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She shifted back to the obvious issue. “Why did you interrupt my work out?”
I adjusted my expression to my most blandly polite arrangement while holding the precious, ratty-looking notebook in front of my breasts. “Chronicler matter, Luna.”
“What sort of matter?” Marcella asked, knowing full well I could be bringing her everything from a routine filing to our featured train wreck of the week.
I tapped my fingertips on the notebook. “The journals my mother left for me. Didhetell you how I came to get them?”
“No. He was very circumspect with the details, and apparently MaryAnne knows something of it, but has declined to discuss it, citing a Chronicler matter. Haveyoucome to share this Chronicler matter with me?”
Practically felt her nipping my heels. “Jerron tried to hold Chronicler Anise of EarthSpine hostage because she refused to turn over an item she found in the archives to him. It is a Chronicler matter that requires the Chronicler to sort out.”
“So, why areyousharing this with me?”
“Oh, it’s something a dead Luna told me. She was there.”
Marcella gave me thethat sass is going to tan your asslook she had perfected. “What did Anise find?”
“The key to a safe deposit box that Luna Autumn had taken out shortly after her terminal diagnosis and prepaid it for twelve years.”
This had Marcella’s attention. She shifted her weight to one foot and crossed her arms, workout forgotten. “So, what was in the box? The notebooks?”
“No. Old crayon drawings and worksheets from when we were in grade school while SilverPaw was still in Alaska, plus a single old photo. Jerron was there with some wolves when the box got opened. Jerron was expecting something else.”
Marcella nodded. “Interesting. So the notebooks.”
“My Aunt Spring.She’sthe one who gave me the notebooks after I’d been taken prisoner. Apparently, Mom had given them to her after her diagnosis to keep safe and secret until I came for them. Mom knew I would.Thiscard was wedged into the journals.”
I passed Marcella the bright pink card and the notebook it’d come from. She held the card out at arm’s length like maybe that would change the words on it. Me? I’d read it a thousand times. A how-to guide on finding my wolf-of-silver. Where, what he’d look like, what he’d be like. All storms and snow and chess pieces and coins, in a city, no less. Literally namedSterling.
Marcella flicked the card shut, unmoved, but her scent troubled and annoyed. This had just been upgraded from standard mortal politics to Gaia’s Watching. “Interesting. Chess pieces. I remember you saying, at my table,he’s going to sacrifice the white queen, stop him. You had a vision at my table. You have Autumn’s gift.”
“No, nothing like her. Only a little more than most. It got stronger and more… obnoxious… since being mated.”
“What did you see in my table?”
“A chessboard. With a few pieces. End of the game. I saw a hand about to make a queen’s sacrifice, and we’d end up in checkmate.”
“Hetold mehehad played the queen’s sacrifice. Made no sense to me, but had an odd smell.”
“I’m sure he wasn’t smelling especially good at that moment.”
“I do not see, little wolf. Ismell. My visions are scents.”
The Moon’s Gift could manifest asscents? That was a new one, but no time to argue about it. Time to skulk through the underbrush and lure her to my way of thinking. “Most of the stuff she crammed into the journals were decoy items. To obscure thatthiswas hidden in the spine of one notebook. I’m surethisis what Jerron was actually looking for.”
With hesitation, I handed over the index card that had the key taped to it.
She studied it. “You didn’t go back for it.”
My heart started to ache. “We couldn’t go back. He told me we’d go back… later.”
“Sensible. Have you confirmed if the box is still there?”
“No. Too many wolves live in Fairbanks. I might tip one of them off.”
Marcella flicked the index card back and forth against her palm, lips tight and pinched. “So you want to go get it, even though you have no idea what’s in it.”
“Isn’t it enough she was covering her trail? The box in Montana was a decoy. The key to the real box went to her sister. And Spring had thought I’d come looking for information on my mother. She thought I’d come to ask about an old dead pack named BlizzardFall. When she realized I had no idea, she let it go.”
