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I thumbed my screen, pulling the notifications bar down farther and checked the dates. My ears rang when I saw how much time had gone by. It felt like maybe only a couple of weeks had passed. It was the strangest feeling seeing that it had been two whole months.

The text from Matilda came like two or three days after I missed a couple shifts. Whatever, good riddance.

That one message from my old job didn’t surprise me at all, however Vance’s text saying he married some girl and moved to California did. Good for Vance, that he found his match. I knew I couldn’t respond to either of them. I was tempted to log in to my email, but I didn’t do that either. Was I legally declared dead? Would anyone know at all that I was gone?

And the greater question—did I even care? No, not at all. I got to travel to alternate dimensions, talk to crows, and fight off Fae. I was more than pleased with my deceased status. I couldn’t have asked for anything better than what I was doing, right now.

Kiam appeared in front of me, startling me enough so that I dropped the device on the floor. I kicked it under the table.

He had a shovel resting against his shoulder. “What’s that for? Gonna dig another hole for me to fall into?” I asked.

“That can be arranged but I thought we’d go looking for your grandfather’s jewelry.”

His sense of humor was so dry sometimes. “I think I’m all set with falling into holes,” I said.

Kiam led the way and we walked out the back door. This time, the opening in the barrier wall was there, the one I’d seen that one time, in my dreams. “This is actually always here, isn’t it?” I asked, dragging my fingers along the brick as we passed through.

“It is,” he answered.

Silently, we walked through the woods, with me following behind Kiam. His steps were sure, like he knew exactly where we were going. Every now and then, a murder of crows would light in the trees, landing on branches and cawing at us before flapping their wings and taking off somewhere ahead.

“How far are we going?” I asked, catching a branch with my elbow. I had missed the thick New England woods.

He glanced over his shoulder at me. “As far as we need to. I’m following your DNA.”

I stumbled over a tree root and grabbed his arm before I fell. “What do you mean? You mean you can sense where it is?” The thought that he could pick out my dead family member’s cells from my blood was insane to me. But then again, I wasn’t a vampire.

“Yes.” He stopped and looked right to left and started walking forward again.

“Damn it. I should have told you what I was doing out in these woods right off the jump,” I muttered. “Shit if only I knew.”

It must have been a couple of miles that we walked but eventually we stopped. My own investigation had never taken me this far, but I’d come close. Of course, it was a corner of my mapped-out grid that I’d assumed wasn’t promising.

Kiam lowered the shovel and stared at the rock and leaf covered ground. There was a large chunk of white quartz with green moss covering half of it, and some disintegrating tree limbs blocking the dirt below.

“You think it's here?” I asked, kicking at the soft, crumbling wood.

I knelt beside the rock and tried to push it over, but it was too large, and I switched to trying to move the rotting wood away. “Brittney,” Kiam said softly, “get out of the way.”

Wiping my hands on my pants, I did just that and watched as he effortlessly cleared the stubborn quartz and other debris. Then he began digging, but he didn’t have to shovel much at all. A glittering strand of gold caught on the edge of the shovel, and I jumped for it, grabbing it out of the air before he could even present it to me.

“Holy shit holy shit holy shit,” I mumbled over and over. It wasn‘t until I nearly went blind that I realized I was crying.

All these years of searching and never finding, and now I held it in my hand. The feeling was indescribable—the relief, the sentiment, and just how much I missed my grandpa washed over me in waves. My body ran hot, and then it ran cold, and then Kiam placed the wedding ring on my hand, tucking it onto my finger.

I wiped my eyes and stared at the band, my mind going backwards in time to when I was a little girl, sitting on his lap, twisting the piece of jewelry in circles while he did his best to dump Nerds candy in my mouth. He’d try to squeeze the box so it wouldn’t make the obnoxious shaking sound and fail every time. I’d sit there like a baby bird waiting for a worm, and my mother would, obviously, be alerted to the racket and start lecturing grandpa about food dyes and environmental harm to the icebergs.

“I can size the ring so it fits you, and we can make something with the leftover metal,” Kiam said, lowering himself beside me.

Tucking myself against his chest, I nodded my head. “Thank you so much. Thank you for this.” My heart felt like it was going to blast into a million pieces. “I don’t even know what to say.”

Kiam tilted my chin up and planted a kiss on my forehead. “You are welcome. I’m more than happy to do this for you.” He looked me in the eye. “I want your help with something when we get back.”

I used his shoulders to push myself up, and rubbed my sleeve over my cheeks, removing the rest of the dampness. “Okay, sure, of course.” My head was still swimming with the magnitude of what had just happened.

Even though the chain was dirty, I moved my hair and gestured for Kiam to fasten it around my neck. “What are we going to do?” I asked.

His eyes gleamed. “You’re going to love it.”