She put her hands on the door, then scraped at it like she had done with the magic on the box. It yielded some, inciting her, but then she heard a muffled sound from inside the room. She pressed an ear to the door.
‘Ay…ay….ay’
Exhilaration swept through Sage. Could there possibly be another angel-wolf pendant inside this room? Would it help her like the last one had? She examined the magic around the entire door again, looking for weaknesses. She pried at it but again, she couldn’t make a dent, so she went to the kitchen to look for a tool. There were no knives in the kitchen, not even butter knives. She settled for a fork and a spoon, but they were useless against the magic. Sage pitched them across the room and went back to work with her hands.
After several minutes, she managed to make a tiny slit in the magic with her fingernails. She put her ear to it and listened.
‘Sage. Sage. Sage.’
Hope blossomed inside her.
“I’m here,” she whispered. “I hear you.”
Her name stopped, cut off abruptly, and in its place, a trilling sounded, a long, musical, almost tinkling noise of absolute delight. Sage didn’t know how she could understand, but she did. The thing that had been calling her name was delighted that she heard it and was delighted that she had responded. Sage smiled, her feelings of rage and desperation falling away slightly.
“I’m ah—I’m locked in,” she whispered into the wall.
‘You can escape if you like. Your powers are awakened, and you no longer need be hidden.’
Sage frowned at that, wondering what this…thingreally knew about her and her situation.
“There’s magic everywhere. I can see it,” she said softly.
‘Good. You can use it.’
“How?” Sage whispered, ready to try anything.
‘Adil was born with power she uses well. You also possess this power. You only need to learn what is possible.’
Adil. Sage didn’t even have to ask who Adil was. Nana White’s first name was Abigail, but Sage somehow knew it was also Adil.
‘Yes, Adil is her birth name. She may have forgotten, but others have not.’
“What… who are you?” Sage whispered.
‘Who I am will only be understood when you know who you are.’
That wasn’t exactly an answer, but Sage got it. There were more important things to deal with at the moment, likeAdiland her magic.
‘Adil’s powers deal directly with power. She and her brother—and also you—can find, recognize, hold, direct, and control power of any sort. Her abilities extend to include objects of power, extensions of power, and symbols of powers, like abilities, ideas, memories, money, flags, and even the essentiality of an animal self, as you well know. There are many types of power, and Adil has identified and collected enough of them over the centuries that she can create the ‘magic’ that you see about you at will. This is not something that you can do, although you may learn, but even if you never learn, you are as strong as she. You can match Adil in—'
The thing stopped talking, leaving Sage despairing that it had abandoned her, but then it spoke again.
‘Quickly Sage, there is something you must hear, but you have to create a bigger hole first. Use a tool, anything you consider powerful will work, even if it’s only a quarter.’
Sage dug a quarter out of her pocket; certain this thing was actually helping her. She scraped at the magic with the quarter, and it sliced right through it.
“Yes!” Sage scraped and pried and then pulled until she had a substantial break in the magic. She dropped the quarter and scooped, as if digging sand at the beach, making the hole bigger.
She heard talking inside the room! Sage stopped moving, her hands cupped around the clear space she had made to keep the magic from oozing back over it. She pressed her ear to her hands and held her breath.
“What’shedoing here?” an unfamiliar female voice snarled.
“Mind your biz,” another female voice said, and Sage recognized that one.Her ‘loving’ Nana.
“I’ll mind my biz,” the first woman said, her voice coiled like a snake. A moment went by with only silence, then the woman said. “Ohh. Ohh. Thebearencalled his big dumb brother home early. Isn’t that just perfect for you? He’ll bring his mate, and she’ll bring hershiftsegen.”
Sage held her breath, her hands pressed against the door. She’d never heard the wordshiftsegenbefore, but she knew they were talking about the angel-wolf pendant, had to be! It must be the object of power that came with the new mates from Rhen and there was more than one of them!
