“Very precisely,” she answered vaguely. “I’ll show you.”
Kallie guided my hand outward, and my fingers met cold metal located along one of the Warden’s book cases. She had me place my ear to the side of the safe.
“I’m going to test each number on the dial,” Kallie explained. “With the way the locking mechanism works, you’ll hear a slighttickwhen we’ve reached a contact point where the lever inside will drop slightly. We’ll need three numbers for the lever to fall completely into place and unlock the safe.”
“That seems simple,” I remarked.
Kallie chuckled lightly. “It takes practice for sure. Let’s get to work.”
Kallie started spinning the dial slowly. I held my breath, listening intently for thetickshe mentioned. I couldn’t hear a thing except for Ava and Marcus rifling through papers. Oberi’s nails scratched the floor as he paced around nervously, and Rishi kept letting out hopelessmews.
Several long minutes passed before Kallie sucked a sharp breath. “There it was! I got the first number.”
“Really? I didn’t hear a thing,” I said.
“Like I said, it takes practice,” she replied.
Kallie kept working. She surprised me by finding the second number even faster than the first. At least fifteen minutes must’ve passed. My nausea was finally beginning to ease.
“Guys, I found something!” Ava cried at the same time I heard the lock disengage.
“I found something, too,” Marcus said.
“The safe is open!” Kallie exclaimed.
“That’s great!” Ava abandoned her papers and hurried over to us.
“What’s inside?” Marcus asked eagerly.
“Let’s see…” Kallie slowly opened the door, and the three of them gasped in unison.
I grabbed Ava’s hand instinctually, as if I expected something dangerous. She didn’t tense under my touch, though, and I quickly realized she wasn’t frightened at all.
“It’s a key,” Ava said breathlessly.
My jaw dropped. “You mean one of the keys from your journal, the ones your Aunt Maddie drew from her visions? A key to the Elven gate?”
Ava’s breath wavered as she stepped forward to take the key. “Exactly like one of those.”
“It has angel wings on the end,” Marcus said thoughtfully. “This must be the one the angels received when the keys were split up. How did the Warden get his hands on it?”
“I have no idea,” Ava said. “But the Warden’s power doesn’t surprise me anymore. He has more resources than we could ever imagine. We need to decide what to do with this key. If the Warden finds it missing, he’ll know we took it.”
“I can make a duplicate,” Kallie said. “A key’s a simple illusion to turn solid. It won’t hold its magic, so it can’t open the gate, but if the Warden checks to see if it’s still in his safe, he won’t know the difference.”
“It should work,” Marcus agreed. “I think Charlie should take this key.”
I furrowed my brow. “Why me?”
“Because you’re the only person without one,” Marcus pointed out. “We’ll get it back to the Lair with the other three as soon as we can, but if we ever need to split them up, Charlie should be in charge of this one.”
“I agree,” Ava said. She reached for my hand and placed the key in my palm. “We shouldn’t be keeping the keys together, anyhow. Once we find a safer place for them, we’ll each take one to keep an eye on.”
“That sounds like the safest option,” I agreed, though I didn’t like the idea of being responsible for something so important. It made me really nervous.
I slipped the key into my pocket, while Kallie conjured a duplicate into the safe and sealed it back up. I turned to Ava. “What’d you find?”
“Evidence. A lot of it,” Ava said. She hurried back toward the Warden’s desk and began shuffling through the papers she’d been studying. The rest of us gathered around her. “Eddie and the others are still alive but… the Warden’s notes say they were tortured. It sounds like he didn’t get anything out of them before they were moved.”
