This changes everything…
“Rainy?” Duke said softly. “Are you all right, darling?”
“It wasn’t just a book,” I whispered. “She left me more than a book. An inheritance? That would make sense. The whole novel is about finding a lost will. Is that it? Could that be the thing that changes everything?”
My knees shook and I had to sit down. Gently, Duke put me into my grandfather’s chair and knelt beside it.
“Breathe, Rainy. You’re turning even paler than usual.”
I met his eyes. “All this time, I thought I knew the message of the book.Don’t grieve me. Get on with your life and your adventures like Nancy Drew did.But that’s not it. There is more.”
Duke nodded. “It seems there is much, much more. But I wouldn’t start celebrating yet.”
“Why not?”
He tapped my grandfather’s notebook. “Your grandfather hid this and put an enchantment on the lock. I think he learned something so dangerous he was afraid to even write about it in his notebook. Which means either heison a top secret mission investigating what he discovered…or someone learned he discovered this information and—”
“Don’t say it. Please don’t say it.”
“I’m sorry, Rainy, but we have to accept the possibility he’s been taken somewhere against his will.”
My grandfather’s old desk chair creaked as I sat back, my hand over my mouth in shock.
I shook my head. “No, he left me a note—”
“That he may have been forced to write,” Duke said. “Which is why he had to write in code, to tell you where to find the key.”
“He’s been gone a week. What if he’s—”
“Don’t say it,” Duke said. “We’ll find him.”
I threw my arms around his shoulders and he pulled me close.
“What about the ground rules, darling?” he asked.
“We’ll get back to them in a minute.”
I rested my chin on his strong shoulder. Relief coursed through me. I wasn’t alone in this. Duke was going to help me. As I’d told Penny, fictional detectives could make you feel like they could solve all your problems, that everything would be okay if you just let them handle it.
I pulled back, and he smiled that irresistible smile of his.
Rules or no rules, I wanted to kiss him, and he certainly seemed amenable to the idea. When I leaned in, he leaned in closer.
But before our lips could touch, the phone rang. It wasn’t my cellbut the red landline on my grandfather’s desk. Someone from the Coven was trying to get in touch.
“I have to get this,” I told Duke.
“Let me listen.”
I picked up the receiver, ten times as heavy as even the largest smartphones, and put the call on speaker.
“Hello? Rainy March here?”
Silence…a long silence, and then.
The line crackled and then someone spoke as if they were calling long-distance from another universe. “Rainy?”
“Pops! Where are you?” I jumped to my feet in excitement.
