Chapter Nine
I’d managed to convince the Red Queen—whose actual name I still didn’t know—to fold herself and her enormous gown into the extended cab of Owen’s truck. It had taken some doing. Her Majesty had been adamant that she was not climbing into “that metal contraption death on wheels.”
Owen had promised to drive slowly, hands at ten and two like some DMV poster boy. Even so, by the time we turned onto Snapdragon Drive, the queen was a bundle of frayed nerves, gasping at every passing pickup like it might veer across the line and obliterate us all.
I talked her into lying down in the spare bedroom to “recover from the journey between realms and interstate traffic.” Thankfully, there was no sign of Tani. The last thing I needed was Fairy Royalty vs Wonderland Royalty in my hallway.
As soon as the bedroom door clicked shut, Owen said, “Tell me what you know.”
I caught his hand and led him downstairs, putting as much floor and drywall as possible between us and the queen. Only when we reached the bottom did I turn to face him.
“Owen… when we were at the antique store before? Your father told me something in confidence. I don’t think he wanted you to know.”
His brows pulled together. “Know what?”
“He said he was keeping magical artifacts in his storeroom for Alice.” My voice dropped on the last word.
For a heartbeat he stared at me, his expression going still. Then he pinched the bridge of his nose like he could press away a headache. “I knew he was keeping something from me. Why would he do that?”
“I don’t know. Maybe Alice swore him to secrecy.” Frustration bubbled up in my chest. “I need to see those artifacts, Owen.”
“And you want me to take you there.”
“Yes.” I swallowed. “What if Aunt Alice was the one who stole them? The Fae treasures Titania’s talking about?”
“Don’t even think like that.” His tone sharpened. “She wasn’t a thief.”
“Well, she was a witch, and I didn’t know that,” I shot back. “What else don’t I know? What else did she hide? She had formulas for potions, ley lines under a hickory tree, a demon the size of a refrigerator, a fairy queen in my greenhouse—”
“Hey.” He stepped in closer, hands settling on my shoulders, his thumbs brushing lightly against my collarbones. The touch helped. A little. “One step at a time, remember? Let’s get to the antique store. Maybe my dad will have some answers.”
I let out a long breath. “Okay. One step at a time.”
We headed for the truck and this time Owen did not drive like a man promising to be gentle with someone’s royal nerves.
He gunned it back toward town, the engine growling as though it shared his mood.
By the time he jerked to a stop outside Charmed & Vintage, my stomach was somewhere up near my throat.
He was out of the car before I could yell at him about his driving. I scrambled after him, jogging to keep up as he beelined through the shop toward the back.
We didn’t make it.
Dougal McAllister intercepted us halfway to the storeroom, looming out from behind an armoire like a tall, stern haunted house prop.
“Owen, where have you been?” he demanded.
“Step aside, Dad.” Owen didn’t slow.
Dougal looked from his son to me and back again. I watched realization settle over his features in one slow, heavy sweep. When his gaze returned to me, his mouth flattened. “You told him.”
“I had to,” I said. “We found something in the woods.”
“What?” he pressed, crossing his arms like a barricade.
“It’s… complicated,” I said weakly.
“We have reason to believe the artifacts you’re holding were stolen,” Owen said, voice hardening. “Now I want to see them.”
“Stolen?” Shock cracked Dougal’s composure. “Alice never said anything about them being stolen.”
“She probably wouldn’t have,” I said. “She took secrets seriously.”
“You think she did it?” Dougal asked.
Owen shook his head. “We don’t know. Where are they, Dad?”
Dougal’s shoulders sagged a fraction. His arms dropped to his sides. “Follow me.”
He led us through the maze of furniture toward the back.
I kept my gaze fixed on the line of his shoulders, ignoring the curious looks from customers as we slipped past carved headboards and dusty lamps.
This town already thought I was the weird girl who’d inherited the flower shop.
No need to add “artifact thief” to the list.
At the back of the shop, Dougal pulled a ring of keys from his pocket and selected a shiny gold one. He unlocked a metal door and swung it open, flicking on the light.
Fluorescent bulbs hummed to life, revealing a cramped storeroom packed with crates. Gun-metal gray shelving units lined the walls, sagging under the weight of box after unmarked box.
“I’ve stored them at the back here,” Dougal said, nodding toward the far corner.
We followed him through the narrow aisles until we reached a cluster of crates stacked against the wall. All different sizes. None labeled.
“This is it?” I asked.
“This is what she brought me,” Dougal replied. “I’ve never opened them. I didn’t think it was my place.”
I crouched by the nearest crate. The lid was nailed down. Of course it was.
“Got a crowbar?” I asked.
“Let me find one.”
He disappeared back into the maze of shelves, leaving me and Owen alone with the crates and the scent of dust and old wood. Owen scanned the stack like he could see through them.
“Owen?” I asked.
“Yeah?” His eyes narrowed, fixing on one crate in particular.
“Are we in over our heads?”
My words snapped him out of whatever he’d been sensing. He looked down at me, the corner of his mouth twitching with something that was almost a smile but didn’t get there.
“I don’t know, Piper,” he admitted. “Maybe.”
I pushed to my feet and moved closer, needing the heat of him, needing something solid to hold on to. “I’m scared,” I whispered.
Of what, I wasn’t even sure anymore. Demons. Queens. Fairy lies. The possibility that my aunt—my anchor—had been tangled up in something darker than any of us realized. That the letter naming me Guardian had been less “inheritance” and more “last-ditch defense.”
Owen caught my hands in his. “We’ll get through it together,” he said. “We’re a team, remember?”
Before I could answer, Dougal returned with a crowbar.
“Found one,” he said.
Owen took it before his father could even offer. “Which crate first?”
I pointed to the one nearest me. Owen attacked it with far too much enthusiasm, grunting as he pried at the nails, ignoring Dougal’s attempts to “help.” Finally, the lid gave with a groan. Owen and Dougal hauled it the rest of the way off.
Packing straw spilled out onto the concrete. I dug both hands into it, wading through the dry rustle until my fingers brushed something solid. I pulled out a shoebox-sized container and eased off the lid.
Inside was a pair of red slippers.
Not ordinary red—ruby red, impossibly vivid, with a faint shimmer and a low magical hum.
Their surface caught the fluorescent light and fractured it, scattering tiny sparks of crimson fire as I tilted the box.
The color seemed to run deep, as if the slippers weren’t coated in color so much as cut from the heart of a gemstone.
They looked as though they were waiting for someone to slip them on and be carried away.
“What is it?” Dougal asked.
“A pair of red shoes,” I said faintly, though the words felt inadequate. “And I have a feeling they’re not meant for walking.”
I dug deeper, straw scratching my wrists, but the crate held nothing else.
“That’s all in this one,” I said.
“Why would Alice have a pair of red shoes locked up like contraband?” Owen asked.
“I don’t know.” Although the word relic whispered at the back of my mind. Red shoes. Portals. Crossroads. I jammed the lid back onto the box. “Let’s see what’s in the next one.”
We muscled open a second crate after several more minutes of swearing and lever work. Inside, nestled in straw, was a long, rectangular leather case. The leather cracked with age when I unfastened it, the hinges complaining as I lifted the lid.
Light caught metal.
I sucked in a sharp breath and stumbled back a step.
The sword lay in black velvet, its blade gleaming like liquid moonlight—clean, flawless, untouched by time. Not sharp in a way that promised violence, but bright in a way that felt… absolute. As if it decided where it belonged, not the other way around.
The pommel was pure gold, etched with symbols I didn’t recognize yet somehow understood. They hummed faintly against my skin, a quiet answering call.
Silence fell. Even the hum of the fluorescents seemed suddenly intrusive.
“What is it?” I whispered.
“A sword,” Dougal said softly.
“I can see that,” I snapped, eyes locked on it. “But who does it belong to?”
Owen swallowed. “Do you think it’s the Sword of Light? The one the Red Queen mentioned?”
“And if it is,” I said slowly, “what’s it doing here? In Hickory Hollow. In my aunt’s crates?”
Dougal shook his head. “I have no answers for that. Alice only said it needed to be kept safe.” His gaze lifted, distant, as if he were seeing something beyond the ceiling.
“This town attracts things from the in-between. Relics don’t simply wander into ordinary places, Piper. They arrive where the paths cross.”
Right. Like Hickory Hollow.
My skin prickled.
“I don’t get it,” Owen said.
“Me either,” I muttered. “I don’t have answers. I have more questions.”
Dougal exhaled. “I suppose we’ll have to open the rest—”
“No.” I snapped the case shut and stepped back. “Close them up. Both of them. They’ll be safer here for now.”
I turned to Dougal. “Who else knows about these crates?”
“No one besides you two,” he said. “Alice didn’t want anyone else involved.”
“Good.” I nodded. “Let’s keep it that way until I can figure this out. In the meantime, I’m going to talk to Tani and see what she knows. If that is the Sword of Light, she’ll want to take it back to Faery with her.”
But I wasn’t sure it was the Sword of Light.
“You believe all that?” Owen asked.
I met his eyes. “I think I have to believe it, Owen.”
“I’m coming with you.”
“I can handle Tani on my own.”