Lula pulled the chain over her head and took the few steps to the box.“Do you want to pick up the box?”
“Yeah.”If she was the only one who could touch the book, I should be the one who held the box.
I bent and removed the cloth.
The box was the size of a small cooler and looked like a wooden crate that might hold tools.The wood was unfinished, chipped on the edges, and all-in-all looked like it would fit right in at a thrift shop.
But the inside of the box was woven with the McClellan witches’ power and magic—moonlight and forest, water and glade, all grown into the very fiber of the wood.
It was powerful enough to hide the book from gods, even when those gods were right next to it.
I picked it up.
It wasn’t heavy.It wasn’t odd.It was just a wooden box.
But I knew what was inside of it.Our future, our deaths.
Our freedom if we didn’t screw this up.
“I’m gonna lift the lid,” I said.“Abbi, keep those ears open.”
She made a small humming noise.
I met Lula’s gaze.She winked, and I huffed.“I’m just being cautious.”
“You’re always cautious,” she said.“There’s no way out of this but through.Open it.”
A part of me—yeah, all of me—didn’t want to do it.I wanted to put the box down and leave the book hidden away in this room forever.
To hell with Headwaters, gods, and all.
But Lula had lived a hundred years alone.I had lived a hundred years unable to touch her, to talk to her.
Because of Atë’s monster, Headwaters.
Even though my gut said run, hide, do anything to keep Lula far away from gods and their magic, I didn’t step outside the circle.I stayed right there beside her.
“Then let’s go,” I said.
I opened the lid.
Lu sucked a quick breath, her pupils dilating like a predator spotting prey.The book was still wrapped in the kerchief Lula had wrapped it in back in Texas.Even so, it thrummed with an odd whispering musical chorus of magic.
“I’m going to pick it up and unlock it.Abbi?”
“Still quiet,” she said.
“You hear the magic?”I asked her.
“No,” Abbi said.“But it’s quiet out there.”
Lu pulled the book free and unwrapped it, dropping the handkerchief back into the box.
I expected…something.But the book was just a soft, tawny leather-bound book, slimmer than one would expect a gods’ spell book would be, worked with gold threads and bits of stone and metal.
The carved bone lock was a bird in full dive, the loop of leather clutched in its talons.
Lu shifted her grip on the key, shaped like a wing, and inserted it into the lock.
