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I also knew I couldn’t please both of them.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Rafe didn’t want to wait for breakfast. He left me with the few tools and the extra wood he’d brought to the tower and went off to search the area for our uninvited guest. I promised to stow the stuff in his workshop, then join him in the search.
We’d come close to blows over rebuilding the winding mechanism, yet we’d avoided saying anything we couldn’t take back. I was glad. Rafe and I might be brand new and terribly fragile, but I valued what we shared.
Do you value it enough to stay here forever? He will, you know. His spirit will be trapped here as sure as Martin Gallagher’s.
“For pity’s sake,” I said aloud. “If you think you can distract me with your chatter, you’re wrong.”
Mostly wrong, anyway. The voice in my head, the one that wasn’t my own, had taken on greater substance, a nearly-visible figure who sat right behind my eyes.
You’ll do what I say when it’s time. You won’t have a choice.
Somehow that threat, along with the echo of laughter, upset me more than anything else. I might not be a powerful magician and most people might value my name over my person, but damnation. I rarely let anyone tell me what to do. Grappling with my determination, I strode along the gravel path to the workshop, the crashing waves an accurate counterpoint to the storm in my head.
The workshop door was unlocked and I didn’t feel a spell’s telltale pop when I stepped across the threshold. Rather than try to guess where to put the things I’d returned, I put the package of tools on the closest workbench.
A few coals still burned in the grate, warming the air somewhat. Rafe and Della said they’d searched everywhere for the amulet. But had they? At one point I’d thought the workshop was the most obvious place to hide the Ferox Cor. With that in mind, I surveyed the cluttered little room.
Might we have missed something?
Conscious of how little time we had left, I got to work. Over and under, in corners and one shelves. I had only a vague notion of what I was looking for; some kind of bejeweled box of a size to hold an amulet. Given that my image wasn’t terribly specific, I opened every box I saw, as well as looking behind and under them.
Nothing.
Did you really expect to find something?
Ignoring the voice, I turned to Rafe’s workbench. It had a set of drawers in the front, the kind that got increasingly large from top to bottom. The narrow top drawer held a selection of fine chisels. The second one seemed to be a repository for half-finished projects. A wolf emerged from a block of wood the size of my palm next to one wing and the long, narrow beak of a hummingbird half-carved from another cube.
The third drawer was stuck. No amount of tugging would open it. The lowest and deepest drawer held pieces of wood stacked neatly according to size. As the only one likely large enough to hold the amulet, I opened it fully to make sure there was nothing hiding in a back corner.
There was only wood.
The third drawer bothered me. Rafe must have searched it already, which tempted made to simply ignore it.
The man has a right to some privacy. What if it’s holding such items as are useful for private acts of pleasure.
Those words might have been intended to upset me, but they only made me laugh. If it did hold such objects, I could hardly object. “I highly doubt that.”
No one responded to my comment, which was just as well. After all, I’d been talking to a voice only I could hear.
There was no visible lock on the third drawer, though when I slid a narrow file along the top, something blocked the file at the halfway point. A peg? I tried from the opposite direction and hit the same obstruction.
Acting on a hunch, I opened the second drawer an inch or so and felt along the lip of wood beneath it. There, at the center, I found a button. Pressing it resulted in a click.
“Let’s see…” I tugged on the third drawer. It still wouldn’t open. I ran the file along the top, and this time it went the whole way, without getting stuck at the center.
“Okay.” I sat back on my heels. “I could go get Rafe and see if he can open it. Or…” I stared at the offending wooden drawer front. My gift allowed me to change a thing into something else, but I’d only ever tried to change small things. “If the drawer front was made of glass, I could break it.”
If.
A glance at the rack of tools showed me what I’d need; a large, heavy hammer. With it at my side, I put both palms flat on the surface of the drawer and gave a push of power.
Nothing happened.
I wasn’t surprised. Rafe was right when he said my magic was a parlor trick. Besides, I didn’t even know the amulet was in the drawer. Maybe the voice was correct, and I’d find an assortment of dildoes.
