Page 14

I opened the lid and the scent of burned chemicals hit me. The inside of the reliquary was black, and the foam I'd packed the silver piece in was gone. I used a pair of tweezers to pick up the silver piece and set it on a cleaning pad. After brushing out the inside, I wiped it with a clean cloth and found the silver solid. I set the reliquary aside.

“It must the piece,” I whispered.

I brushed the soot from the silver and revealed Tristan's sigil. It looked the same as before. As soon as I saw it, I remembered I wanted to ask him why it was there. But as I opened my mouth to speak, I turned the piece around. And stared.

The back of the silver piece had been smooth and featureless that morning, but now there were letters carved into the metal, forming a word. I swiveled the arm of my magnifying glass to bring it over the piece, and turned on its light. The letters formed a word, but I didn't recognize the language.

“Tristan, can you read this?” I stepped aside.

He didn't move, just stared down at the piece, his face pale.

“What does it say?” I nudged him. “Tristan!”

“I can't tell you.”

“What? Why not?”

“It's too dangerous. I'm sorry, Destiny. All I can say is that it shouldn't be there.”

I didn't argue with him. I couldn't. Because he looked terrified. Tristan's hand hovered near the silver and then drew back. I picked it up and, the breath rushed out of Tristan as he sagged. Leaving him to recover, I took the silver piece with me to fetch a piece of foam and a new protective cloth. Working quickly, I cut a new case for the silver piece, set it in the reliquary, and wrapped the reliquary in the clean cloth. When I looked up at him, he was hunched and staring at the floor.

I took Tristan's hand, and he flinched. Then he moved his stare to our clasped hands.

“Hey!” I squeezed him. “Look at me.”

Tristan looked up and met my gaze.

“You're not alone,” I said. “Someone damaged that reliquary on purpose. They knew to target the repair so I'd have to remove it and find the silver piece. Whatever this is, I'm a part of it now.”

“If you're right, and someone deliberately put this in your hands, we have more to worry about than Heartbreak drawing me to you.” He scowled at me. “Destiny, this could get dangerous and—”

“Then you tell me what we need to do, and I listen. I'll follow your lead. No arguments.” I held up a hand before he could answer. “That's the deal. You don't get to disappear on me again, and I don't get to be reckless just because I'm curious. Agreed?”

“And your shields?”

“I keep it up around you.”

Tristan searched my eyes, his lighting with hope. Finally he exhaled, and some of the tension eased from his shoulders. “Agreed.”

“Good. Now I'm going to pull the acquisition file. I want to know who sent this to me.”

I locked the reliquary in the cabinet before I fetched my work laptop. I sat at my worktable and pulled up the Smithsonian's records for the reliquary while Tristan moved to stand beside me. It was found at Stylos Monastery during an archaeological escavation in 1939. A private collector named Amos Wexford purchased the reliquary from a Beirut antiquities dealer in 1962. Sold in 1978 to a Swiss estate belonging to Countess Odile Varga. Donated in 2003 to a foundation registered in Liechtenstein, then quietly transferred to the Smithsonian last year anonymously. It was a short list for such an old item.

“I'd say the anonymous donor is the red flag, but let's look into the others anyway. Amos Wexford.” I searched genealogy records, obituaries, and auction archives. Nothing. No birth certificate, no death certificate, and no photographs. “This man doesn't exist.”

“Keep looking.” Tristan leaned over my shoulder, as focused as a bloodhound on a scent.

Countess Odile Varga had died in a car accident outside Geneva in 1959. Nineteen years before she supposedly bought the reliquary from a man who didn't exist.

I stared at the obituary photograph of a stern-faced woman wearing pearls. “She died before the transaction occurred.”

“Of course, she did.” Tristan straightened, arms crossed, the fluorescent light catching the gold in his hair. “It's a trick as old as forgery itself. Build a paper trail of dead people. Ghosts don't argue with provenance, and a collector, especially a museum, isn't going to look too closely. Even if they did, what could they do about it? Reject the piece because they don't know where it came from? That's not going to happen.”

“That's clever.” I hated how impressed I sounded.

“It's efficient.” He crouched beside me, and his arm pressed against my thigh, his worry about touching me gone. “Someone with resources built a history sturdy enough to survive a minimal inspection and impossible to track. This is looking worse and worse.”

“They really didn't want to be found.”