboard carrying container with coffees in the center of the table. Hyunjin and Jisung grabbed theirs right away before settling in. After they’d loaded their bagels and claimed their drinks, Jisung got down to business.

“So, the program hasn’t totally finished running yet, but we’re getting some good results so far and some things that we can work with. Ingredients, mostly. I’m having the algorithm work on the easy stuff first. Meaning, things in English, or at least still-spoken languages. A lot of the spells are in ancient languages, which is so totally unhelpful, but I’m working on some translation software.”

He hit the print button on his machine and the small desktop printer spit out a few pages. He whipped them out and held them up. Felix took the sheets. Hyunjin came up behind him to peer over his shoulder. “What do we have here?”

“Hmm,” the angel said. While reviewing the pages, in a corner of his mind, he remembered the thing about “personal space” Hyunjin always harped on. Felix himself wasn’t exactly an expert on human interaction, but he was still fairly sure that Hyunjin was violating his own rule with the way that his warm breath ghosted over Felix’s neck. Positive of the violation when the hunter shifted his weight to his left foot, bringing him minutely closer, and ran his right hand down Felix’s shoulder to his bent elbow. He gripped the angel’s forearm gently and adjusted his arm out more so that Hyunjin could see the paper more easily. Felix was unsure whether the gesture was meant to be intimate, but it felt that way. Goosebumps rose on his skin and he suppressed the involuntary shudder that nearly overtook him.

“Are these all plants?” Hyunjin asked, glancing up at Jisung, whose look of surprise was causing his eyebrows to nearly disappear into his hairline.

“Yeaaah,” he drew out the word. Stared pointedly for another moment.

“Okay? So?” Hyunjin prompted irritably, as if unaware of what he was doing.

“Um...” Jisung blinked. Turned back to his computer. Shook his head wryly, then refocused on the task at hand. “Well... you’re right, I guess. Plants. Lots of them. Most of them are super common, but...” He shrugged a shoulder, turning his attention back to the men. Hyunjin didn’t miss his profound expression as he watched them and elected to ignore it.

Felix pointed his finger to a list item. “These few are extremely rare. Perhaps extinct.”

“Great,” Hyunjin grouched. “So what the hell are we supposed to do?”

Felix folded the note carefully into a neat square. He slipped it into his inner jacket pocket and then turned to Hyunjin. “We’re supposed to search.”

Hyunjin’s shoulders slumped a little. “Awesome. Anything we can do right now?”

Jisung clicked a few more keys. “Well, most of this we can get online. Herbs, crystals, whatever.” He looked on Felix with sympathy. “Gonna need your angel mojo for the rest, though.”

He wasn’t put out in the least. “It’s no problem. I’ll help in any way that I can.”

Jisung beamed. “Great! I’ll track down the easy ingredients while we’re waiting for my algorithms to finish. Don’t worry, Hyunjin. You’ll be back to, well, you in no time.”

Hyunjin stepped away from Felix with a small sigh. “Thanks, Jisung. You’re doing great so far. Felix, what’s the word?”

The corner of Felix’s mouth tipped up in a half smile. “I know where to find some of these already.”