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“What is it?” Henri asked them. “What’s inside it?”
Demetrius shook his head. Marcella took the box back and lifted the pendant out of it, turning the spear around in the light, causing it to change colors from tropical blue-green to the silvery-purple-blue. It glowed softly, but cast no light outside of the spear.
Werewolves didn’t deal in relics. The closest we got were ceremonial daggers, like what had been used to carve my arm. We talked about good or bad luck, good or bad stars, we had our rituals and our prayers and our songs and our customs, but we didn’t have trinkets or amulets or magical runes or anything of the sort. The closest we got to “magic” were mates and the Moon’s Gift. So a weird glowy pendant was a new one for all of us.
Save that the pendant was very old.
“Where did you find it?” Demetrius asked as Marcella closed the box again.
“Small hamlet in a general shop. It was in an old display case next to some frog skulls.” Three bites of oatmeal seemed enough. The bacon was too much effort to crunch. “Took it to a jeweler to have the silver clasp removed. Under it were the gold hinges. Very old. No obvious mechanism to open it.”
“You’ve never heard of anything like this,” Marcella said.
“No.”
Marcella tapped her fingers on the box.
Henri pointed his fork at it. “Care to fill us in on why she went looking for it and what it has to do with anything?”
“It’s from dreams. Specifically, her dreams.” Marcella nodded to me. “She’s seen it in her dreams. And it turns out, Luna Autumn of SilverPaw had also seen it for years. We have some of her journals, which were obtained after her death. Between decoding the dream-inspired artwork in the journals and clues from her own dreams, Summer was able to create a map that led to a general idea of its location.”
“Marcella and MaryAnne helped.” I stared into my half-finished coffee.
The wolves at the table—all the highest-ranking AmberHowl—exchanged uneasy, disbelieving looks.
“And we don’t know what it is, or what it does, or what it means,” Sarah asked me and Marcella.
Marcella shook her head.
“I am still processing it exists at all,” Demetrius told Marcella.
“That in, and of itself, is unsettling,” Marcella agreed.
Murmurs from the entire table.
I was far past being unsettled by the necklace being real. “I wonder what happened to the puppies.”
Marcella swung her attention to me. “What?”
“The puppies,” I said, mostly to myself. “In my dreams, when I saw the necklace, it was always in one hand, while the wolf holding it held puppies in the other. I always took the puppies. Or tried to.”
TWUNK.
I closed my eyes and flinched.
Demetrius left to take his pups to school before hitting the commute route. Marcella told everyone at the table not to discuss the find before she disappeared with the box. I went to go scrape my uneaten oatmeal into the scrap bin and help with the dishes.
Tim gave Searle a shove as he passed towards the kitchen sink. Searle absorbed the shove and growled under his breath. Henri, his daughter balanced on one hip, gave Searle a bump with his other shoulder, before depositing his dishes next to the sink.
“Try using your words,” Searle growled at both of them.
“Try somethinking,” Tim retorted, and he cuffed Searle upside the head. Searle smacked his wrist away, Tim shoved, Searle shoved back.
Sarah and Emily ignored them. I went back to scraping food off plates.
“That’s enough,” Henri demanded after another thirty seconds of tussling.
Searle and Tim growled at each other, but Searle adjusted his shirt and headed out to finish getting ready to leave for the feed mill.
