by Erin Johnson
We ducked through a trapdoor. “Horace is a swallow, and so are we—it’d be good to know what we’re up against, and also more about our own strengths and weaknesses.” He glanced over his shoulder at me, grinning. “I was going about it all wrong. I thought I’d find the answers in a book, so that’s all I looked at.”
My mouth twitched. “Nerd.”
He scoffed and his mouth hung open in mock indignation. “That’s highly offensive.”
I gave a quick curtsy. “I’m sorry. Prince Nerd.”
His lips twisted as he fought a smile. He cleared his throat and forced a straight face. “I prefer Prince of the Nerds.”
I laughed. “Of course you do.”
“Anyway.” He lifted his brows significantly, and we continued on. “I tried something totally different this morning. I did a finding spell for information about swallows.” He glanced back at me and nodded.
“Uh. Isn’t that the exact same thing you were doing?”
He stopped and I paused behind him at a fork in the hallway. He looked right and left, then pointed left. “This way… I think.”
I followed him up a winding stone staircase. I watched each step carefully as the gloom darkened around us. Cobwebs stretched thick around the ceiling and dust flew up with our footsteps. “Doesn’t look like anybody comes this way too often.” I coughed into the crook of my arm as a cloud of dust flew into my face.
“Exactly. And you’re not giving your boyfriend enough credit.”
“I’m not?”
“No.” We came out on a stone landing with two wooden peaked doors and heavy iron rings. Hank moved past them. “We’re nearly there.” We headed down another hallway. Hank clicked his fingers and torches sprung to life in the sconces along the wall. We stopped in front of a heavy tapestry so covered in dust that all the woven colors appeared gray… and fuzzy. He turned to fully face me and a ball of light appeared in his palm. It illuminated his strong jaw and large straight nose. He grinned. “Before, I’d been looking for the word ‘swallow’. This time I looked for information about swallows.”
I grinned. “Okay….”
He reached a big hand up and brushed my bangs out of my eyes. “And this time I found something.”
A little thrill of excitement zipped through me. “You did?”
He nodded, his eyes sparkling from the glow of the light in his wide palm. “A hidden room, behind this tapestry. The spell led me here and—well, you just have to see.”
I sucked in a shallow breath of air and nodded. Hank swept the tapestry to the side to reveal another peaked wooden door. I looked a question at him, and he nodded. “Go ahead.”
I gulped and gripped the iron knob. I pushed and the door stuck. I pushed harder, and it lurched open with a creaky groan. A black darkness lurked beyond the opening. I changed my mind about leading the way and stepped to the side. I swept my arms at the door. “Boyfriends first.”
Hank grinned and edged forward. He held the light in his hand overhead, and took my hand with his other one. He ducked into the doorway and I eased in behind him. Dark shadows and strange shapes loomed all around me. I squinted as my eyes adjusted to the dim light.
“What is this place?” I coughed and pressed the back of my hand to my nose. A strong ammonia smell burned my nostrils.
The light in Hank’s hand rose and split into four separate balls of cool light that spread to the corners of the room and grew, illuminating the whole space. I frowned as I turned and took it all in. Enormous cobwebs stretched across the stone corners of the room and over the multitude of boxes, tarps, and filing cabinets that cluttered nearly every inch of the room.
My eyes slid to Hank’s face and I edged closer to him. Goose bumps prickled my bare arms from the cold damp that seemed to seep from the walls. “You brought me to the palace’s haunted attic?”
Hank chuckled. “Imogen, we got rid of the ghosts ages ago.” He sobered. “Unless they found a way back in past the wards. They do sometimes break.”
“Okay. I can’t tell if you’re joking or not.”
He moved forward through the maze of junk and muttered to himself, “It was just over here, I think.”
I stayed rooted in the same spot and glanced back at the door, which stood slightly ajar. “You’re joking, right? Hank? Does the palace have ghosts?”
I hurried forward with goose bumps crawling up the back of my neck from a major case of the heebie-jeebies.
“Here!”
I jumped as Hank stepped in front of me suddenly, a brown file in his hand.
“You okay?”
“You nearly scared the—the bat guano out of me.” I straightened and gazed into Hank’s amused face. I snapped my fingers. “That’s what it smells like in here. Like that bat room in the library.” I beamed, proud of myself for identifying it. Then my smile fell. “Oh geez, that means there are bats in here, right?” I hunched my shoulders and shrunk against Hank.
He chuckled. “If there are any bats, I’m sure they’re sleeping and won’t bother us.” His grin faltered. “I think.”
I opened the file he held in his hands. “So this is what the spell led you to?”
He nodded. “I looked at it enough to get the gist, then went to find you.”
I frowned as I turned page after page. Whole paragraphs of text were blacked out, while other pages contained schematics and spreadsheets of numbers. “What is this?”
Hank scooted closer. “As far as I can tell, it’s about a secret program—something to do with swallows.” He flipped through the thick stack of papers. “Now, I couldn’t find any mention of swallow, which is probably why my earlier spells never worked. I was searching for the word. But based on the finding spell, this has to be relevant.”
“What are all these numbers? And drawings?”
Hank shook his head and joined me in scanning the file. “Look. A date.”
I squinted at the place he marked with his finger. “That was what—twenty years ago?”
He nodded.
Still breathing through my mouth, I moved to his other side. “You said there’s more?”
He nodded and pointed. “It came from that filing cabinet.”
Hank continued to pore over the file in his hands while I moved past tall bookcases draped in tarps. I shivered. If I were a ghost, this was exactly where I’d hang around waiting to freak people out. I stepped over a low trunk and reached the black, scratched metal filing cabinet. I opened a few squeaky drawers and peered inside at the stacks of papers. Nothing jumped out at me, but if this had information about swallows, it’d be more than we’d learned in months.
I sighed. Not strictly true. Horace had told me that the swallow had been a monster with the power to heal. The creature chose to heal him and me after we’d been hurt in the monster attack that killed our parents and most of the village we’d lived in. And it was that healing that had given us our powers. I’d been just a baby at the time. I turned around and looked at Hank through the dim, dusty light.
I sighed again. He’d gone to such lengths to find information. Meanwhile, I, his girlfriend who he saw every day, had more information than any of these files would probably contain. My stomach sank. I’d been telling myself that I hadn’t told him about that or meeting with Horace yet because we’d hardly had a moment alone. But here we were—alone. My eyes slid over to him. I had no excuse except for cowardice. I had to tell him now.
“Hank?”
He kept his head bowed over the papers in his hands.
I cleared my throat and spoke louder. “Hank.”
He glanced up.
“I have to tell you something.” Nerves made me nauseous and I thought I might be sick. I sat down on the trunk behind me. But as soon as I did, a wave of dizziness coursed through me and the world turned. My head rolled.
“Imogen!”
I heard Hank, but barely, muffled. My vision blurred. I felt as though I’d stood up too fast.
Suddenly I was on my feet with
Hank’s arms wrapped around me, holding me steady. I blinked and caught my breath.
“Are you all right?” His worried eyes searched my face.
I nodded, which sent the world spinning again. I sank against him. After a few more breaths, I gradually felt more like myself.
Hank stroked my hair. “I’m okay now. Really.”
He let out the breath he’d been holding. “What happened?”
I shook my head, careful not to shake it too much. I threw an arm behind me. “I sat down on that trunk, and—” I paused as I looked at it again. “Hold on.” I moved closer but stopped before I reached it as another wave of dizziness hit me. I stared at my own dim reflection in the black stone of the coffin-sized trunk. “Hank, is this—?”
He stepped up beside me. “Looks like swallow’s mew.”
I nodded. “What the swallow gate is made of?”
“Exactly.” He stepped closer but swayed on his feet. I grabbed his thick arm to steady him. He glanced at me and raised his thick brows. “No wonder you felt ill.” We both turned back to the trunk. I’d had to pass through gates made of this material a few times. They were not moments I remembered fondly. This material was the only thing that could stop a swallow, as far as I knew. Unlike other magical folk, swallows like me, Hank, and Horace pulled our magical energy from sources outside ourselves, instead of generating it from within. The gate cut us off from those sources and all our senses. When I’d passed through the gates before, I’d gone blind and deaf, lost in silent blackness.
“I didn’t know that just getting near it could make me ill.”
Hank shook his head. “Me neither. I try to stay away from the stuff as much as possible.”
I let out a shaky breath. It formed a little cloud of cold condensation in the chilly, damp air.
“I could be wrong, but—I think the file we found is about the program that developed swallow’s mew.”
I glanced at Hank’s pale face.
His throat bobbed. “There’s a lot of German mixed in with the English words, so I’m not positive. But one of the schematics looks a lot like this—” He gestured at the stone box in front of us.
“A coffin?”
Hank gave a tight nod. “I tried a few spells just now to reveal the blacked-out text, but it’s sealed with powerful magic. Someone really wanted this kept secret.”
I shivered.
Hank tucked the file under his arm and rubbed his wrist as he stared at the large box. “What do you think is inside it?”
I edged back. “Nothing good. Probably a cursed mummy or something.” I let out a dry laugh. “But for real.”
Hank lifted his palms at the box. He cast me an apologetic look, his brows lifted and eyes squinted. “I’m sorry, but I need to know.”
I gulped. I’d been about to tell him about Horace and the swallow before I’d nearly fainted. “Look, Hank. You don’t need to go searching in weird boxes, I’ve been trying to tell you, for weeks actually that—”
A whoosh of cold air blew my bangs out of my face and ruffled the short sleeves of my blouse. A loud thunk made me jump. I peeled my eyes open. Hank stood frozen over the box, his palms still outstretched. The heavy stone lid of the box lay askew, slid to the side.
“Hank?”
He whirled on me, the whites showing all around his eyes. “Don’t—”
But it was too late. I’d stepped forward and now stared down into the shiny black box. Inside, a skeleton lay curled on its side. Tatters of clothes dripped from its bones and its jaw hung open in a silent scream.
I opened my mouth and let out a not-so-silent one.
3
The Black Box
“Snakes.” I pressed my hands to my mouth as goose bumps prickled my arms.
Hank stepped over some boxes to stand beside me. He wrapped his free arm around my shoulders, the file still tucked under his other one. “Sorry. I didn’t want you to have to see that.”
I let out a shaky breath. “It’s all right. I’ve seen worse.” A woman cut in half with a saw, a dead mermaid in a fishing net, a guy drowned in a cauldron of punch…. “Heh.” My heart still pounded in my chest, but I tried for a light tone. “This is nothing.”
A scuffle sounded from behind us and I shrieked and clutched Hank’s arm. My chest heaved as we listened hard.
“Probably just a rat.” Hank’s wide eyes darted to mine. “Right?”
“If it’s a rat, why are we whispering?”
We stood still, ears pricked. Tarps hung all around us, looking just like ghosts. And here we were, alone, in a forgotten attic room and having told no one where we had gone. My breaths grew quicker and shallower. “This is bad. This is really bad. It’s like we’re in a Goosebumps novel.”
Hank arched a brow.
I shook my head and dug my fingers harder into his arm. “Human thing, but trust me, it isn’t good.”
He squared his shoulders and cleared his throat. “This is— I’m being ridiculous.” He shook himself. “For all we know, it’s a, uh—it’s a, uh—”
“A human skeleton hidden in a box in a room where no one was ever supposed to find it?”
Hank’s throat bobbed. “Yeah, that is probably what that is.” He nodded to himself. “I’m going to look again.”
I nodded. “Yeah, sure, okay—but why?”
He squeezed my shoulder and gave me a small grin. “I’m taking a page from my sleuth girlfriend.” He shrugged. “Maybe there’s some clue as to who this is, or why they’re here.”
I took a deep breath and blew it out. “All right. Let’s do this.”
He looked my face over carefully. “You sure?”
I lifted my chin and took his hand. “Yeah. If we do it together.”
His lips quirked into a smile and we stepped over some piles of junk, hand in hand, toward the skeleton in the box. I stayed as far away as I could and leaned forward on my toes. It was a full-sized skeleton, an adult, and it looked like the person had been dead quite some time. The white bones lay in a clean pile, aside from the fragments of clothing. I frowned and pointed. “What’s that?” Something glinted in the dim light.
Hank eased forward and peered into the box. “Huh.” He leaned over the skeleton and I shivered as he reached in. Brave man. Not only because of the swallow’s mew, but to reach in next to a body like that. He swayed a bit as his arm neared the enchanted black stone and I clutched him harder to steady him. He pressed his eyes shut tight and took a few shaky breaths, but he managed to stay on his feet as he pulled out something small and round. He held it up so we could both see.
“A ring.” I moved closer and examined the golden circle.
Hank turned the smooth band over in his fingers. “There’s an engraving on the inside.”
I squinted and read. “C. R.”
Hank dropped the ring and staggered back a step. It landed on the stone floor with a ping as I reached for his arm.
“Hank?”
His face had lost all color and his chest heaved as though he might be sick.
“Hey, are you okay?” I grabbed both his thick wrists and looked up into his wan face. “Is it the swallow’s mew?” I glanced toward the black box.
Hank shook his head. His chest heaved a few more times and he blinked rapidly before he could answer. “I know who this is—who this was.”
“You do?” My heart sank.
He shook his head and looked down at the pile of bones in the box. “My old mentor, Colin Row. That was his ring. I asked him about it once. He said it was fake gold, but he loved it because his mother gave it to him. She had it engraved with his initials.” Hank dragged a hand over his mouth, his eyes glassy.
I let out a whimper of sympathy. “The mentor who taught you how to use your swallow powers?”
Hank gave a tight nod, though his eyes never left the body. “He was the only swallow I’d ever known before I met you. He—he saved me. I was out of control and no one could help, but he did. He was like family. And then one
day he just disappeared.” Hank let out a shaky breath. “Oh goddess. How did he end up in here? How long has he been here?”
As Hank paced the room between towering piles of forgotten objects, I folded my arms around myself. How terrible. Had Colin been dead when he was placed in the box? Or had he gone in alive? I shuddered, the horror of dying in a box made of swallow’s mew too much to contemplate. Alone, deaf, and lost in darkness.
I needed to leave this room. “Hank, can we—”
I stopped midsentence as the rough scrape of the door opening across the stone floor cut me off. Hank turned to me, eyes wide. I held my breath and listened. Footsteps scuffed on the stone floor, here, in the room with us, somewhere on the other side of the file cabinets, wardrobes, and tarp-covered furniture that cluttered the space. Icy fear flooded my stomach. Hank stepped quickly around a dusty wooden barrel and took my hand.
“Okay,” he mouthed.
I gave a tight nod. With the file still tucked under one arm, Hank led the way through the maze, the footsteps growing louder, nearer. Who had entered the room? Why weren’t they speaking? Did they know we were here? I winced as I realized Hank’s glowing orbs of light still illuminated the room enough for us to see by. Of course whoever, or whatever, it was knew someone was here. I jumped as a pile of junk clattered to the floor somewhere behind us. We picked up the pace as we snuck toward the door. I squeezed Hank’s hand, tight in my own. My panting breaths sounded loud to me in the near silence.
Finally, the door came into sight around a pile of old newspapers stacked nearly to the stone ceiling. Warm relief flooded through me and I let out a shaky sigh. But Hank slowed, then paused. He turned to me, his brows drawn together. He leaned close and whispered, “This is my home, yours too. Why are we sneaking out? We have a right to be here.” He gulped. “Maybe we should see who’s here? Maybe they know something about how Colin ended up… ended up in that box.”
Was he crazy? My eyes widened and I leaned back to look Hank in the face. “Maybe they’re the reason Colin ended up in that box.”
