“Foxy lady! The vibes are all wrong over there! Something’s blocking the cosmic flow!”
Cassie stood, brushing off her jeans. “She says they’ll keep showing up until we address the root cause.”
“The root cause being my possessed phone?”
“The root cause being your magic.”
I stopped halfway up my porch steps. “My what now?”
“Come inside. Margaret found something.”
Inside,my apartment looked like a supernatural intervention had taken place.
Margaret was in my armchair, surrounded by books that definitely hadn’t been there when I left. Luna was perched on my bookshelf, tail swishing, watching everything with those unsettling golden eyes. Tequila had claimed the back of my couch and was glaring at Luna with the intensity of a cat who did not appreciate interlopers in his territory.
There’s another cat here,he informed me.She talks. Out loud. It’s unnerving.
“Tell me about it,” I muttered.
Also, she called me ‘pedestrian.’ I don’t know what that means but I’m offended.
Luna’s ears twitched. “I can hear you, you know.”
Good. You were meant to.
“Children,” Margaret said, not looking up from her book. “Focus.”
I dropped onto the couch, dislodging approximately seventeen throw pillows I didn’t remember buying. My apartment had accumulated things over the years—blankets I never used, candles I never lit, a bread maker from a brief period when I thought I might become a bread person. I was not a bread person. The bread maker now held my mail.
“Diane.” Margaret closed her book and fixed me with those sharp, knowing eyes. “I need to see your great-aunt’s things.”
“I don’t have any of her things. She died when I was a kid.”
“You have something. Family magic always leaves artifacts. Think.”
I thought. My brain felt like soup—exhausted, overwhelmed, still processing the fact that I’d spent an hour drinking tea with a grumpy antique dealer while my phone did something it had never done before.
What did I have from Tía Rosalinda?
And then I remembered.
“There’s a box,” I said slowly. “A jewelry box. My mother gave it to me when Abuela passed. She said it was Rosalinda’s, that Abuela had kept it all those years, and now it was mine.” I’d shoved it in my closet and hadn’t thought about it since. “I think it’s in the back of my bedroom closet. Behind the shoes I keep meaning to donate.”
“Get it.”
I got it.
The box was smaller than I remembered. Dark wood, carved with symbols I’d never questioned—swirls and curves that I’d assumed were decorative. The kind of thing you see on antique furniture and think, “That’s pretty,” without wondering what any of it means.
It was alsohumming.
“Has that been doing that?” Cassie asked, staring at the box like it might bite her.
“I thought it was the refrigerator.” I set it on the coffee table, hands slightly shaky. “It’s been making that sound for days. Maybe longer. I don’t know.”
Margaret leaned forward, studying the carvings. Her expression shifted—recognition, I thought. Maybe respect.
“These are old symbols. Protection. Preservation. And this one—” she traced a spiral pattern on the lid, “—this is for inheritance. For passing magic down through bloodlines.”
