I throw my entire weight against the cast-iron barrier. I push and I push and I push. Until there is the tiniest fraction of give.
Excited, Rafe and I look at each other.
He pounds some more.
Then he pries while I shove, so hard I’m working up a sweat.
We don’t stop until a crackle splits through the chamber.
The upper hinge snaps. The door shifts forward at an awkward angle. Rafe pulls me back and we watch with bated breath as the bottom hinge follows suit. Metal screams against stone and thedoor slams to the ground, echoing violently through the antechamber.
A cloud of dust billows around us.
I cough and wave my hands and when it settles, the door lies on the stone floor.
Rafe takes one of the torches.
I take the other.
He steps over the fallen door and I follow him inside.
The crypt is exactly how Jude and I left it, with the portrait, the family tree, the once-locked tome from Evermore Books on the stone table at the far end. Along with the scroll with the prophecy about Dante and Seraphina. The photographs of Rafe from different decades. And several of Ezra’s journals.
Rafe bypasses the coffin in the center of the room. He slots his torch into one of the scones and stares at the portrait he had in his possession for so long.
Ezra’s Obsession.
A painting of me.
Completed in 1807.
“I should have known as soon as I saw you,” he says, “that your presence in this town, at this moment in time, wasmeaningful. I guess you’re right, Selah.” He looks at me, firelight dancing along his profile. “I do seem to underestimate you.”
He picks up the black and white photographs of himself—frozen in time, just as he is now. Then he thumbs through one of Ezra’s journals. “Of all my dear nephews, Jude is most like him.” He speaks quietly, like he’s talking more to himself than me.
Still, I can’t help but inquire, “Do you miss him?”
Rafe looks at me over his shoulder.
For a second, there is a flash of vulnerability—the tiniest hint of pain—like maybe he does. But then his expression goes cold and uncaring. “I miss tormenting him. But I suppose I got my fill with his descendants.”
“Is that what you plan to do—torment Jude?”
“I think you’re doing that just fine without my help.” With a biting smile, he takes the torch from my hand and turns to the coffin behind us. “What do we have here?”
I pull it open and there is the jewelry box, still inside. I lift the domed lid, move aside the tray with the charred silver husk that was once Seraphina’s locket, and find them underneath. I wasn’t sure if they would be here. I didn’t know if Lainey would leave them behind. But they are here indeed—the onyx and the pearl—gleaming in the torchlight.
With trembling fingers, I reach inside thejewelry box to pick up the onyx, something I have done before. Not long ago, while sitting in the center of Jude’s bed, I held the onyx in my hand, as well as the pearl and the ruby. Nothing happened then. The stones seemed stripped of their powers.
But now?
Warmth spread through my palm and skitters up my wrist, all too reminiscent of the plant. Reflexively, I try to let go. But I can’t open my hand and my lacerations burn. I release a strangled cry as the onyx starts to glow.
Fear swirls with excitement, because this is it.
A rift will open.
I know it.
