“Nah, I’m not that easy to kill.”
“Really?” Gemma arcs her eyebrows. “You’re bloody.”
“Most of it isn’t my blood.” I turn, waiting for the guys to shuffle in. Hasan’s back got cut pretty bad. I had Thomas swipe supplies from an open ambulance, and I cleaned Hasan up the best I could. “Speaking of…”
“Yeah?”
“Can you take a look at Hasan? He got cut with glass. I don’t think I got it all out. The guys heal during the day, but we still have hours until dawn.”
“Of course.” Gemma, who’s a nurse, motions to the kitchen. “There’s better lighting in here. Can you get me tweezers?”
I go upstairs to grab some along with extra towels and washcloths. Thomas and Gilbert are going toward the front door, looking on edge, when I come back down the stairs.
“What are you doing?” I ask.
“Gemma said she thought she heard someone out here about twenty minutes after we left,” Gil says, shooting back the deadbolt.
“What?” I ask, even though I heard him correctly.
“She said it sounded like someone walking. She got scared and stayed hidden.”
“Smart on her part.”
Gil opens the door and Thomas steps out, bending down to pick something up.
“It’s a letter,” he says, flipping it over. “Addressed to you, Ace.”
He extends it, and I hesitate. Whoever left the letter knew we left. They saw all five of us leave the house and squeeze into my car. But they weren’t counting on Gemma being here, it seems.
“It’s handwritten.” I take the letter and look at my name scrawled across the off-white paper making up this thick envelope. “What do you think the chances are it’s my letter to Hogwarts?”
Gil shakes his head. “Sorry to disappoint. That’s not the Hogwarts crest.”
I flip the letter over and look at a design stamped into a wax seal. “No, that’s definitely not the Hogwarts crest.” The symbol is robust, consisting of a rising sun inside a triangle. “Do you know what that is?”
“Never seen it before.” Thomas closes the front door and makes sure the locks are all in place. “But we know someone who might.”
“Right.” I tuck the towels under my arm and go back into the kitchen. Hasan is sitting at the table, leaning forward so Gemma can pick pieces of glass out of his back. She’s pulling the bandages off and disinfecting the wounds now.
“Was there anything out there?” she asks, carefully blotting the biggest cut with an alcohol swab. “I feel silly getting scared, but I’m a little paranoid.”
“You’re not paranoid,” I tell her. “You were right.” I put the towels and tweezers on the table and step over to Jacques. “Someone left this on the porch.”
Jacques’s chocolate brown eyes cloud with worry as he takes the envelope from me. “This looks vaguely familiar.” He runs his finger over the seal. “Though both symbols are commonplace in magical symbolism.”
“Should I open it?”
“It could be filled with poison,” Gemma says seriously. “Maybe you should call the pol—oh, you are the police.”
“This isn’t something the law can handle,” I say with certainty. “None of this is anymore.”
Jacques flips the letter over and then holds it up to the light. “The parchment is too thick to see through.” He brings it to his nose and inhales. “It smells of sage.”
“So did the files.” I look into his eyes. “Whoever sent those files left this letter.”
Jacques nods. “It appears so.”
“Open it,” Thomas encourages. “Unless it’s cursed or something.”
