A long while later, when Emily’s box was completely empty, she dropped it onto the floor beside the desk and unceremoniously shoved the discard pile over the edge to land inside. She’d only saved a small notebook and a ledger, and I was nearly to the bottom of my own with no more than three journals, and a few random receipts and papers to show for it.
I flipped open a folder marked “potential properties” to find surveys, reports, and printouts on various estates I assumed Council had considered acquiring under Morgan’s rule. Nothing sparked recognition, but tucked behind a reported marked up in red ink, I found an envelope that didn’t have the feel of empty. I laid the folder down to open it, and pulled out a photograph I’d known for years.
“It’s from my duffle bag,” Emily whispered beside me. “He must have found it ... just like Aern said.”
I studied the photo of my mother, a younger Emily and I leaning easily into her arms, and I couldn’t help the tug at the corner of my mouth seeing our goofy smiles. We’d no idea then, what would truly come. None of it had seemed real. But our mother had known. Her eyes were the same strange green I remembered, not the softer shade of Emily’s and mine. And though she tried, her smile didn’t quite reach them. I wondered if she’d known. If she’d seen this moment before, seen her two daughters alone in a dark room, grasping the one final piece of her we had left. My gaze trailed the blonde streaks of her chestnut hair in the photo and I could feel the pressure of the banded lock where it rested against my hip inside the jeans pocket.
She had known. All along, she’d done everything she could to stop the fate her visions warned her of.
Emily reached over to take the photo from my hand, and once it was empty, I had the instinct to pinch the skin at the base of my thumb and forefinger. It was a trick I’d learned from our mother, one of those secrets to keep your emotions in check, but I wasn’t going to cry.
I drew in a solid breath, the idea that I didn’t need to fight tears relaxing me even more, and Emily said, “She saw all of this, didn’t she?”
I reached automatically for her, to comfort the grief that was somehow absent from me, and she stopped me with a look. “You don’t have to do that, Brianna.”
I hesitated, still contemplating the lack of sorrow. The hours after finding our mother’s lock of hair had been painful, full of regrets and what-ifs, but the overwhelming heartache at her loss seemed farther away. I didn’t know what that meant, and stab of guilt that maybe I’d accepted it, that I’d gotten over the death of someone who’d meant so much, struck me.
Emily watched me, so I finally asked, “Do what?”
She sighed. “That thing you do. Where you take it away. You don’t have to, Brianna. I can handle it.”
I opened my mouth to protest, but she turned from me, tucking the photograph between the pages of a nineteenth century collection of ancient Egyptian symbols. She was finding her own place to keep it safe.
We walked from the office into the library, but the difference was no longer blinding. The sun was setting and the room took on a soft glow, the urge to curl up on the sofas only tempered by the figures against the farthest of the three large windows. Aern moved first, hand sliding free of his pocket as if in anticipation of Emily. I watched the gesture, maybe too long, as we crossed the room, and my gaze moved to Logan where he stood by the glass, eyes on me.
The last rays of sun struck his face, giving them that otherworldly glow the seven lines sometimes had, and I couldn’t look away. When he didn’t either, my thoughts replayed the moment on the stairs, the words that kept returning. Is it now? I glanced down, shifting the documents in my hand as my cheeks heated.
“Find anything?” Aern asked. I looked up, but he’d been questioning Emily.
She shrugged. “Nothing to speak of.” Her tone didn’t betray the lie, but in truth neither of us wanted to speak of the lock of hair or anything else we’d seen. She gestured vaguely toward the journals and folders now situated firmly under my arm. “Brianna’s got a couple of things she’s going to take a better look at later, but I don’t expect much.”
Our eyes met in an unspoken agreement, because we both expected nightmares of Morgan and our mother, but then Emily slipped easily under Aern’s shoulder and the tightness at the corner of her eyes relaxed. “Be safe, Brianna,” she said.
I managed a smile. “I will.”
It struck me that her words were so like those used by Logan’s men, and my gaze fell to him. He was still watching me, but now that the three of us were watching him back, he stepped closer, taking the documents from beneath my arm to place them in his pack.
He turned to Aern, each taking the other’s forearm in the traditional Council manner, and they shared their own unspoken message before Logan said his good-byes and we left the Council buildings.
I had very little to say on the ride, the pressure of my mother’s lock of hair inside my pocket a constant reminder of Morgan and what had come to pass. It was time to take action, I knew that, but if I didn’t find some sign or clue soon, I’d be fighting blind. And I didn’t think I could trust myself not to go for Morgan first. Especially now.