“My mother was an alchemist.”
The third pin caught, and the tension wrench turned, the lock clicking. I pulled the metal grate open, relieved that my success had interrupted our chat. If it hadn’t, he would have asked more about my mother and my knowledge of alchemy. And I wouldn’t have answered anything about that. He couldn’t know about the book. That was the one secret I had to keep.
“Hang on, I have a flashlight app,” Kane muttered, rummaging in his pocket for his phone.
“No need,” I said. I lifted my right hand and focused on it. Flames burst from my palm, licking my fingers, illuminating the mausoleum’s walls with their flickering orange light.
I stepped into the cold room, the memories flooding me. A small black smudge marred the floor where we used to light our campfires. We always made sure to clean the ashes the following day, but the black mark remained. The walls were lined with the family’s tombs, their names engraved in the ancient stone. An alcove across the room contained a line of urns. Isabel told me that when the space in the mausoleum began to run out, the family had begun cremating their dead. My eyes immediately went to the right-hand wall, and I knelt by the bottom tomb, looking at the engraved letters illuminated by the orange firelight, even though I knew what they said by heart.
Eleanor King, 1864-1886.
“This was my spot,” I said. “Where I’d sleep. I used to watch this engraving, imagining that Eleanor was lying on her side facing me. She was Isabel’s great-great-aunt. She died in childbirth.”
“Do we need to start opening these tombs to find the crystal?” Kane asked. He sounded uncomfortable, almost like the concept of a girl regularly sleeping next to an entombed skeleton bothered him.
“No.” I stood up. “We had a cache. The right urn over there is empty. We used to hide some stuff we needed there.”
Kane picked up the urn I pointed at. He removed the lid, and carefully upturned it on the floor, shaking it to empty the contents.
An assortment of items fell out. Two ten-year-old cigarette packs, a lighter, a small knife, a pack of cards. And in the midst of it all lay the crystal. Now, in the dark cemetery, there was no mistaking the light that pulsed in it. I let the flames on my hand dissipate, and the mausoleum was cast into a gloom, illuminated only by that strange, warm, pulsing light.
I picked up the crystal by the chain and looked at it closely. What did Breadknife want with it? Did he really intend to unleash the horrors we had seen in Isabel’s cards? In any case, it was obvious we couldn’t give it to him.
“Okay,” I said. “It’s time for you to create the fake crystal. And make it look real.”
Chapter Thirty-Nine
The street corner was unusually dark, since two of its streetlights weren’t working. The third emitted a sharp electrical hum, perhaps the streetlight equivalent of a dying man’s breath. Across the street was a nearly empty parking lot and a closed McDonald’s, the yellow M looking faded and old. The traffic lights in the corner had changed endlessly since I’d shown up here—green, yellow, red.
I checked my phone again, rereading Breadknife’s message for what must have been the twentieth time. Corner of Warren and Dale. Half past midnight. No one but you. Come only with the box.
It was now twelve forty-three and I was getting anxious, even though I knew it was part of Breadknife’s strategy. He wanted me stressed and full of doubt. He knew me well enough to guess I might try something, that this evening was the equivalent of a very violent chess game between us, with everything on the line.
A battered gray Lexus slowed down as it got closer, and I tensed. The driver was obscured in the darkness, and for one moment I almost believed it was Breadknife himself. That he would step out of the car, shoot me, and take the box.
But when the car stopped, the brakes squeaking, I saw it was only Steve O’Sullivan, Breadknife’s flat-headed, obedient soldier. Of course; Breadknife would never risk an ambush. He’d sent one of his minions to fetch me.
Steve stepped out of the car, leaving the engine running, and approached me. His face was blank, an expression of a man with one goal in mind—following his boss’ orders. He looked at me, at the small pouch in my hand.
“Is it in there?”
“It is.” I tensed. Would he try and take it from me now? Leave without freeing my daughter? “Where’s the girl?”
“You’ll see her soon enough. Open it.”
I opened the pouch, cursing myself for telling Kane to stay far away. I needed backup right now. If Steve took the box, I would have to stop him from leaving myself.
But he never even touched it. He examined the pouch, verifying it was empty aside from the box, feeling the fabric for any hidden pockets. Then he patted me down to make sure I carried nothing else. He did a shoddy job, and I suspected that deep inside, Steve O’Sullivan was wary of becoming too intimate with a female body. He found nothing, which demonstrated his carelessness. I had two items on me that he should have confiscated. He did take my phone, and removed the battery. Then he swiped me with some sort of electrical device, which hummed and buzzed as it brushed my body. He was looking for a wire. There was none.
“Get in the car,” he said, holding the rear passenger door open.
I did, hugging the pouch close to me. The car stank of sweat, accompanied by a moldy smell that hinted of a forgotten snack left to rot, probably under one of the seats. Steve got into the driver’s seat and started the engine.
The ride was long, and Steve drove in a roundabout way, circling Boston, taking side roads with little traffic, trying to spot anyone who was following him. I was relieved that I had expressly forbidden Sinead and Kane to do that. I’d known Breadknife would suspect a tail.
I also knew something else, and the knowledge made me tremble in fear. Breadknife suspected a decoy. That was the only reason for not simply shooting me on the spot and taking the box. Breadknife knew I might use a forged crystal, and not the real one. And if that was the case, he wanted me alive to find out where the real crystal was.
How good was Kane’s forgery? The incantation had taken more than an hour, slowly morphing a piece of wood into an identical-looking crystal. I couldn’t spot any difference. Even the strange light in the crystal looked the same. But there was no ignoring the fact that the crystal that currently sat in the box was a stick, disguised with glamour. If Breadknife checked hard enough, he would spot the forgery. And then this night would probably end very badly, for both my daughter and for me.