“I knowwhatit is. What is it used for?” I shift my palm, allowing the light to catch the stone.
“That depends.”
“On what?” I’m getting impatient.
“A great many things. Where did you find this?” she questions, briefly meeting my eyes.
I give her a long, hard look, deciding how much I want to tell her. She seems very curious. I’m willing to give her more if it means I’ll get something in return. “Go, and speak of this to no one,” I order while making eye contact with Maxine. The girl pauses for a moment to examine her high priestess, but then she flees the dingy kitchen in a sprint.
Melva doesn’t pay much attention to the interaction with her coven member, she’s still too enthralled with the simple stone.
“I found this near my…near Harlow’s effigy,” I stammer. I don’t know why it’s so much harder now not to let my tongue slip about who he was to me. “It was concealed under a bush. I don’t think it was meant to be left behind.”
Melva’s eyes dart up to mine, but her shoulders stay hunched. “Did you search for more crystals like it?” Her voice is hushed, as if she’s afraid we might be overheard.
“Yes. We didn’t find any, but this certainly didn’t belong there.” I shift my fingers again, and Melva recoils as if she thinks I might toss the thing in her face. Her reaction reaffirms that Modeus was wise to make sure it didn’t touch his skin when he picked it up.
“What can you tell me about it? Can you find out what it was used for?”
Melva takes a full step backward. “It would only be a guess, an educated guess, but an assumption all the same.”
“That’s more than I have now,” I admit.
“It may have been used to create a circle. If you found other stones with it, I could be more certain.” She shakes her head.
“Like a summoning circle?”
“Possibly. Or a binding circle,” she offers. “How close to your father was it?”
“Ten feet,” Modeus answers for me.
“Yes, he was quite imposing in his true form,” Melva says slowly, as if she’s recalling what my father looks like. “Under a bush, you say… Was he found in a large clearing?”
“Yes, at the manor house,” I confirm.
Melva’s brows furrow, but a single wrinkle still doesn’t appear—magic at work. “But your mother is in Sacred City,” she tells me, as if I weren’t already privy to that bit of information.
“Exactly.”
Melva releases a heavy sigh and swats the side of her thigh, making her flouncy dress sway. “Messy, incompetent fools.”
The muscles along my back tighten. Her utterance of indignation pisses me off. She seems more bothered that someone might have fucked up than she does about what they have done.
“I refuse to believe Harlow would have fallen prey to imbeciles.” She huffs, clearly affronted.
Well, that’s a little better. Maybe she’s mad for Harlow. “He never would have just walked into a trap. There has to be more to this, like someone he trusted working against him,” I suggest. “Do you have any idea who used this? Is there a way to track it back to a coven or a witch?”
“No,” she admits, crestfallen. “The crystal is what it is—a tool used to enhance and strengthen a circle, I’m assuming.”
“Then why are you leery of it?” I extend my palm again, and she leans back.
“It’s tainted with death magic now. A cursed stone like that will bring nothing but misfortune and suffering to anyone who touches it. I’ve had enough of that in my life, which is why I was more than grateful to Harlow for letting me live here.”
Egan reaches over my shoulder and snatches the onyx from my hand. It’s so quick, I’m not even sure if he was able to avoid touching the crystal in doing so. There’s no point in asking for it back. I know without inquiring he’s not going to let me near the damned thing again.
“There’s nothing that will help me figure out who left the onyx behind?”
“I’m afraid not. It would be like trying to find the carpenter just by looking at a nail,” Melva answers, and sadly, I believe her.
