My hand shook as I lifted it to turn the handle, but it wouldn’t budge.
“It’s locked.” I glanced at Bair. “How do you know he’s in there?”
“Neighbors hadn’t heard from him in days and then looked in through the window. They got word to me as soon as they could, knowing Safiyya and I need to be quick to do the burial rites before the Citadel patrol found the body and burned it.” Bair frowned, trying to peer through the front window. “I’ll walk along the perimeter of the house to see if we can get in through another entrance.”
He left, making his way toward the back of the house, but I was still staring at the door. My fingers itched as soon as they’d felt the lock.
I could fix this problem easily, though Bair didn’t know that.
Finder of lost things. Revealer of secrets.
My mother’s voice whispered through me, urging me on, like a gentle breeze, lifting me up. I waited until Bair was out of sight, until I was sure he couldn’t see me and what I was about to do.
Don’t ever let them use your magic.
The memory of my mother slipped through my mind, one that I thought about too often. It was when my magic had first manifested, after my father had been executed. My Amma had been searching for my father’s last letter to her, desperately trying to find the final words he’d written to us before getting captured by the Citadel.
But no matter where she looked, she couldn’t locate the letter.
She sat on her knees on the kitchen floor and sobbed, clutching at the cold tiles. Seeing her like that, when she’d always been so calm, had unlocked something in me. Golden threads had burst through my fingers, pouring out of my hands and flooding our little house on the edge of Ginshal village. They culminated around a crack in the wall, beside the divan. My mother had stopped crying and sat back, stunned, as we watched tendrils of power coil from my fingers and surround us. Something tugged at me to follow them, leading me to where my father’s letter lay in the hidden space next to the threadbare divan.
It was that day that Amma had forbidden me from using my power around anyone else.
Don’t ever let them use your magic.
The soft voice of Mahira Nazir rose in my memories like one of the songs she collected. She knew what the Citadel would do with a power like that. I would be their puppet, finding fae relics for them until there were no more to be had.
After that day my mother and I experimented with my magic—finding out that I could unlock simple locks and reveal the answers to puzzles. It had limits—complex safes or heavy-duty locks wouldn’t budge. And I had to be in close proximity to something to find it. But after Amma left, I no longer practiced my magic in my dark bedroom.
Instead, I used it to find the relics the Citadel were so desperate to ship back to the Empire.
And now I would use my power to find the dead.
Bair was rustling around the house, looking for a way in. If we weren’t careful, we’d catch the notice of the patrols soon.
I hesitated for another second before making my decision and placing my palms flat to the wood door.
Power gathered to the surface, threading through my skin like the current of a river, golden threads feeding into the fabric of the metal lock until a small clink echoed in the night. And just like that, the lock clicked open, the door releasing with a giant sigh beneath my hands.
But once I had called on my magic, it wasn’t easy to pull it back. It kept running, like a bath tap left on, overflowing past the rim of the tub. It flooded through the gap in the open door, fine gold threads pushing out of me like a gilded web, and I staggered forward with a gasp. It had been too long since I’d last used it, and it was brimming to the surface, eager to be released. With no choice but to follow, I nudged the door to Ghassan’s crumbling stone house open. Something brushed at my hair and I jerked back with shock, my eyes darting above me to see a bundle of dried jimson weed and Malabar nut leaves hanging above the entrance. They were often used by the villagers of Ginshal to ward off witches and ghouls, preventing evil fae from entering. Luckily for me, I was human.
My feet pulled me through the doorway and into the main living area of the house.
The air was cold, and it smelled of trodden dirt. Not the fresh, earthy scent of new growth; this was the dirt that sat at the bottom of unused cellars and decrepit barns. And underneath that, the sweetness of decay had already begun to set in. The smell that promised something far worse than neglect.
The house was in disarray, with books dumped onto the floor and papers scattered everywhere. Clothes were shredded and dishes smashed.
I remembered Ghassan as a neat and quiet man. It didn’t fit him that his house would be like this, and I doubt he had done it himself. It looked like someone had been searching for something. Food perhaps? From the state of his house, it didn’t appear the sort to have any valuables.
The golden strands of my magic still threaded through the air, spiraling throughout the room and curving over something on the floor in the corner.
A body.
No, not just a body, but Ghassan. A man I had spoken with in the archives, shared lunch together, waved to at the end of a workday.
My stomach twisted with dark horror and bile rose to my throat.
I had known this man, and now I would have to bury him.
