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“Easier said than done, Claire. She’s my mom.”
“I know, but she’s still human like the rest of us, which means even Myra is fallible from time to time.”
I smiled. “Yeah, you’re right. Thanks.”
“What’s a BFF for?”
I filled her in on everything that had happened since I’d talked to her last, which took up the whole twenty-five-minute drive to Chapel Hill.
David wasn’t home yet, so I resumed packing but wondered if I was overstepping my bounds. He sent me a text saying one of his friends had dropped him off at the library and he’d call me to pick him up later.
My encounter with Myra, along with everything else that had happened over the weekend, had been overwhelming. After I heated up a can of soup for lunch, I went into David’s room and crouched next to the bed, pulling out the sword Tsagasi had given me from between the mattress and box springs. Sitting on the edge of the mattress, I held the blade in my hands. It needed to be sharpened, although I had no idea how to do that, but it had proven effective nevertheless. Still, I couldn’t ignore how quickly I’d gotten worn out in my fight with the Raven Mockers. If I was going to start using a sword regularly, I needed to learn how to wield it. And build up my upper-body strength.
But first I needed a nap. I lay down, setting the sword on the comforter next to me. Then I grabbed David’s pillow and wrapped my arm around it, breathing in the scent of him—the clean smell of his shampoo, with a hint of musk. Myra’s admonishment was still fresh on my mind, but so was the message from Claire’s ghost. Did I trust the woman who had been my mother for the last ten years or some nameless ghost?
I roused out of my dreamless sleep and blinked my eyes open as I felt movement on my arm. “David?” I murmured.
He was sitting on the bed next to me. “Hey.”
“How did you get home?” I asked, still groggy.
“I ran into a friend who gave me a ride. How was your visit with Myra?”
I rolled onto my back to face him. “Don’t ask. Moving to Durham has changed her in a lot of ways.”
“I’m sorry.”
I told him about the whole incident, and when he heard what Myra had said about him, pain flickered in his eyes. “It’s not you, David. She thinks it’s all me.”
“What do you plan to do about her advice?”
I sat up and placed a gentle kiss on his lips. “I’ll hold off on selling the inn for a few months. But I’m not giving you up. Even Claire’s ghost agrees that I shouldn’t.”
A grin spread across his face, even if his eyes were slow to catch up. “Well, there you go. It’s a good thing this ghost likes me since you follow her lead so much.”
I shook my head and smirked. “It just so happens Claire’s ghost and I think a lot alike. Anyway, I wanted to show you the marks on Myra’s door. They’re really different.” I dug the phone out of my pocket and pulled up the photos. “Have you seen anything like this before?”
He enlarged the photos and scrolled through the images. “I can honestly say I don’t recognize any of the marks. Forward them to my phone, and I’ll see what I can dig up.”
“Thanks.” I texted them to him, then put my phone on the bed. “Now tell me about your day.”
David had spent several hours with his friends, helping Allison’s parents arrange for her body to be moved to her hometown of Asheville for her funeral, and then Phil had dropped him off at the library.
“I read the letter Penelope recommended, and it helped confirm a lot of what we know.” It was written by a man claiming to be part of a group of Keepers whose duty it was to watch for a curse to break. The man spoke of a gold ring and a spear that could be used to rid the world of demons. Both objects had been lost for over fifty years, but he’d discovered the prominent Middleton family in Charleston, South Carolina, had gained possession of them. He had gone to the plantation to confront the current heir, but had never made it past the caretaker. He’d tried to talk to the sheriff in Charleston, but the man had refused to listen because the Middleton family was so respected, not only in Charleston but in the entire nation.
“Middleton,” I said. “I’ve heard that name before.”
“Are you sure? Could it have been from a history class or book?” He winked. “Or perhaps aPeoplemagazine story about Kate Middleton?”
“Very funny.” I shook my head. “It’s a memory, trapped in my head. I’m sure it’s associated with the Ricardo Estate. I don’t know how, but I do.”
“Okay,” he said, nodding. “Somehow the Middleton’s got possession of the ring and the spear. And we suspect the ring you’re wearing came from the estate through your mother. But what happened to the spear?”
“Allison told Trina that the collection also had Native American spears. Some were so old that the shafts were warped.”
“So the Guardians might have the spear. That’s good.”
“Tsagasi says that there are things from the night my mother died that are important. I need to remember what happened.”
