Page 61 of House of Lilith

It’s the softest knock, but it sends me springing from the bed on which I’m trying to pass the time.

When I fling the door open, I find that it really is the courier. There are two luggage carts with boxes of Professor Onas’ stuff behind him.

As he helps me get them all inside, I barely exchange two sentences with the guy. That’s how anxious I am to start. And I’ve rescheduled the dressmaker so I’ll have plenty of time.

So as soon as the courier closes the door behind him, I throw myself onto the bed and I grab one of the boxes, all neatly stacked at its foot.

Despite the eagerness, I don’t rip it open straight away. No one would bat an eye at me asking for a favor like this. I’m the only one who doesn’t do itall the time. And when I do, I’m smart about it. I don’t ask favors from people with obvious red flags.

But once I start looking through the things, there’s no going back. I will have disobeyed Mother’s orders to stop with the detective nonsense. And if anyone ever found out…

What’s the worst that could happen, I ask myself. The family would be even more disappointed with me? They’d make me sit through yet another extremely uncomfortable conversation followed by weeks of silent treatment?

I frown. The thought doesnotappeal to me.

But this is not just about getting a poor widow the satisfaction of her husband’s killer being thrown in jail.

If I catch the killer, I’ll also have caught the person trying to sabotage the Games. And statistically, the killer is probably someone the professor knew.

So I rip the box open and start pulling stuff out, eagerly but with great care.

A framed picture of the professor and his wife.

An etui with a pair of glasses in it.

A pencil holder.

And a lot of books. Textbooks, to be more exact.

Alright, I think as I look up, my eyes sweeping over the other sixteen boxes. It would be downright weird if I found what I was looking for in the very first box.

So I dive in, determination in my every move.

I go through another box.

And another.

And another.

Until I get to the second to last and I stumble onto something shiny, a fist-sized rough crystal that feels weird to the touch. And as soon as I pull it out, it starts emitting this horribly annoying sound, like nails on chalkboard. It’s only once the sound starts becoming louder that I realize the crystal is sucking in and amplifying all the sounds in my room.

I shove it back into the box and I close it shut, breathing a sigh of relief as soon as the sound dies down.

But it’s only then that my mind processes it, what my eyes saw while I was closing it.

I open it back up and pull the shoe box out.

Hell yes, I think as I inspect the lid. Fuck elaborately carved wooden boxes, where people generally only keep the boring stuff, like jewelry. Even my mother, the Duchess Irina Nikolayevna Romanova, owns a shoe box in which she keeps her documents and some of her letters. Granted, it’s a designer shoe box, but still.

Eagerly, I take the lid off, my mouth instantly cracking into a grin. Letters.

Bingo.

I start going through them like there’s no tomorrow.

A letter from a girl who seemed to have been a high-school sweetheart, judging by the hearts dotting the Is.

A letter of acceptance into Grimm Academy.

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