Page 98 of Awry
I drop the shovel, not wanting to press my luck and end up damaging the mausoleum.Then I hunker down to get my fingers into the gap I’ve created.Another firm yank gets it open enough to peer inside with the help of the light on my phone.
A simple metal urn and a narrow wooden box occupy the space within the foundation stones.I retrieve the latched box.An inlay of various woods, reminiscent of the armoire in my aunt’s turret office, decorates its top.The box opens without resistance, to reveal a knife set on a black velvet lining.It’s double edged and wickedly pointed, with a wood-inlay handle that matches the top of the box.
I don’t have to touch it to know that it’s filthy with dire-wrought essence.It shimmers with that essence, though it should have dulled and corroded with age.
The blade is also stained.With old blood.
The implications of it not being wiped clean and interred with the ashes in the urn are instantly clear to me.I lean forward to try to get a better look at the urn, without touching it.But its slightly tarnished metal has no design or name carved into it.
Who would be interred in the Gage family plot, but also hidden away like this?And with the knife that was likely used to murder them?
I have even less idea why Mack would have been digging up this interment.Unless he was trying to get the knife.Because it killed whoever’s ashes are in the urn, and the evidence of a decades-old murder needed to be … what?Hidden somewhere else?Destroyed?Who would ever have found it here?
The knife, even after decades, still seethes with twisted essence.So perhaps Mack needed a dire-wrought blade for some reason?Paired with the idea that Ingrid was likely trying to scry for my aunt, that made more sense.Harlee had said something about a teleportation spell … making it an easy guess that Ingrid was trying to teleport to my aunt.And did she need this knife to do so?For what?Perhaps the spell kept failing … or …
Was the knife meant to be used against whoever was powerful enough to hold my aunt?
I’ve been awake for less than an hour, and my head is already aching.I’m trying to put mismatched pieces of a puzzle together.
Maybe Mack murdered someone years ago, then hid the evidence and just randomly decided to destroy it.The timing might mean nothing.
Except … the design of the knife hilt, matching that of the top of the box, seems at utter odds with the malignant intent I can feel from the blade itself.
I’ve uncovered another fucking mystery that might be completely irrelevant.As all mysteries truly are to me— because the past doesn’t matter.
My aunt is dead.I am the Conduit.Thewhydoesn’t really factor in.Thewhyis a petty human concern.Selfish, really.Because I have other responsibilities in the Now.To the fucking universe.
Wanting to put everything back the way I found it, though a bit better hidden, I grab the lid of the box.And a piece of the velvet lining the inside flaps forward, revealing the edge of a black-and-white photograph.
I tug it free, staring down at a photo of my aunt surrounded by three huge shifters.Their size gives that away.They’re on the beach, the craggy bluff and roaring surf occupying the distant background.The photo is aged, but not otherwise damaged.If it’s been protected by any magecraft, I can’t feel it.Though that isn’t unusual.
My aunt looks to be in her midtwenties, as always.The casual clothing in the photo —her plain sundress, the shifters’ sweaters and jeans— are difficult to date accurately.
My hand is trembling as I flip the photo over.My aunt’s distinctive handwriting fills the back:
Oso, Ward, Disa, and Ari.Summer 1989.
The photo was taken thirty-four years ago.Almost five years before I was born.I don’t know any of these men or what they meant to my aunt.Except that the ashes of one of them has been interred with the knife likely used to kill him.
I put the top on the box and tuck it into the niche.Then I close it all back up, dirt included.I nearly hurt myself shoving the marble urn back into place.
I keep the photo, even though it isn’t mine to collect.
I decideto make a trek down the driveway before heading back into the house.I’ve already walked as much of the property as I can manage in a couple of hours, including checking out the cottage in the south woods — empty as reported — and the two other gravesites where those not of the immediate Gage bloodline are buried.
I’ve found no fresh graves or other recently disturbed interments at the other sites.But a trickle of memories is now filtering back to me of the combat mage missing from the property.I remember a male with light-blond hair and tanned skin.Laugh lines radiating from light-brown eyes.
It bothers me that it’s taken walking through the cottage— Devlin’s claimed space — for those memories to surface.And I’m left wondering why that is, alongside still wondering why he didn’t accompany my aunt and me on our trips.My ‘training’ often involved situations that my aunt’s combat mage should have … would have wanted to … shield her from.
I shove the thoughts away.Because again, the past is not my domain.But I’m aware that I’m going to be forced to fully examine those thoughts, and likely soon.
For me, I don’t think ignorance is going to be bliss.
As I near the end of the drive, I see the two vehicles parked on the grassy edge of the road on either side of the gate.Despite the chill of the intermittent mist between sunny breaks, Cayley is leaning against the back of the Corvette, watching as I approach.She’s got two insulated mugs in her hands.Waiting for me to appear.
The second vehicle is a massive beast of an SUV.Black on black, with deeply tinted windows.For anyone else, those windows would be a fineable offense.In Cascadia, at least.
But not for the Authority.
