The door to Grandad’s study was open. I held out a hand to protest Amelia going in, in case the floor was no longer stable, but she’d stopped just outside.
The interior had been remade in shades of black and gray. There were the hulking impressions of what had once been a desk and bookshelves, but most of the chair had been reduced to charcoal. Whatever books or notes were kept there were only ash.
Amelia pointed to the metal brackets where a shelf had once been. “There were clocks there with little Post-It notes beneath, and they all had names. One for your dad, one for Laurelie, one for you.”
“What were they for?” I asked.
“Tools for keeping time,” she said.
“I know that, but—”
“They don’t work. Not here.”
“Not anymore,” Kessian remarked, looking at the piles of ash on the floor.
“No, I mean Dad’s and Laurelie’s were stopped at 3:16 and 12:00, but yours, Tal? It still ticked.”
I was trying to follow. “So … mine worked?”
“Not here. They don’t work unless they’re underwater.”
“That … is normally the opposite of true,” Kessian murmured, but neither of us dared interrupt her. She’d grabbed onto a yarn and was following it to some sort of conclusion.
With a faraway look, she regarded the rest of the room. In a sudden frenzy, she went to the desk, and before I could call her back from the danger of a floor that could collapse, she wrenched open a drawer and froze.
I ventured a few tentative feet into the room to see what she’d found. It was hard to discern amongst the ashes, but a pocket watch lay within, sooty and dark. She picked it up, rubbing away the soot to reveal a flash of silver and a mother-of-pearl inlay. It was tarnished with rust, but it was beautiful.
Beautiful and familiar.
“Grandad gave that to me for my sixteenth birthday,” I said. “I … I lost it. I had it on me the night I went into the strid.”
“How could he have found it?” Kessian asked.
I didn’t know. Amelia picked it up reverently and opened it. An engraving on the inside lid read:
34-96-13
“That wasn’t there before,” I said.
“Do those numbers mean anything to you?” Kessian asked.
I shook my head.
Amelia said, “I think it’s for you.”
“Why? What do I do with them?” I asked.
She screwed up her face in concentration, rubbing her head so hard it looked like it hurt. “I saw everything in there, and now it’s like my head’s sprung a leak.” She dropped her hands and let out a deep sigh. “I can’t remember the ‘why.’ Just that you need this. Someone wanted you to have it.”
“Just … someone?” I prompted.
Through her exhaustion, she looked a little afraid. “I’m losing sight of everything from in there, but if I remember right, you left it for yourself.”
We drove back to the spa. I called Fae, Mum, and Marlowe and told them to come see us at once. They came expecting bad news.
Fae was first to arrive, and when Amelia came out to greet them, theyat first screamed like she was a ghost, then immediately burst into tears and crushed their cousin in a hug. By the time Marlowe, Lettie, and Mum drove up, they couldn’t see Amelia, she was so enveloped in Fae’s arms.
Lettie nearly fell to her knees and wept. Marlowe looked so shell-shocked that it didn’t become real until he hugged her. And Mum, she just looked at me open-mouthed.
