“You are?”
“Yeah. I can feel it. My magic is going off like alarm bells.”
“What do you see?”
“Nothing, which is rare. Normally, I’d get a vision. And I should be, but something is blocking it. Or maybe my magic is just being stubborn. It’s seemed a bit wonky lately.”
“You’re connected to Rasla, though?”
“Somehow. I knew my obsession wasn’t random.”
“True that. No one would be interested in that miserable bastard unless they had good reason.”
I put the seal in my pocket and reached back into the pile of fabric. My fingertips touched the leather binding of a small book, and I drew it free. As with the seal, the book pulsed with magic. A connection zipped between me and the volume, a fizz of magic that lit up my mind.
An ornate golden clasp locked the book tight, making it impossible to open. Protective magic swirled around it. “I don’t think we should try to open it without a key.”
My power struggled to work, trying to read information from the object in my hand. I got a flash of an image—a woman wearing the dress in the box. She looked sad. Terrified. And there was something familiar about her.
I tried to focus on her face—did she kind of look like me?—but her image faded away. Frustration seethed through me.
Damn it.
I opened my eyes, staring down at the book. “There are answer here.”
“About you and Grey?”
“About everything. My past, definitely. I can just feel it. My power is screaming. And she might have looked a bit like me, which was weird. But the book isn’t showing me anything else.”
Mac held her hand over the lock for a second, then hissed and yanked it back. “Definitely don’t break the lock.”
“That was my thought. Feels like a strong enchantment, huh?” I looked at the clasp, unable to find the lock hole. There were three other tiny holes, though. “Must be a really tiny key.”
“Yeah.” Mac leaned over the box and picked up the dress, gently shaking it out. I watched, hopeful that a key might fall from the folds, but once she’d fully withdrawn the dress and shook it out without finding anything, I leaned over to look into the bottom of the box.
It was empty.
“Damn.” She met my eyes. “I can start searching the rest of the boxes.”
I looked at the piles of dusty, battered crates. “I doubt it’s in here, but we need to search them anyway.”
“My thoughts exactly.” She wiped a finger through the dust on the box. “But first, I want to get rid of this. It will kill us if we disturb all of it.”
My nose itched with an oncoming sneeze, as if agreeing. “Maybe Seraphia could work on the book in the meantime. She’s got to have a trick for getting into locks like this.”
“Great idea. Library should open any minute.”
“I’m going to take it to her. Good luck with the dusting.”
“Ha. Leaving me with the fun job, I see.”
I grinned at her. “You really are the best. I owe you.”
“A bottle of wine, at the very least.”
“And a gift certificate to that Fae spa you like, because you’re going to need it once you’re done with this dust.”
Her brows rose. “I won’t say no to that.”