Page 190 of A Winding Wave of Magic
She turned to me and, with substantial effort, ignored the mess of crumbs left on her table. “I think,” she said carefully,“that Penny’s wishes need to be amended. It’s time to open that box you’ve been hiding, Cassandra, and find out what we’re dealing with.”
I frowned. I thought I’d kept the thing well hidden since arriving. No one had said a thing.
Jonathan, on the other hand, wasn’t quite so reticent.
“The box?” Jonathan croaked. He turned to me, quickly enough that I leaned backward. “I thought we agreed to leave it in Boston.”
I frowned. “No,yousaid we should leave it there. I never said I did.”
“So you mean that— Penny’s secret—theSecret she was sworn to keep from the Council and the entire fae community—was carried across the Atlantic straight into the waiting hands of every powerful magical creature in the Western World? Gods in fucking heaven, Cassandra! All along I thought it was just youthat made every bloody fae in Dublin turn and sniff.” Jonathan fell onto a stool with a thump and slapped his hand against his forehead. “How could I have been so stupid?”
“Because you were a fool falling for your mate,” Caitlin snapped.
Both of us glared at her.
Robbie frowned. “Have I missed something?”
“She knows, Rob,” Jonathan spoke through his teeth.
“Ah. Well. That’s out, then.”
“I knew what she was carrying in that bag the minute she stepped onto our property, and so did Rob,” Caitlin continued.“I keep telling you, Jonny, you need to take a few steps back. You won’t be able to protect her if she’s all you can see.”
Robbie reached over with a brief pat on his friend’s shoulder. “Don’t worry, Jon. We’ve all been there. There’s a reason they say love is blind.”
“We’re not in love!” Jonathan and I both exclaimed in unison.
Robbie just patted Jonathan again, causing him to huff.
Jonathan looked up at me, fierce determination written across his normally stoic features. “You can’t keep things like this from me. I’m here to help you, but I need to know everything.”
I bristled. “Like you’ve told everything to me? Oh, wait, I think you’ve confused that with stalking, dictating, and keeping me in the dark. And that goes for all of you!” I stared at the three of them, each of whom wore varying levels of guilt on their faces. “I’m not a servant or invalid. If you knew people other than Caleb Lynch were looking for me, you should have told me. This ismylife. I was completely blindsided by that Fallon person’s appearance, but none of you seemed surprised. Weallneed to know what’s happening if we’re going to work together. Everyone got that?”
First Robbie, then Caitlin, and finally Jonathan all nodded.
“All right, then,” I said as I marched to stand next to Caitlin. “Let’s find out what’s inside that stupid package. Maybe if the Council wants it so badly, they can just have it.”
Instead of leadingthem back to Gran’s cottage, I took them upstairs to my old room in the attic. I hadn’t dared to bring the box with me, fearing the risk of leaving such a valuable thing in a house that had no locks, whereas Rob and Caitlin both kept their home fortified with charms. It had seemed safer with the Connellys, buried in a chest of moth-eaten blankets that looked like they hadn’t been touched in years.
“It was a good instinct,” Caitlin confirmed dryly as I tugged the wooden chest from beneath the nicely made bed.“Although I would have appreciated being asked to harbor a lost magical object that’s been sought for millennia and for which my best friend was murdered.”
Though her words were meant lightly, the weight of them fell like rocks.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “You’re right. Weallneed to be more transparent with each other, don’t we?”
I rifled through the chest again, tearing out the blankets with abandon and finding only unvarnished wood at the bottom of the chest.
“I—I don’t understand,” I stuttered. “It was here. Who would have taken it?” I turned to everyone else, my heart full of dread. “Oh gods, I’ve made a horrible, horrible mistake, haven’t I?”
Robbie stepped forward kindly and put a hand on my shoulder. A flood of reassurance filtered through my system before he removed it. “You did,” he confirmed. “But since Ifigured it out anyway, it wasn’t hard to fix. Now, then, step aside, will you?”
I scooted back obediently and watched Robbie’s eyes flash again while he muttered something in Irish. When he was finished, his eyes softened back to their normal warm brown, and he smiled at me. “All right. Go ahead and look.”
I found the box sitting at the bottom corner of the chest as if it hadn’t been touched, still wrapped in its original cardboard,from the chest.
“It wouldn’t have hidden it permanently,” he admitted with a humble shrug. “And certainly not from truly prying eyes. But a disguising spell can be managed when a visitor like Fallon comes to call.”
I pulled the sleeves of my sweater over my hands, then took a deep breath, lifted the box from the chest, and set it on the bed in front of all of us.
