Katrina and Jade thrust open the door of Wolf’s cabin with a drunken thump! Katrina gasped, then shushed Jade, who replied with a muffled chuckle and shushed her right back.

She giggled a reply and they tiptoed quietly inside. The door to Wolf’s cabin was never locked, not even at night. Books lay everywhere. Books of great value, books of great power, books that held great danger. But only a knowing thief could find anything in this mess, and no simple lock would keep that sort of thief out.

Jade shut the door with an equally loud bang, and Katrina turned and gave him a look.

“Oops,” he muttered with a mischievous smile. Then he took a few steps forward and nearly tripped over a pile of books.

Katrina widened her eyes at him in emphasis, but the look and his own clumsiness only proved an entertainment for Jade, who then had to press both hands over his mouth to prevent himself from bursting into hysterics.

“Shh,” Katrina giggled at him. She’d had a drink or two after all, but not many. Jade was far more drunk than she.

By this point Jade was sure that his father was awake and just being polite.

Wolf respected his children’s right to a life of their own. He expected for them a full life of adventures had, and mistakes made. It was the best way to learn. He wouldn’t intrude if Jade had a girl in the house. There was no danger to be found there, not in one so young, and not in the daughter of a close friend.

Katrina backed up into the table, knocking a book to the floor in the process. She leaned down to pick it up but then paused, as her eyes were drawn to another book on the table.

Jade picked up the fallen book for her. “You dropped this,” he remarked in a soft whisper, as he placed the book back on the table and slid his arm around her waist.

When she didn’t reply, but instead kept her eyes locked on the book in front of her, he glanced down to see what it was that had captured her attention so entirely.

There, on a page of an open book, was a meticulously drawn picture of a knife. The drawing took up half the page. The lower half was filled with words describing the object in great detail.

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With a slender finger, Katrina flicked to the next page. The description continued across both the next two pages completely, and extended half way down the forth page after that.

Katrina flicked back to the first page.

“The Reapers knife,” Jade read the title aloud in a hushed whisper.

“It’s very pretty,” Katrina remarked softly, with an edge of wistfulness to her tone.

Ah, of course, Jade thought. That was what had drawn her eye.

It was true that Katrina liked pretty things, but she was by no means a shallow individual. She valued power too. She just didn’t see why useful things couldn’t also be pretty. The knife certainly was all that, pretty and powerful.

“It says it sucks in the life force of anyone it kills,” Katrina read, “Meaning you could use it as an ingredient in almost any spell requiring blood.”

“Mmm,” Jade flicked the page and pointed to a line he’d noticed when she’d turned the page over before. “It also says if the blood runs out, it will take the life of the wielder as a substitute.”

He couldn’t imagine Katrina ever taking a life, not even that of an animal. Her older brother or sister, sure. They had both killed the odd pig, hare, or deer for dinner. Gemma, he knew had once even taken the life of a man, a pirate who had boarded her father’s ship at sea with ill intentions.

But Katrina, Katrina didn’t even like to kill the bugs that came in her room at night. She’d capture and release. He also knew, because she’d told him, that once during a fishing trip her father had handed her the paddle to knock the fish out cold. To hit their dinner over the head and end it’s gasping suffering. Katrina’s hands had shaken so bad that she’d had to hand the paddle over to her older sister to do the job for her.

And once, when Jade in werewolf form, had caught a rabbit in his mouth, a sacrifice to be used in one of her spells, she’d made him wield the knife. No, Katrina was no killer, not for all her lust for power.

But something she did have, was an insatiable curiosity. “How many lives do you think it contains?”

Jade pulled her into a tight hug and kissed her dark hair. “I don’t know, but for all the information we’ve got, it may as well not exist. A lot of the items in dad’s books are just rumours.”

“Mmm.” Katrina leaned her head against his chest. He was nice and warm. “It is very pretty though.” She flicked once more through the pages, as if searching for some evidence that this entry had more to it than just rumour. Alas, as curious as she was, she was also very drunk, and a little distracted. Her mind wandered to that of the strong body pressed against her.

Suddenly he pulled away.

Katrina glanced up at him in surprise.

But he grabbed her hand and pulled her gently towards one of the back bedrooms. “Come on.”

She followed obediently, not a thought of anything else was left in her mind, but for him.

The open book remained where it was. The pretty knife with it’s daffodil blade, so artistically rendered on the page, was all but forgotten.