Page 55 of Crown of Wings and Whispers

“I should have dipped it again before we left civilization,” I said, and opened my hand. Hank looked pretty bad, like a round snake trying to slough off its skin. “My grandma tried to pass it down to my mother, but she wouldn’t take it. She wouldn’t even talk about it. Thought her mother was…insane. So Grandma gave it to me. She warned me never to touch it with my bare hands, so I haven’t—except for once, and I won’t do that again.”

I couldn’t tell if he was listening, his attention was so fixed on Hank. I lifted the edges of the handkerchief and lifted it off my hand to offer it to him.

Hank lost his mind. His painful screeching nearly made me drop him, and I pulled the bundle back.

Still wincing, Griffon shook his head. “All right. We know not to try that again.”

I held it in my palm again and moved it close so Griffon could get a good look, prepared for another screech. But Hank didn’t seem to mind.

Griffon blinked, surprised. “It’s the Pleiades.”

“I guess so. One of the Culloden Highlanders is married to a gemologist. She was the first one to point it out. She thought Hank must be tens of thousands of years old to have formed around the stones.”

“And the gold? Did she have anything to say about that?”

I shook my head. “There were a few times, when I was freezing and hungry in my apartment in Idaho, that I considered taking it to a pawn shop. I thought the gold was at least worth me not starving to death. But Hank hates being left behind. When…I was abducted, I had hidden him, buried him in the ground. Boy, was he pissed. Hissed and hissed in my mind until I finally went back to get him.”

“This is the hissing Orion heard.”

“Yes, but he’d never hissed at anyone before. Ever. My grandmother gave him to me when I was fifteen, just before she died. In twenty years, he’s never made a peep except when he thought I was trying to get rid of him. Now, he’s hissed at Orion, growled in Moire’s Embrace, and screeched at you. I wouldn’t be surprised if he started talking next.”

“A talking pet rock. Wouldn’t that be a neat trick?”

“Coming from a guy who can sprout wings, that’s saying something.”

Griffon leaned closer to Hank. “Hello, Hank.”

We both waited, but nothing happened.

Griffon leaned back. “Can you tell me what happened when you did touch it?”

I drew in a deep breath and forced myself to revisit the memory. I’d tried so very hard and for so very long to never look at it head on. Just touching on it gave me the shivers and I shook it out of my head again. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

I wrapped my fist around Hank and the cotton and leaned back. Griffon’s arm snaked around my shoulders, and he pulled me closer. We sat like that while we watched the very late dawn breaking on the other side of the door. It was an odd glow that started, then stopped and held instead of growing brighter.

“Maybe I’m not DeNoy,” I said, putting words to thoughts I’d been toying with since I’d opened that note from the Grandfather. “Maybe it’s just Hank. And if I never touch him, if no one ever touches him, then there’s no danger.”

“Maybe,” he said, only patronizing me.

“But that wouldn’t explain why Orion is so interested in me. He never asked if I had a star stone.”

“And if it were only stones that interested him, he would have taken the ones in Daphne’s room.”

“They hissed at me, you know, the first time I went in the room.”

“Then they, too, recognized you as DeNoy.”

“Yeah. And I knew, somehow, they wanted me to touch them. They stopped hissing when I said, aloud, that it wasn’t going to happen.”

“And the difference between them and Hank is—”

“The gems have been removed, and they had no gold.”

“Daphne mentioned gold a few times but never elaborated. Maybe it drove her mad that she never found a stone with it.” He faced the window again. “I do believe we’re burning daylight.”

“That’s it? That’s all we get?”

“This is why everyone in Finland needs mega doses of Vitamin D. It’s December. We’ll have about four hours of decent visibility a day. We don’t want to waste it.”

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