Page 90 of Soul of Shadow
“Figuring out how to get into an ancient god’s temple doesn’t earn you extra points on the SATs,” Mason reminded her, but Abigail only stuck out her tongue.
Together, the six of them gathered around the pedestal and watched as it shook. Charlie lifted the vätte from the floor and placed him on her shoulder so he could have a better view. Atop the pedestal, the snakes carved into its surface began to move. To slither and slide, as if the carvings in the rock were living things. As their bodies moved, they seemed to pull open the top of the stone platform. Charlie, Mason, Abigail, and the Vikings stared in wonder as a low rumble sounded from the platform.
Two panels slid open on its surface. The one to the right was tiny, maybe an inch across, and had been covering a small keyhole set into the stone. The one on the left was much larger. It slid open to reveal a deep hole from which an object began to rise, like a spaceship in a sci-fi movie.
The object was small and box shaped, made of glossy wood that stood out against the dark stone of the tunnel. As it rose to the surface, Charlie saw that its lid was covered in complex geometric patterns: diamonds, triangles, flowers, crosses. The shapes were arranged in long stripes that formed no obvious pattern. The sides, too, were all distinct, covered in different shapes and designs.
Charlie recognized the object immediately.
At the same time, she and Abigail whispered, “It’s a Japanese puzzle box.”
They looked at each other in surprise.
“How do you know that?” Charlie asked.
“Me?” said Abigail, sounding slightly offended. “I wasobsessedwith puzzles growing up. I solved the Rubik’s cube for the first time when I was like, five, and my dad and I would always do the morning crossword at the kitchen table in our New York apartment. As I got older, he started bringing home more and more elaborate shit for me to solve. We made a game out of it. Like, what’s the most obscure puzzle he could find online, and how long would it take me to figure it out. We dideverything.But the himitsu-bako—the Japanese puzzle box—that was always my favorite.”
She raised an eyebrow. “How doyouknow what it is?”
“The himitsu-bako is classic sleight of hand,” said Charlie. “The sliding panels, the magnets, the hidden compartments…” She shrugged. “It’s like a tiny version of a magician’s stage.”
“I didn’t understand ninety percent of what came out of your mouths just now,” said Mason, “but it sounds like, between the two of you nerds, we should have no problem solving this box thing? And getting the key that is presumably inside?”
Charlie and Abigail looked at each other again. Together, their mouths spread slowly into identical grins of mischief.
“Oh, yeah,” said Abigail, reaching for the puzzle box. “We’ve got this.”
She picked it up, turning it over once in her hands. “Right. So. To start, you look for any gaps or seams in the wood that indicate sliding panels.”
“There.” Charlie pointed at the side of the box to a spot that, to the untrained eye, would look like a smooth, unbroken square inlaid with repeating stars. Half an inch down from the box’s lid, however, there was a subtle line in the wood. “Try that.”
Abigail pressed her thumb to the wood and pushed it to the right. Like magic, a section of the wood slid open.
She glanced up at Charlie. Their grins grew.
And they were off.
Abigail found a latch on the other side of the box. Charlie found a section of wood that could be pushed in like a button. They worked in sync, bouncing ideas off each other, marking panels to come back to if they couldn’t be opened yet. Charlie knew she shouldn’t be having fun, that it was wrong to enjoy herself when their best friend was in grave danger, probably just beyond that wall, but she couldn’t help it. It felt good, working together like this with Abigail. Combining Charlie’s skill at sleight of hand with Abigail’s brilliant mind.
They had the box open in under five minutes—exceptionally fast for a himitsu-bako with over twenty steps. When Abigail triggered the final lever, a drawer slid out of the box, revealing a small golden key with a green tassel.
“Ta-da!” said Abigail, picking up the key and waving it by its tassel. “Easy peasy.” She winked, then stuck the key into the keyhole and turned it to the right.
Charlie felt a little better knowing that Abigail had clearly been enjoying herself as well.
The tunnel began to rumble. Charlie, Mason, and Abigail exchanged looks that were two parts terror, one part excitement. The Vikings stared straight forward, weapons held at the ready. The vätte tensed on Charlie’s shoulder. If she could read his mind, she guessed that she would find him preparing himself to turn back into that crazy gremlin Tasmanian Devil, in case things went sideways. The dead-end wall groaned until, at last, a crack appeared at its center. Like a sideways mouth drawing slowly open, the two halves of stone wall rumbled apart, moving inch by inch until the crack became a slit, andthe slit became a skinny opening, and the skinny opening became—
Elias.
He stood on the other side of the doorway. A body made of shadow, golden storm clouds for eyes, eerie smile pointed directly at them. Charlie’s heart seized in her chest. After everything he had done—lying, using her, hiding that Sophie was still alive, setting draugar on her—she would have thought that all she would feel looking at him was hatred. Pure, unbridled loathing, perhaps even a drive to violence.
And those feelings were there. The anger, the hatred, the desire to punch him straight through his intangible face—it was all there.
But there was something else, too. A sort of tug. A yearning. A thickness in the air between them, as if the tunnel were filled with invisible smoke. It clogged her throat, her chest, the base of her stomach. It should have made her sick.
But if she were being honest, it made her feel exactly the opposite.
“Hello, Charlotte,” he said. “Welcome to the beginning of the end.”
