Box of Secrets

by Raquel Lyon

  She looked around and sighed. It would take all day to clear the mess. Sebastian was due back anytime, and she still needed to search for Lambert’s key. Closing her eyes, she pictured it rising up from the debris and landing in her outstretched hand, but when she opened her eyes again, her hand was empty.

  Disappointed at the key’s lack of appearance, she tried to think where else it could be, whilst absent-mindedly focusing on a bronze statue of Cupid. When it floated back into position on a nearby shelf, she turned her energy to an upturned elephant foot, stood it up, and whisked the collection of walking sticks back into it. A smile crept across her face as she sat down on the counter stool. Cleaning up was a lot easier with magic.

  After practising on a few more things, she tried doing two at a time, and then more. Items crossed each other in mid-air as they flew to their rightful locations. Pictures straightened, fallen ornaments stood, books closed and slotted into place on the shelving, and plates secured themselves onto their wall hooks, until all that remained were two sorry-looking items wriggling on the carpet, broken beyond repair. It seemed that Piper would have to put the dustpan and brush to work, after all, but then a memory of a fixing spell Beth had taught her, when one of her levitation attempts had resulted in a bowl crashing to the ground, came back to her. Pleased she could remember the words, she enchanted the cogs back into the clock and fit the shards of a mirror seamlessly into its frame. With everything finally back where it should be, it was impossible to tell anything had happened at all.

  She sat back with satisfaction as Beth appeared.

  “Ready to go?” Beth asked.

  “What are you doing here? I thought Sebastian was coming to get me.”

  “He told me about... the incident and asked me to fill in. Another important meeting or something. Aren’t you pleased to see me?”

  “Yes, of course, but—”

  “What happened here?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Are we really playing that game? The whole shop is streaked with magical trails. Are you telling me that, even though you’ve found your magic, you still can’t see it?”

  Piper shook her head. “Not a thing.”

  “Interesting. But what happened? Did one of your attackers return?”

  “Some kids broke in. It was nothing. I cleaned up a bit.”

  “This is your magic?” Beth studied the repaired mirror and adjusted her hair. “You did a good job.”

  “Thanks. I think so.”

  “Well, if you’ve finished playing house, it’s time to go.”

  “Oh, um...”

  “Don’t tell me you’re not ready?”

  “Um... no, actually,” Piper said, tapping a finger on a book. During her clean up, it had flown towards her on its way to the shelf behind her head, and she’d caught it before it hit her in the face, and set it on the counter. “With all that’s happened, I haven’t had the chance to unpack, never mind repack.”

  “Shouldn’t take too long, then. Come on.”

  Piper tucked the book under her arm as she stood up. Taking one last look around the shop, she routinely reset the alarm and went upstairs to get her things. But as she entered the flat, she stopped dead.

  “I don’t believe it! They’ve been in here too.” She stared at the key in her hand. “They must have got in through a window somehow,” she said to Beth.

  “Or walked through the door.”

  “You just saw me unlock it.”

  “I meant like this.” Beth turned and walked back through the front door without bothering to open it.

  Piper stared at the expanse of wood, hardly able to believe her eyes. She grabbed the handle and pulled it open to see Beth standing on the landing, grinning. “How...?”

  “I don’t know. It happened after Mathanway cured me. There was a tussle, and I was pushed against a wall, but I kept on going and ended up on the other side. That’s how I found out I was a witch.”

  “Can I do it?”

  “I don’t know. Can you?”

  “Shall I try?”

  “You won’t know unless you do.”

  “Okay.” Piper closed the door. There was a knot in the grain at eye level, and she concentrated on it as she took a deep breath, took a step forward, and smacked into the panelling. Behind her, Beth giggled. “It’s not funny,” Piper said, rubbing her forehead. “That hurt.”

  “It was a little funny. Here...” Beth ran her finger along the red mark emerging above Piper’s eyebrow. “All better.”

  Piper’s emerging headache subsided. “You need to teach me how to do that,” she said as they returned inside.

  “Is the magic in here yours, too?” Beth asked.

  “I did do one small conjuring spell.”

  “No, it’s more than that,” she said, “so I think we can safely deduce that whoever was in here wasn’t kids. It’s also rather coincidental that you were assaulted while your home was being raided, don’t you think? Someone knows about you, Piper.”

  “How?”

  “Don’t ask me. Did your attackers say anything?”

  “Not really... apart from one asking about my jacket.”

  Beth’s eyes lowered to Piper’s clothing. “The one you’re wearing?”

  “Yes. He wanted to know where I got it from, but I didn’t tell him.”

  “And where did you get it from?”

  “Dad gave it to me. Sixteenth birthday. ”

  “Did he say anything else?” she asked, turning to cast a cleansing spell over the room.

  “He said it was made from Voltignis hide.” Piper’s brow furrowed as a thought came to her. “Come to think of it, his coat could have been too.”

  “Okay. So... we can assume the men were Divimagi soldiers, and I have a hunch they came here looking for something.”

  Piper jumped as the rug under her feet unrumpled itself. “But nothing’s missing.”

  “Clues then, maybe to your father’s whereabouts?”

  “He’s in Chimmeris. If we know that, why wouldn’t they?”

  “Perhaps they’ve been hunting him down for a long time and hadn’t been informed of his return? Why don’t you get your things while I check over the rest of the rooms?”

  Piper went to her bedroom. As usual, what Beth was saying didn’t add up. Why would the men be looking for her father?

  She stepped over a pile of clothes that had spilled from her travelling bag, picked out some soiled items for the wash, and got some clean things to replace them, then sat on the floor to organise her packing as Beth came in the room.

  “All shipshape everywhere else. How’s it going in here?”

  “I’ll just be a... Hang on.” Piper pulled the remaining items from her bag. “Where’s the box?”

  “What box?”

  “Lambert’s box.” Panic swelled in her chest. “It was here. Where is it?” she asked, lifting random items of clothing to search underneath them.

  “Are you sure you packed it?”

  “Positive.” She bent to look under the bed. “And I’m not leaving without it. It has to be here somewhere,” she said, feeling her tears beginning to pool.

  Beth laid a hand on her shoulder. “Piper?” she said. “Maybe they found what they were looking for?”

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  PIPER COULDN’T REST. Outside the sun had begun its slow descent, and for the first time in a week, she’d be spending its setting alone. She’d grown used to Lambert’s visits, and the thought of not being able to see him again filled her with sadness, but the thought of where he might be saddened her even more. If Beth’s hunch about the warlocks being her intruders was right, then the fleeing soldier may well have taken Lambert back to Chimmeris, where he would surface from his wooden prison only to be met by one of a different kind.

  She paced her room, wondering how he would feel when he emerged back where he started. Would he miss her as much as she was already missing him, or would he blame her for letting him go and pu
tting him back into that godforsaken place? He had every right to. If she hadn’t decided to go home, he would be with her, right now, in the safety of Lovell Towers, sitting on the dressing table with the rest of her father’s things, or maybe standing right next to her, looking down at her with those electrifying eyes of his. But he wasn’t. She’d been selfish in wanting to return to her old life, and had messed everything up. Now he was gone, and she was stuck lodging in a puke-coloured room at Freak Central... alone.

  Even though common sense told her that the Towers was the safest place for her to be, it was as if she’d been entombed in a prison of her own—a very huge, very fancy prison, in which she was the only inmate. With Beth returning to work, Sebastian still not back from his meeting, and Sophie away at an art gallery in the city, Piper was all by herself, rattling around in a giant mausoleum with nothing to do except think. And she didn’t want to think: not about how her chance of going back to college had evaporated, not about using her new-found wealth to redecorate the flat, and definitely, not about how she’d lost Lambert—her new friend, her possible brother, and someone she’d started to care for.

  Sitting on the bed, she stared at her college work spread out over the covers. After spending most of the afternoon in the ballroom, practising her magic, she’d come upstairs intending to immerse herself in a different form of study. It had been meant to keep her mind away from Lambert, but it was useless. She’d made him a promise, and until she fulfilled it, he would always be there. The two scribbled sentences she’d taken an hour to write—having spent most of the time staring into space or at the muted television set in the corner of her room—were proof of that. She got up to turn the voiceless film off—it had only been on for the company, anyway—then returned to her work, scooped it into a pile, and stuffed it into a spare drawer. It wasn’t her life anymore. She was no longer Piper the Student; she was Piper, Divimagi Witch from another dimension. She had brains and she had talents. It was time she put them to use. She would find the key; she would find the box, and she would free Lambert.

  Determined to uncover a connection, Piper filled the space her books had left with all the clues she’d collected, laying the items out in one long row, beginning with the letters, then the potter’s card and diary, the scribbled note, her bank book and jacket, and finally, a trinket box from the nightstand to represent Lambert’s box. She leaned back against the pillow and thumbed through the book she’d brought from the shop, in two minds whether to add it to the line—after all, it had seemed intent on making her notice it. Her father’s writing flickered by on the pages. It was the book in which he logged his daily transactions, and went back a number of years. She added it to the end of the line, pieces of a jigsaw puzzle which fit together somehow.

  Looking at each of the items in turn, she contemplated where to start, and, as much as it pained her to do so, decided to work with Lambert’s notion that their fathers were the same man. She picked up the letter from the queen. It had arrived before her father had disappeared, before Lambert’s box had arrived. The queen spoke of a service over the years, and a jewel, which would mean the service was the mission Lambert had talked about. Could looking after a jewel be counted as a mission? It would have to be an extremely valuable jewel to be sent to a whole other dimension for protection. And if that were his mission, had the queen been sending him money to continue its safekeeping? That would account for the other income Mr Smithers had mentioned, and her own huge bank balance, but where was the jewel now? The queen had said she needed it back. Had he taken it with him? And if he were merely delivering a package back to its rightful owner, why had he not returned? Obviously, Chimmeris was the place of his birth and where he belonged, but she was his daughter. A loving father didn’t abandon his daughter for no good reason.

  Her eyes found the note: from her father’s beloved Mischa, whom he’d kept in contact with for years. She was dying. He knew that from her letter. She hadn’t said how long she had left, but if he’d returned and found her on her deathbed, it was conceivable he’d want to stay with her until the end. But why hadn’t he brought her with him all those years ago, and why had he subsequently married a human and had a child with her, when his heart lay elsewhere?

  And then there was the key—the key Piper really needed to find. The queen had sent that, too, but she hadn’t explained what it was for, only told him to take care of it. Mischa had already informed him of their son’s imprisonment. Had he recognised the key for what it was, and if so, had he taken that with him, too, or kept it safe as the queen had instructed? And why would she have asked him to do that, knowing that the box it opened remained in Chimmeris? Was it so that he could free his son when he returned, or had it been on her orders that the box had been sent here, too? But why would she do that: purely gratitude for his service, or something else?

  Piper thought back to the day she’d first seen the queen’s letter. Her father had just come back from an auction, and it was tucked down the side of a cardboard box full of his purchases. What day was that? She flipped through his book and found the auction purchases recorded on March the twenty-eighth. March the twenty-eighth. Wasn’t that...? She checked the potter’s diary entry. Yes. It was... Two days before his mysterious meeting with Ned. Ned, the guy known for concealing illicit spoils inside ceramics and stoneware. Was it possible he’d offered a similar service to her father? And if that were the reason for their meeting, what had her father asked the potter to make, and where was it now?

  She closed her eyes and tried to picture every statue in the shop. Then, with panic rising in her throat, she remembered the old couple who’d bought the figurine from the shop window. Surely her luck wasn’t that bad, was it? Would her father really have been so stupid as to risk the sale of his commission in his absence? Wouldn’t he have kept it safe, at home, or—her eyes flicked to the items on the dressing table—in his cabinet? But there had only been one possible candidate in his cabinet.

  She flew from the bed, almost stumbling over her own feet in her haste to reach her father’s items, and picked up the old statue—at least, she’d always presumed it to be old. She turned it over in her hands. Whether it was old or not, it was certainly ugly. She’d disliked it for years. Years. It couldn’t be the one. She glanced at the base, about to set it down, but there was something not quite right. The bottom of it was smooth and clean. An item of its age would have had wear—dirt and scratches from years of being handled and moved from place to place. The statue had a new base.

  Praying she wasn’t about to do something she’d later regret, Piper searched the room for an appropriate implement, and spotted a pewter platter hanging on the wall. She laid the statue on the floor, removed the platter from its hook, and, holding her breath, brought the heavy disc down upon the figure. As she lifted the platter to the side to look underneath, her anticipation gave way to excitement. There, nestled amongst the fragments, was a small, tightly bound package. With her heart pounding, she ripped it open. Inside the wrapping, there was indeed a key... that looked nothing like her pencil rubbing.

  Pushing back her disappointment, she ran a finger down its length. It was quite big, with a chunky stem and teeth down either side of the bit. Whatever item it secured, it clearly possessed a big lock. She held it up to the light and noticed a number engraved into the bow. Could it be...?

  She glanced at her watch. It was already after four, but if she ran all the way, she might just make it in time.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  PASSING BY THE GIANT pyre composed of his enemies’ remains, Septamus held a cloth to his nose. Their bodies were as vile in death as they were in life. He stopped in his tracks to allow another rider to be thrown to the flames. Although just as deadly as their mounts in battle, they were useless in death, and very hard to burn. The fire would need to be stoked for days to ensure their complete obliteration to ash.

  Keeping the cloth in place, he entered the butchery, where the workers were busy. It was the same
after every invasion. No part of the fallen beasts went to waste. Jars of blood and bowls of scales filled tables. Hides hung from the rafters to dry, and a large vat of leftover meat ensured the dogs would eat well that night. He squeezed his cloth tighter upon reaching a bench in the corner, where he noted the shrivelled skin surrounding the vacant eye sockets of a mammoth head that was in the process of having its teeth pulled and its horns sawn off.

  He felt no remorse, only revulsion, as he passed through the foul-smelling room and entered the army barracks. He had received word of his soldiers’ return and was eager to learn the outcome of their trip.

  Spotting one of them at the far side of the room, he pocketed his cloth and strode up to him.

  “What news?” he said.

  The soldier offered a small bow of his head in greeting. “The Oracle was well informed. We located the item precisely where she described.”

  “Excellent. Where is it? I want to see it.”

  The soldier lowered his eyes.

  Septamus gritted his teeth. “Tell me you have it.”

  “It is with Maximon.”

  Septamus scanned the room. “And where is Maximon?”

  The soldier swallowed nervously. “He did not make it.”

  “Explain yourself.”

  “Sir, we were about to return, when a girl—”

  “A girl?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Maximon’s head was turned by a woman? Why does that not surprise me?”

  “No, sir. Not her. Her jacket. It was Voltignis.”

  Septamus narrowed his eyes. “Go on...”

  “Maximon challenged her, sir.”

  “Yes...?”

  “But before gaining any information as to her identity, he was interrupted.”

  “I fear I will dislike your next statement.”

  “I fear so too, sir. The meddler was a wolf man. Maximon fought valiantly... but was killed.”

  “The fool. And what of the box?”