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TREASURE TROVE

A s a parent, there was nothing worse than feeling helpless when your child was in danger.

Fortunately for us, the current speed bump in the road of parenthood was short-lived.

The door to the vault creaked open, and Sierra stepped out.

Her eyes were dazed and her whole body was trembling, but there wasn’t a scratch on her.

Luck must have been just another one of her many superpowers.

“It’s gone,” she said, she took a step toward us on stiff legs, then stopped, pausing in the doorway. “Dead.”

“What was it?” I asked.

“A beast.” She turned to glance over her shoulder, then shuddered.

Nero rushed past us into the vault. He knelt down beside the dead monster. From here, I couldn’t see much more than fur. Lots and lots of fur. The creature—whatever it was—was larger than a werewolf.

Nero returned to us. “You did well,” he told Sierra.

“Where is the ring?” Faris demanded.

“Inside.” Sierra pointed into the vault, her finger quivering. “And there’s more.”

Intrigued, Faris went inside. Grace followed him. I stayed with Sierra, holding her tightly to me. She looked like she would fall to the ground if I let go.

We watched Nero and my parents assess the contents of the vault. There was a lot in there. Books and treasure chests and urns and all kinds of magical curiosities in all shapes and sizes.

“An odd assortment of items,” Nero said.

I looked at the set of silver spoons he was showing me. “It does feel rather arbitrary,” I agreed. “It’s like the collector went to a bunch of random garage sales in search of magical objects.”

“These magical objects weren’t bought.” Faris set a dagger in my hand. “They were stolen.”

Now that I held it, the dagger did seem familiar. “I encountered this years ago. It’s an immortal artifact.”

“Yes.” Faris took the dagger back from me. “A dagger that belongs to me.”

“And this shield was once mine,” Grace said, swinging the heavy silver shield in front of her. “I have not seen it in many years. Not since it was stolen.”

“Everything in here was stolen,” Faris said. “Either from the gods or from the demons. Those two magic urns belonged to Maya and Meda. Aleris owned that trident. And that throne was Zarion’s.”

Faris rarely spoke of his brother anymore.

Once, Zarion had sat on the gods’ council but no longer.

His new home was the inside of a prison cell in one of Faris’s many castles.

I didn’t even know which one. It had been years since anyone had seen Zarion, and that was exactly what the gods preferred.

They tended to keep their mistakes tucked away.

It helped them pretend that they didn’t have any.

“There is much in here that was stolen from the demons’ treasuries as well,” Grace said, pacing along the treasure piles.

“And from the Legion of Angels.” Nero held up a battle helmet. “Whoever this collector is, he’s stockpiling magical objects. There are a lot of very powerful artifacts here. I have to wonder what he was planning to do with them.”

“It no longer matters,” Faris said. “It’s not his anymore. It’s mine.”

Grace snatched the bangle from his hand. “I think you meant ‘ours’. We shall of course return the treasures to their rightful owners.”

To both gods and demons, an object’s ‘rightful owner’ loosely translated to he-or-she-who-was-mighty-enough-to-claim-it.

One could argue that the teleporting thief had fit that definition quite well, but I wasn’t up to arguing that point right now.

The thief was dead, my daughter was tired, and it was time to go home.

Naturally, there would be some infighting between the gods and the demons over the artifacts, particularly those which multiple deities had once owned. It could take years to sort this all out, and I really wasn’t looking forward to the paperwork.

Nor did I believe that we had heard the last of this mysterious collector, the villain who’d frightened the djinn so much that he’d taken his own life.