“Good afternoon, Helena,” he said. “Congratulations on the house remodel. It’s a handsome estate. I just need to search it, if you don’t mind, by order of the council. We have reason to suspect there is a dark artifact in the house, and I’m sure you don’t want to sell it like that.”
“Do you have a search warrant?”
“We’re family,” he said.
“Yes, but…it’s still my house.”
“Helena, don’t be silly. You don’t want to sell the house with a dark artifact inside of it! Piers, go on, I’ll talk to her.”
“You can’t just treat me like a kid because we’re ‘family’,” I said. “This is my house. I demand the respect of proper legal proceedings.”
“You’re hiding something,” Piers said. “Are you and Harris in cahoots? Did he ask you to get something for him?”
“Harris has absolutely nothing to do with my work.” Damn. Couldn’t even give me credit for my own schemes. Piers had to suggest some dude was behind it.
“Hel, we’re coming in. I have no idea why you’re being stubborn except for the sake of being stubborn. This thing is dangerous and the council will dispose of it properly,” Mother said. Piers started to walk toward the house.
Oh god oh god. I didn’t know what to do now. He was going to find the Arcana and the thingie. I’d been keeping them under my airbed, which was not much of a hiding place, but it took at least an hour to set up and deconstruct a really solid ward, and since I’d been trying to study the books, I couldn’t bind them up. If I protested too much, they would know I was trying to hide something. And if I didn’t protest? They would waltz right in and take my stuff.
Might as well protest, just in case I was buying time for Byron to try to hide the books. I ran in front of them and flung out my arms. “So this is how you treat me when you come to visit? You never visit, Mother. I’ve worked on eighteen other houses and you never visited any of those. So this tells me that you only showed up with Piers so you could try and subdue me. But family is a two-way street and if you’re blocking off your lane, I’m blocking off mine. You already proved that you’d disown Harris.”
“I didn’t want to disown Harris, but he left the Ethereal wizards of his own choice and he entered into that scandalous marriage! That’s just the way society works. There are rules. All of you know that. If I stood by Harris, we would have lost everything else in the end. Your father would lose his position, I would lose mine, money would get tight, soon we’d have to sell Ladyswald…”
“I love houses,” I said. “But not as much as I would love my kids.”
“Helena,” Piers said, in a voice that sounded sort of dead to my ears. If Piers had a soul, he was trying to kill it off. “You and Harris have a lot in common, and I can see why you care about him. But I am not here for any family matters. Hash it out with your mother. I will search the house, by order of the council. If you want, I’ll give you the paperwork for filing a complaint that I searched without a warrant.”
He started walking. I followed him. I couldn’t hide my dread. Luckily I was already so sweaty and so annoyed at my mother, maybe no one would notice.
Not that it mattered. I wasn’t powerful enough to fight Piers, and he was a council member and my cousin, and he had my mother for backup.
Piers flicked out his wand and walked into the house, his wand hand twitching as he whispered, sensing for magic. As he crossed from the foyer to the parlor, I was clutching my cheeks with my hands.
“Helena, just tell Piers where it is,” Mother said. “I can tell something is bothering you.”
“You’re bothering me,” I said. Obviously, she knew the deal, but I wasn’t just going to roll over.
“Hmm…” Piers poked at the fireplace and tapped at the walls. He kept going, into the dining room.
What? He didn’t find it? I noticed then that the air mattress was askew. So one of the guys must have gotten the stuff out after all.
“This wallpaper is just splendid!” Mother couldn’t help but say.
“I know!” I couldn’t help but feel proud that I kept it.
But this brief moment of mother-daughter agreement was quickly ruined as Piers kept charging through the house, poking inside all the cabinets in the apothecary room before heading upstairs.
“Who is parked outside?” he asked me.
“Oh—my work crew,” I said. “They went to lunch in the van.” That was a nice, smooth lie but it wouldn’t hold up for long. Thank goodness the guys hadn’t set up beds. If Jake and Jasper could get the books smuggled deep in the forest, Piers would have a harder time sensing them, the same way I couldn’t find where Graham had hidden them.
Piers sensed the floorboard where I first found the piece of the box. “Something was here. Tell me, Helena.”
“I don’t know.”
“Yes, you do. Tell me.”
“The former owners must have taken it out or something!”
“You will speak no lies when I ask you a question…” He moved his wand toward my throat.
“No! Dispel!” I jumped back.
“Piers…” Mother looked unsure about Piers casting a truth-telling spell on me. “Helena might
