Chapter 26: Divine Research
The bell above the door of Elmsire’s Occult Bookshop jingled, a sound that felt both welcoming and like a tripwire being triggered. Liana stepped inside, the familiar scent of crumbling parchment, beeswax, and something faintly metallic wrapping around her. It was a relief after the sterile, opulent pressure of Matthias’s penthouse. Here, the shadows felt earned, not decorative.
Elmsire was perched on a rolling ladder, shelving a heavy tome bound in what looked like lizard skin. He didn’t look down. “Miss Carter. The tea is fresh. Chamomile. You seem like you could use it.”
His perceptiveness was unnerving. She made her way to the small, cluttered clearing by the cast-iron stove, pouring a cup from the chipped pot. Her hands were steady, she noted with distant pride. The tremors that had followed her first… episode… were gone. Replaced by a cold, humming certainty.
“I need to ask you more about Nephilim,” she said, her voice cutting through the quiet. No small talk. She was done with that.
The ladder squeaked as he descended. He adjusted his spectacles, his bird-like eyes sharp. “Your thirst for knowledge is commendable. And specific.”
“Is the power passed from parent to child? Directly?”
“It is. A divine spark, however diluted, cannot be learned or stolen. It is a birthright.” He settled into his worn armchair, steepling his fingers. “Though ‘divine’ is a theological term. I prefer ‘extra-planar’. Less baggage.”
Liana took a sip of tea. It was hot, bland. “Have there been any known Nephilim in the past several decades? In Chicago, or… anywhere?”
Elmsire was silent for a long moment. The only sound was the pop of a log in the stove. “That is an exceptionally dangerous question,” he said quietly. “Knowledge of a living Nephilim would be a commodity more valuable than any grimoire in this shop. Every faction on the Council would have a vested interest. The Vampires would see a tool or a threat. The Werewolves, an abomination. The Fae, a fascinating toy. Why do you ask?”
This was the ledge. She could step back, make something up. But the memory of her own eyes glowing in Matthias’s bathroom mirror, the phantom warmth that had cured a dying man, the way the vampire lord looked at her like she was a rare vintage—it all pushed her forward.
She set the cup down. It clicked too loudly on the saucer.
“Because I am one.”
The words hung in the dusty air. Elmsire didn’t move. Didn’t breathe. He just stared, his expression unreadable. The shop seemed to grow darker, the candle flames guttering as if in a draft.
“I see,” he finally said, the words measured. “The healing of the Lycan patient. The residual energy Sera detected. It makes a terrible sense now.” He leaned forward, his voice dropping to a whisper. “Do you have any idea what you’ve just told me? The risk you’ve taken?”
“I know,” Liana said, and was surprised by the steel in her own voice. “But I need to know who I am. I never knew my real parents. I was left at a fire station in Skokie when I was a few days old. The system. Foster care. The whole sad story.” She wrapped her arms around herself, the black lace of the negligee she’d worn that morning a ghost against her skin under her practical coat. “You have access to records, histories, things no one else does. I’m hoping you can help me find them. Or find out about them.”
Elmsire stood and paced to a shelf, running a finger along the spines. He was thinking, calculating. “A Nephilim child, abandoned in the mortal world. That is not an accident. That is a hiding place.” He turned back to her. “Does Sera know?”
“She doesn’t,” Liana said. The words felt like a confession. “Matthias was the one who analyzed my blood. He told me what I was, but he left it to me to decide who to tell, and when.”
Elmsire’s eyebrows lifted, disappearing into his wild fringe of hair. He let out a slow, contemplative breath that stirred the dust motes dancing in a sliver of gray light from a high window. He nodded thoughtfully, the gesture measured and slow.
“Matthias Thorne,” he said, the name a careful weight in the quiet room. “He is probably one of the very few in this city with the resources and the ancient knowledge to uncover that particular truth. His private libraries are… extensive.”
He moved back to his chair, the old leather sighing under him. “Your decision to not immediately tell the Council was wise. That kind of news in a room full of agendas is a lit match in a gunpowder shop.” He paused, polishing his spectacles on his vest. “Although I do wonder. Leaving the choice to you suggests a certain… respect. Or a calculation. Matthias does nothing without a purpose. He might still try to use the information to gain an advantage, when the time suits him.”
Liana’s fingers tightened around the ceramic warmth of her cup. That word—calculation—echoed in the silence between them. It lined up too perfectly with the unease that had curled in her stomach since she’d woken up in that velvet-draped bed, her body humming with a strange, satisfied ache and marked with fresh bites.
It lined up too perfectly with the unease that had curled in her stomach since she’d woken up in that velvet-draped bed, her body humming with a strange, satisfied ache and marked with fresh bites. She looked into the dregs of her tea, searching for a courage she didn’t feel. “What do you know about him, Elmsire? Honestly. What’s your read on Matthias?”
The old man leaned back, the chair groaning. He stared at the ceiling where cobwebs wove complex geometries between the beams. He considered for a long moment, weighing his words like rare coins.
“Matthias Thorne is… polished,” he began, his voice low. “He’s certainly more noble and measured than many vampires I’ve met over the centuries. He prefers chess to bludgeoning, discourse to domination. He has preserved more mortal art and history than any museum, and he does enforce the Concordat with a certain cold fairness.” Elmsire’s eyes slid back to hers, sharp and clear. “But Liana, one does not rise to a seat on the Council, and hold it for three hundred years, by being a Boy Scout.”
A cold knot tightened beneath her ribs. “What does that mean, exactly?”
“It means his loyalty is to stability, to the system that allows his kind to thrive in the shadows.” Elmsire spread his hands, indicating the shop, the city, the hidden world beyond. “Individuals are temporary. Even remarkable individuals. He would sacrifice a pawn to save the board, and he would do it with genuine regret while already planning his next move.” He paused, letting the gravity of that sink into the quiet. “You are not a pawn, I think. But you are a new piece on his board. He will want to know your moves, your value. Your vulnerabilities.”
The memory of his mouth on her skin, the possessive gleam in his red eyes—it all felt different now. Warmer, yet infinitely more dangerous. It hadn’t just been desire. It had been an assessment.
“He’s helping me,” Liana said, but it sounded weak, even to her. “For now.”
“He is investing in you,” Elmsire corrected gently. “There is a difference. Be grateful for his patronage. Be flattered by his attention. But do not, for one second, believe you are seeing the whole board.” He stood up, his joints popping, and walked to a seemingly solid wall of books. He pressed a specific, worn spine, and a section clicked open, revealing a narrow space filled with older, denser-looking volumes. “Your parentage. If you truly wish to walk this path, we begin here. And we tell no one.”
Liana rose, her heart pounding a frantic rhythm against her sternum. This was the point of no return. She looked from the hidden shelf back to Elmsire’s earnest, worried face.
“Okay,” she whispered.
“First,” he said, pulling a small, leather-bound notebook and a fountain pen from his vest pocket, “I need to know as much as you can tell me about the circumstances of your adoption. Every detail, no matter how insignificant it seems. And anything else you might know about events prior to it, even just feelings or stories you were told.”
She took a deep breath, organizing memories she usually kept locked away. “I was found at Fire Station 21 in Skokie. It was a Tuesday, in November. A really cold night, they said.” She closed her eyes, recalling the yellowed paperwork she’d stared at for hours in the county records office. “I was wrapped in a plain white cotton blanket, no identifying marks. No note. I was clean, healthy, about three days old.”
Elmsire’s pen scratched softly against the paper. “Estimated time?”
“Around two in the morning. The crew heard crying outside the bay door.” She opened her eyes, watching him write. “That’s it. That’s all there ever was.”
“No rumors? No strange occurrences reported nearby that night? Unexplained lights, odd strangers, anything like that?”
Liana shook her head, then paused. “There’s one thing. It’s probably nothing. My first foster mother, she was kind. She used to say I never cried like other babies. She said I’d just… stare at the ceiling, calm, like I was listening to something. And sometimes the family dog would whine and hide under the bed when I was upset.” She gave a weak laugh. “I thought it was just a weird kid story.”
Elmsire didn’t smile. He scribbled the note with a firm underline. “Animals are sensitive to extra-planar resonance. It’s not nothing.” He tapped the pen against his chin. “The blanket was mundane. The location was deliberately public, anonymous. This was a strategic abandonment. Someone wanted you found, but untraceable.”
Hearing it stated so clinically made her chest ache. “So they didn’t want me.”
“Or they couldn’t keep you safe,” he corrected, his voice softer. “There’s a difference. A Nephilim birth would not go unnoticed by everyone. There are entities that track such things. Your parents may have been fleeing.” He closed his notebook. “Next, we’ll need to work together to unearth any information we can find about Nephilim in the region in the last quarter century. I have extensive notes, and I might be able to subtly ask a few colleagues to share notes without anyone catching wind of my actual research objectives.”
“Subtly how?” Liana asked, imagining grizzled wizards gossiping over crystal balls.
“Oh, you pose it as historical inquiry,” he said, a faint, cunning smile touching his lips. “A theoretical study of celestial intermixing patterns in the Midwest, 1980s to early 2000s. Dull enough to avoid excitement, specific enough to get data. The academic occult community is wonderfully pedantic.”
He stood and walked to the hidden shelf, pulling down a massive ledger. Dust cascaded from its spine like brown snow. “This is a census. Of sorts. Not official Council records—they’d never allow this—but my own family’s notations. We’ve been chroniclers here for a long time.” He heaved it onto the table between them with a definitive thump. “We start cross-referencing. Your birth year. Any mention of ‘unusual celestial activity’, ‘tainted bloodline’, ‘winged manifestations’, or ‘sanctuary seekings’.”
The task felt monumental, a needle in a haystack of archaic terror. But it was a start. It was her start. Liana reached out, her fingers hovering over the ledger’s cracked cover. “Thank you, Elmsire. For not throwing me out. For not being… afraid.”
He met her gaze, his eyes old and weary behind the lenses. “Child, I am deeply afraid. For you.”
He let the words settle in the dust-moted air between them. “And it is also the reason I am giving you… homework.”
He stood, his bones issuing a soft protest, and walked with purpose to a towering section of shelves crammed with obscure botanical references. Liana watched, puzzled, as he pressed not a book, but a specific knot in the dark oak. A soft click echoed, followed by a hydraulic sigh. The entire six-foot shelf unit jumped an inch, then swung smoothly aside on a hidden pivot.
Behind it lay a space no larger than a closet, lined not with wood but with dull lead. The air that wafted out was several degrees cooler, carrying the scent of ozone and deep, undisturbed time. Inside, a few dozen volumes rested on bare metal stands, each looking less like a book and more like a captured relic.
Elmsire reached in, his movements reverent, and extracted a large folio. Its cover was a faded, mottled leather that might once have been dove-gray, now stained by centuries of handling. Across it, in flaking gold leaf that still caught the feeble light, were etched swirling, angular characters that made Liana’s eyes water if she looked directly at them.
“This,” he said, cradling the weight of it in both arms, “is one of my rarer pieces. The Liber Aethereum. It is as complete an account as any on the nature of Nephilim abilities, their manifestations, and their… historical pitfalls.” He carried it back to the table, placing it down with a soft, definitive thud that stirred the motes. “You need to study it. Understand what you are, what you might be capable of, and what has happened to others like you who were not prepared.”
Liana reached out instinctively, but he placed a gentle, restraining hand over the cover.
“Here,” he said, his tone leaving no room for argument. “You’ll need to do it here. It is too risky to take it where it might fall into the wrong hands. Or the wrong eyes.” He glanced meaningfully towards the door, towards the city and the penthouse that overlooked it. “Matthias’s libraries may be extensive, but I doubt even he has this. Its existence is a secret. Your use of it must be one, too.”
She nodded, understanding the lock this placed on her time. Her nights at the hospital, her days… here, in this dusty back room. “How do I even read it?” she asked, staring at the cryptic script.
“The text is in Enochian, the theoretical language of angels. It will resist you.” A faint, challenging smile touched his lips. “It will give you a headache that feels like an icepick behind your eyes. But if you are what you say, the meaning will begin to… impress itself. Start with an hour a day. More, and you’ll bleed from your nose.”
“Charming,” Liana muttered, but she was already pulling the heavy tome towards her. She opened the cover. The pages were a thick, creamy vellum, surprisingly supple. The script was indeed a dizzying maze. But as she let her focus blur slightly, not fighting the shapes, a word in the margin seemed to shiver. It didn’t translate into English so much as inject a concept directly into her mind: Threshold.
She gasped softly and snapped the book shut. Her heart was hammering. “Okay. I felt that.”
“Good.” Elmsire looked satisfied. “That’s your starting point. Thresholds, limits, and the cost of crossing them. Homework, like I said.” He walked back to the hidden lead-lined wall and pressed the knot again, sealing his most dangerous secrets away. “Now, before you dive into celestial theory, help me with the mundane. That census won’t cross-reference itself.”
For the next two hours, they worked in a companionable silence broken only by the rustle of pages and the scratch of Elmsire’s pen. Liana read aloud snippets from the ledger—"Chicago, 1998: unexplained auroral event over Lake Michigan, dismissed as refinery flare"—while he made connections in his notes. It was tedious, grounding work. It felt real.
Her phone buzzed in her coat pocket, a violent shiver against her thigh. She fished it out. A single line from an unknown number glowed on the screen, but from the text she knew who'd sent it covertly.
I already miss your presence. Gazing absentmindedly at the space you occupied feels hollow. My bed will be cold tonight without your warmth.
The words were a phantom touch against her skin. Liana glanced at Elmsire, his back turned as he squinted at a map of ley lines, muttering to himself. Her thumbs moved quickly, tapping out a reply she felt in her bones before her mind could filter it.
I’m already feeling empty being away from you. And I’m not looking forward to going back to Sera’s endless training drills. She hit send, the confession leaving a guilty warmth in its wake.
The three dots appeared almost instantly. A reply flashed up.
The discipline is necessary, my dear. But remember your strength is innate, not manufactured. You should know you always have my support.
A heartbeat pause. Then a final, loaded sentence.
…And love.
The word “love” sat there, stark and unbelievable. It stole her breath. It felt like a key turning in a lock she hadn’t known was there, and like a collar snapping softly into place. She stared until the screen went dark, her reflection in the black glass wide-eyed and unsure.
“Find anything?” Elmsire’s voice made her jump. He was watching her now, his perceptive gaze dropping to the phone she clutched like a stone.
“No. Nothing yet,” Liana said, too quickly. She shoved the device back into her pocket, the heat of it seeping through the fabric. “Just… a friend from the hospital. Long shift.”
Elmsire made a non-committal hum that conveyed utter disbelief. He didn’t press. Instead, he tapped a yellowed entry in the census ledger. “This. November, your birth year. Not in Skokie, but here in the city. Lincoln Park. A ‘domestic disturbance’ reported as a possible gas leak. Residents described a ‘golden glare’ and a pressure in the air that shattered windows in a single brownstone.”
He slid the ledger toward her. The script was spidery and faded. “No fire was found. No gas leak. The first responders reported an overwhelming scent of ozone and… cinnamon. The case was closed within twenty-four hours. Expedited.” He looked at her over the rims of his glasses. “Expedited by city officials with no clear department affiliation.”
Liana’s mouth went dry. She traced the date with a fingertip. Two days before she was found at the fire station. “A fight? Or an attack?”
“Or a delivery,” Elmsire said quietly. “A celestial birth isn’t a gentle process. It can leave a signature. If someone was looking, they’d have followed that signature.”
“So my parents… they might have been attacked right after I was born?” The theory solidified into a cold, hard lump in her throat. “And they ran. Or someone took me and ran.”
“It’s a hypothesis.” Elmsire closed the ledger gently. “It gives us a location. A real starting point. That brownstone still stands. I know the block.”
The immensity of it crashed down on her—the hidden lead-lined vault, the ancient book of Enochian warnings, the vampire’s text burning in her pocket, and now this: a possible ground zero for her entire existence. The mundane life of Liana Carter, night-shift nurse, receded into a distant, blurry fiction.
“I need to see it,” she heard herself say.
“You will,” he nodded. “But not today. Today, you absorb. You start your homework.” He gestured to the Liber Aethereum. “Understanding what you are is the only thing that will protect you when you start knocking on doors from your past. Especially when other, more present individuals seem so… keenly interested.”
The unspoken name—Matthias—hung in the dusty air between them. Her phone felt like a live wire. Support… and love. She pushed the thought aside, a dangerous and delicious distraction she couldn’t afford.
“An hour,” she said, pulling the heavy folio back toward her. “Then I have to go or Sera will send out a search party.”
Elmsire returned to his maps, giving her the illusion of privacy. Liana opened the book again, steeling herself against the expected headache. The Enochian script swirled, aggressive and alien. She focused on her breathing, on the memory of the word Threshold that had implanted itself before.
This time, she didn’t fight the disorientation. She let the shapes dance, let the icepick pain bloom behind her eyes. Gradually, through the visual noise, concepts began to detach themselves from the page, not as words but as pure understanding: Awareness. Cost. The Mortal Anchor.
A paragraph seemed to clarify, its meaning flowing into her. It spoke of the physical body as a vessel, and how the awakening power sought to remodel its container. It described a period of flux, where the latent abilities could manifest reflexively under stress—healing, yes, but also influencing light, affecting emotions, perceiving the fabric of the Veil. It was a biology textbook from another dimension.
Her nose tingled. She touched her upper lip, and her fingers came away smeared with a single, shocking streak of red.
“Time’s up,” Elmsire said softly, without looking up. He passed her a clean handkerchief.
Liana pressed the cloth to her nose, the metallic tang sharp. The knowledge she’d absorbed hummed inside her skull, a new and permanent resident. She looked from the blood on the linen to the impossible book, then to the ledger containing the only fragments of her history.
Everything was different now. The research, the training, Matthias’s attention—it was all converging, and she was standing at the center, bleeding from the effort of merely beginning to understand. The path forward was no longer a question. It was a threshold. And she was already stepping across.