An Eye For An Eye

Quarante

I shut the door behind me and hung my jacket on the free peg.
“I thought you were going to be out for most of the day,” Deucalion said as I walked to the kitchen.
“I was planning on it but… got kind of bored,” I said. And lonely. But I had the feeling he already knew that. I took the coffee sachets from my bag and put them in one of the cupboards. “This house is no longer coffee free, I brought my coffee with me.”

He chuckled and I looked over at him. He had a box on the floor which he was kneeling next to.
“What are you doing?” I asked as I walked over to him.
“I’ve been trying to unpack a few things, it seems I’m a little stuck with books,” he said with a sigh.
“I can help.”

“Are you sure? I could just ask someone tomorrow,” he said.
“I have nothing better to do other than feel sad and miss people, I might as well,” I said, forcing a smile. It felt like I was trying to convince myself that I was okay more than anything.
“Thank you,” he said as he lifted the box from the floor as if it weighed no more than a piece of paper.

He set the box down on the desk in his study. Bookcases lined the walls and were almost completely filled but it was clear there were some books missing as some were tilted and leaning against others.
“You weren’t kidding when you said you had a lot of books,” I said, staring at them in awe. Like the others, a lot of them were old leather bound books, some with titles on their spine, some without. Some of them looked pristine with shiny gold lettering and bright coloured leather.

“Why would I be?” he asked as he started taking the books out of the box and setting them on the desk. “They’re all arranged alphabetically by the book’s name, not the author, A starts in the top left and it goes down the bookshelf and then across. Z is in the bottom right corner.” He motioned to the bookcase behind him on the right of the door and I let out a long breath.
“This is… insane,” I said as I picked up the first book. It was a book on Banshees.

“But why not the author?” I asked with a furrowed brow. I walked over to the shelves with the book in hand and found where it belongs.
“A lot of these books were written by Argents and other hunters. I don’t care about who wrote it, I care about the information inside of the books,” he said. “There’s Bestiaries from hunting families long gone. Even books from families of werewolves, noting down their alliances with other packs and how easily all of it can be broken.”
“Sounds interesting,” I said honestly.

After putting the Banshee book on the shelf, I was handed more books by Deucalion. One of them had something in Latin written on the side and the other had nothing at all.
“This one says…” I paused to try to figure out the word’s pronunciation. “Veneficium?”
“Witchcraft,” he said and I furrowed my brow and turned to look at him. “It means witchcraft in Latin.”
“What don’t you know?” I said with a laugh before heading to the opposite side of the room.
“A lot of things,” he said with a sigh. I had the feeling there was a lot more to his response than I knew.

“What if there’s nothing on the spine?” I asked as I slotted the book on witchcraft into its proper place.
“Open it. If there’s no title page, there should be writing on a page near the beginning,” he explained. I thanked him as I looked for the title page, there was none but there was the title ‘Kanima - Alpha Form’ written in a neat cursive.
“There’s writing,” I said as I looked at the books to find where the book on Kanima’s Alpha forms should be. “Is it your writing?”

“Possibly, what does it look like?”
“Neat and fancy?” I offered. I wasn’t sure how else to describe it as I pulled out a book with a blank spine. That book was on Kanima’s Beta forms so the book in my hand had to be before that.
“That really narrows it down,” he said drily as he moved the box to the floor.
I sighed. “It’s curly but not overly so. And it’s a book on Kanima’s.”
“Ah, yes, I did write that there,” he said, nodding as he moved the stack of books away from the edge of the desk.

“Your handwriting is very pretty, I’m a little jealous,” I said before getting more books from him.
“Of my handwriting?” he asked. I could hear the confusion over why I would be jealous of his handwriting, of all things.
“Yes, I can’t join up most of my letters and still have them look like letters,” I said. A lot of the time it looked like a three year old had somehow managed to get their hand on a pen. “And I forget to cross my letter t’s a lot which is annoying when I read back through because I misread them as l’s.”
“I imagine that would be annoying,” he said.

I was looking at the bookshelf but I was almost certain he was trying not to laugh, just from the tone of his voice. Turning back to him to get another few books, I could see the smile on his face.
“You can laugh, you know,” I said while placing the books back, occasionally flicking through the first few pages to find a title or name. “But yes, it’s annoying when my character has their food on a plale instead of a plate.”

He laughed and leaned against the desk and I smiled wider.
“What is a plale?” he asked.
“No idea, maybe we should name a new creature that.”
“I’d feel bad for the creature,” he said and I giggled.
“So would I, actually,” I said. “Maybe we shouldn’t name the next new supernatural creature a plale then.”
“It might be for the best,” he said as he passed me more books. Smiling, I turned and started to put them on the shelves. He really did have a nice laugh.