Chapter 3 #2
“Yes, actually. And it was stuck. I spent half an hour trying to get it open. Finally, it gave way, but I had to use a pair of pliers and a fingernail file. But when I got it open, it was empty. Except…” she paused.
“Except what?” Camille pressed.
“It seemed to me as if a puff of smoke wafted out. But that couldn’t be, could it?
The thing had to have been jammed shut for years.
It’s old, and the shop owner said that it’s been on the shelves for at least eight years, since she bought the shop.
Nobody ever even looked at it until I happened in. And I went into the shop on a whim.”
A goose walked over my grave. I held out my hand. “Can I see the box?”
Camille handed it to me. “It feels…heavy. Cloudy.”
As I held the box up to the light, I saw what she meant. It was lovely, and with a good polishing, would be beautiful. But there was something foreboding about the box. Something that made me want to bury it or hide it.
“Can we take this with us?” I asked. I wasn’t sure what I was planning to do, but maybe we could find out where the box was made or if it had any magical properties.
“Be my guest. I don’t know if I want it back, but if you find out anything, please let me know.” Lukia hesitated, then said, “You said you live down the street?”
“Yes, at 33933 Victoria Road,” Camille said. “Two driveways down on the opposite side of the street. If you need us, just come running over.”
“Thank you,” Lukia said. “I hope Grandmother Coyote’s right and that you can help me.”
“We’ll do our best,” I said. “Meanwhile, here’s our number. Call us if anything else happens, and we’ll come on the run if we’re able.”
As we left Lukia’s house, I wondered if we’d manage to help her before whoever was out to kill her succeeded. She was sitting on a ticking time bomb, I thought. And who knew when it would blow sky-high?
As we drove back toward the house, Camille asked, “What do you think?” She held up the box and examined it. “There’s something odd about this. I don’t like the energy, but it feels somewhat familiar. Like, I should know it, but I can’t quite suss it out.”
“It’s a beautiful box,” I said. “But it looks…if I didn’t know better, I’d swear the was some sort of veil over it, cloaking its true beauty.”
“I need to head down to the shop,” Camille said. “I’ll take this with me and see what I can find out. Are you going into your office?”
I snorted. “What office? My cover is a joke and you know it. I’m no private eye, and nobody’s going to hire me.”
Camille frowned, but she didn’t contradict me.
The Otherworld Intelligence Agency didn’t even try to pretend that it wanted us around.
But given the mess that had happened with Menolly twelve years before, they couldn’t exactly fire us.
Lathe—Camille’s old boss—had tried that and failed, though he made her life miserable.
But sending us Earthside was the next best thing to getting rid of us.
Camille was probably right when she said she thought we were stuck over here.
“Did you talk to Father the other night?” I asked.
Camille shrugged. “Yeah, for what it was worth. I wish you’d been home.”
“I’m sorry, but I just couldn’t face it.
That’s why I decided to run off. I didn’t mean to get stuck in that tree.
” Our father was nicer to me than Camille, though at least he acknowledged her existence, unlike Menolly.
He hated vampires, and he was disgusted by the fact that Menolly had been turned.
If he’d had his way, she would have died the final death instead of coming home with fangs and a bloodlust. Menolly fared worst of all, even though he sometimes deigned to talk to her.
Camille snorted. “I know. I felt like running, too. But I have—”
“A duty to the family,” I said, mimicking her. “I swear, if you don’t let go of that, someday I’m going to squirt you with the water mister, like you do to me.”
“You know you deserve it when we do that—” she started to say, but right then I pulled to a stop in front of our home and turned off the engine.
“So, heading out now, or do you need anything from inside?” I asked.
She shook her head. “No, I have everything I need. I’ll head off to the shop. What are you going to do?”
I thought about it for a moment. “I think I’ll take a run out in the woods. Maybe I’ll find something,” I said. “I promise, I won’t get myself caught up in a tree again.”
“You’d better not,” she said. “Menolly’s not awake to get you out. Okay, I’m off. Call me if you need anything. I’ll take the box with me.”
As she headed over to her Lexus, I watched her go, wishing I had her confidence.
Camille knew who she was in the world, and she was confident enough to walk through it with her head held high.
I was still trying to figure out my life.
And that, right now, seemed a bigger task than anything I’d ever tackled before.
I stretched. The snow was coming down again, and I turned my face toward the sky, letting the flakes cover me. The world over here loomed so vast and large that I wondered if it would ever feel familiar. I wanted to feel at home. I wanted to stop being a Windwalker. I wanted to find my roots.