I turn my room upside down. Run my fingers across every surface and nook in the bureau drawers, sift through the sheets, check the drains. I consider asking for an unsanctioned use of Mind’s Eye to check my memory, but I don’t need it. I can see myself unhooking the clasp and coiling the chain as I always do, placing the necklace on my nightstand so that it doesn’t wrap around my neck while I sleep.
I know, even as I strip the cases from the pillows one last time, that Mother’s necklace isn’t here.
A chill works its way down my spine like fingers playing a piano.
Someone came in and took it. While I was sleeping.
I throw on a crumpled wool dress that I’d left lying on my floor and fling open my door.
Miles. Of course. It had to have been Miles.
I head for the back garden, where he’s spent the last week playing with a model airplane he built with Dr. Cliffton. But now he stands beside the garden’s western stone wall, the airplane overturned in the grass, with one wing crooked, like a broken arm. He is cupping something in his hand, and a silvery thread of hope shoots through my veins.
But when he turns, it is only the remnants of flower petals. He is pulling out delicate clusters of pink and white turtlehead blossoms and beheading them from their stems. They are Mrs. Cliffton’s favorites.
“Miles.” Hope is hammering in my chest. I won’t even be mad at him—?not that mad—?if he has it. Though I’ve only had it for a few weeks, I’ve grown used to the weight of it against my skin, and I feel strangely off kilter without it. As I walk toward him, my head starts to throb.
“What?” He hides the petals behind his back. The rest of the evidence remains strewn like tattered rags around the Clifftons’ garden.
“Did you take my necklace?” I ask. “The one with Mother’s ring?”
“No,” he says. But he won’t meet my eyes.
“Miles, don’t lie to me,” I say sharply. I take another step toward him.
“It’s probably somewhere in your room.” He squints down at the petals at his feet. “Maybe,” he smirks, “it’s with your dart and your ribbon and all your lovey-dovey poetry about Dixon Fairweather.”
I grab his shoulders and shake him hard enough to make his teeth rattle, realizing that it’s the first time I’ve touched him in ages. “This isn’t funny,” I hiss. “Stop being your painfully annoying self for one single minute and tell me the truth.”
He looks at me as if I’ve struck him. “No,” he says softly. “I don’t know where it is.”
I release my grip on his small shoulders, and as soon as I do, he runs. I watch the swirl of his cowlick until he reaches the hens and sends them flapping and squawking away from him. When I close my eyes, I can almost see Mother’s displeased expression: she would have gone after him, and I would have retreated to my room to add another line to my floor.
Tears prick my eyes. Miles and I will always stay the same, no matter what else changes around us.
I find Mrs. Cliffton in the sunroom, canning beans in a row of gleaming glass jars. “Can you help me?” I ask. “I’ve misplaced my necklace.”
She and Genevieve help me unmake and remake the bed, lift the mattress, push the dresser out from the wall. Dr. Cliffton and Will join in to search the other rooms of the house. “I’m so sorry, dear,” Mrs. Cliffton says eventually, standing from where she’d knelt to look under a table. Her palms push back the wisps of her hair. “I know it has sentimental value. I’m sure it will turn up.”
“I probably just set it down somewhere,” I say. It’s a lie, but I don’t want her to think that I’m making any accusations. I bite back tears, then let myself out into the garden.
I examine the weathered bricks of the house and the tree, its large limb reaching right up to my window.
My necklace didn’t just disappear. Which means that either a thief broke into my room in the night and stole it while I was sleeping or someone in the Clifftons’ house is lying to me.
At the moment, I can’t decide which is worse.
When I reach the school field for my first Stars practice, Mrs. Percy is already there, shielding her face from the sun, balancing a rectangular metal box under the crook of her elbow. My head pounds with a headache that has persisted ever since Mother’s necklace went missing three days ago.
“Let’s set up,” Mrs. Percy says. I help her level something that resembles an archery target at the edge of the field. There are six lines blooming out from a bull’s-eye in the center, and I breathe a small sigh of relief. If Stars are anything like darts, there’s a chance I could be good at them.
But then Mrs. Percy starts hanging thin wires in front of the target. She slips a silver and red candle into the first wire knot and two glass vials of water in the knots on either side. They are light enough to swing loosely in the breeze.
“Shall we begin?” Mrs. Percy asks. At my nod, she presents me with a pair of thick white gloves. “Precautionary measure,” she explains. “Don’t want any fingers to be accidentally sliced off on the first day.”
She winks. I shift my weight from one foot to the other and laugh nervously. I’m already starting to sweat. No room to dwell on Mother’s necklace now. Not if I want to keep all my extremities intact.
“I’m afraid I don’t know much about Stars,” I admit. “Maybe you should start from the beginning.”
“It’s simple, really.” Mrs. Percy pulls on her own gloves, a light lavender color, then cracks open the metal box. Inside is a neat array of silver Stars, each roughly the size of my palm. Their edges glitter, as sharp as razors.
“There are three rounds, with three Stars thrown in each round,” she says. “That means you have nine chances to collect points. You receive points for each Star that hits the target, and the value increases the closer you get to the bull’s-eye.”
I nod.
“But the real prize is to hit the hanging candle with enough force that the Star slices through the wax, causing the candle to fall and light the fuel below the target. A direct hit to the bull’s-eye is fifty points. If you successfully light the fuel, it’s one hundred and fifty.
“In all honesty,” Mrs. Percy continues, squinting at me, “don’t count on that happening. It’s only been done twice in the history of the tournament. And you’ll need to avoid hitting these vials of water that hang on either side of the candle. If those shatter or spill, you’ll lose points—?and likely the candle flame as well.”
“Got it.” I work my fingers to the tips of the gloves. “I’ve never heard of this game before.”
“This version of Stars originated in Corrander,” Mrs. Percy says. “The tournament favors traditional games with a bit of a twist.”
Makes sense. It’s a description fit for the Sister Cities themselves.
“Oh, and one more thing,” Mrs. Percy adds. “In the third round, the target will be moving.”