“Sometimes, I do feel bad about it. Hansa and Jax would like nothing more than to have a child of their own. Chances are they’re going to adopt soon, but I know it’s killing Hansa that she can’t give Jax a baby with his bloodline.”
“Well, bloodlines matter, but they shouldn’t dictate anyone’s happiness,” I replied, finding a nook between the floorboards. Sticking my finger into it, I quickly assessed that there was something underneath. A space of some kind. We had insulation material under the hardwood in every treehouse; this gap wasn’t supposed to be here.
“I absolutely agree. Hansa knows that too, but she’s more… old school, I guess. Remember the Red Tribe and the pride she and Anjani took in the Gorria name?” Kailani giggled.
I wanted to say yes, but I was struggling with the nook. “Can you help me with the bed? There’s something under it.”
“Sure.” In an instant, Kailani had pushed the bed aside to reveal the floor beneath. I found the nook again, now visible under the warm light from the ceiling fixture. “Whoa…” she said.
“My thoughts exactly,” I replied.
With the bed out of the way, I was able to pry up the floorboard without difficulty. “That came off easy,” Kailani murmured, her brow furrowed. The second one was just as easy to dislodge. Moments later, we could see the hidden storage space where insulation material had once been.
“No wonder they missed this during the first sweep,” I said. “It’s well concealed.”
“What the hell is that?” Kailani asked, leaning closer to get a better look.
I shoved both hands into the dark space and took out a square box made of polished, shiny metal. It didn’t look like anything familiar or GASP-issued. The design felt foreign. The metal itself struck me as odd. I couldn’t make any sense of it.
“It’s not from The Shade,” Kailani breathed, slowly reaching a hand to touch the lid. It had a small round lime green button on the side. “I can… feel it.”
“Magic?” I asked.
She shook her head slowly. “Maybe. But it’s not what I feel. It’s just… ugh, it’s hard to explain. The Word tingles inside me, whispering ‘foreign’ over and over, and I think it’s about the box. It’s not from here.”
“Could it have been put here by Isabelle’s clone?” I wondered aloud, then set the box on the floor and pressed the lime green button. It seemed like the only way to open it. I excluded the possibility of a trap. Had Isabelle’s doppelganger wanted to hurt us with this thing, it would’ve been much easier to find. No, this was meant to remain hidden. The lid popped open with a low hiss. Inside, there were dozens of small cubes, no more than one inch wide on every side.
“Maybe,” Kailani mumbled, her eyes widening as she took one of the cubes and carefully weighed it in her hand. “This weighs barely anything. This isn’t our tech. Not our magic. Not of the Supernatural Dimension or the In-Between. The Word is whispering for a reason…”
“Why would Isabelle’s clone have kept this here?”
“I don’t know. But if we figure out what these things do, I’m certain we’ll find the answer to that question and more,” the witch said, giving me a determined look. For a second, I was hypnotized by the specks of gold lining her white irises—the mark of a swamp witch, a servant of the Word.
We’d found something otherworldly. Something that belonged to our enemy. While there wasn’t much I could do for my son or the others who had gone missing—and since no new shimmering portals had opened lately—I knew this was the one lead I could follow to maybe get some answers.
Information was the thing we most desperately needed, and these strange silvery boxes could give us that. My fingers trembled slightly. Maybe we were one step closer to the truth.
Sofia
The additional sweep of Draven and Serena’s house did not reveal anything new, with the exception of this weird silvery box filled with weird silvery cubes. We had taken it back to the Great Dome and now stood staring at this object dominating the center of our council table. Its reflection lingered on the glass, and we struggled to find words as we tried to peel our eyes away from it.
“And here I was, thinking today might be devoid of significant progress,” Phoenix muttered, breaking the silence. Derek had summoned him back from his field work with the Daughters so he could be here for this. Of all the Shadians currently on the island, our great-grandson was the most equipped to study this new piece of tech.
Phoenix ran his fingers along the edge of the box, then pressed the delicate lime green button. The lid popped open, revealing the small cubes inside. “Grandma Sofia and Kale were lucky to find this. I sanction every new piece of tech that comes out of GASP’s engineering corps, and I’ve never seen this before.”
“It has to be property of Isabelle’s clone,” Kailani added. “The cubes are much different than what Claudia’s double took from her, though. Bigger. The design varies, too. The material… these are something else, I’m sure of it.”
“The irony being that we don’t know what that other tiny cube thing was, either,” Phoenix let out a dry chuckle. “But you’re right. These things are definitely different.”
Draven and Serena were sitting down, clearly baffled by this recent development. “For two months, those things must’ve been up in her room, hidden beneath the floorboards,” the Druid mused.
“I still can’t wrap my head around the fact that our daughter has been gone for those two months,” Serena spat, her patience worn thin and her resolve fractured. I
