Page 69

A few days later, Kierse was fully recharged and hunched over the decoy box.

The heist was only a matter of days away, and she was running out of time and down to the last digit of this combination.

She could feel the thread like it would come apart for her at any second. The anticipation was killing her.

Then with a little hiss, it popped open.

“I did it!” Kierse gasped.

Gen startled awake. “I wasn’t sleeping.”

Kierse laughed. “You so were but look!”

Walter lifted his head a fraction above his computer. “Did what?”

Gen straightened. Anne Boleyn hissed at her side. Gen stroked her back and leaned forward.

“Oh!” she gasped. “You got it open.”

“Nice,” Walter said, returning to his work.

“What’s inside?” Gen asked.

“Let’s find out.”

Kierse gingerly opened it all the way up to reveal…an empty box.

She deflated. She’d known it was a decoy—she hadn’t been able to feel the cauldron inside the box—but a part of her had still hoped for something. The only thing she could sense was a lingering scent of lemon and pine. The Curator’s magical signature.

“Well, that was anticlimactic,” Gen said with a laugh.

“All that work for an empty box.”

“Yeah, but you proved to yourself that you could do it.”

“A for effort,” Kierse grumbled. “Now, I just have to reset it. At least that won’t be the same as dismantling it.”

Walter glanced up. He’d taken up essentially permanent residence in the seat opposite them. The computer systems ever-expanding across the table. “We have a problem.”

“What kind of problem?”

“A big one.”

Kierse sighed. “Should I get Graves?”

“I’ve already alerted him. He should be here soon.”

“Is this better or worse than Schwartz being kicked off the security team?” Gen asked.

“Worse.”

Graves threw the door to the library open. “A manual switch on the cauldron system and you just found out?”

“It looks like it was added recently,” Walter said with a shrug. “We’re going to need someone inside security to dismantle it if we want to get Kierse inside.”

“And we fucking lost Schwartz,” Graves grumbled.

Gen raised her hand slowly.

Graves shook his head. “You don’t have to raise your hand.”

“No. I was volunteering.”

“For what?” Kierse asked.

“To turn off the security system,” Gen said.

“Do you know anything about security systems?” Graves asked.

“Well, no, but everyone else has a job to play tomorrow.”

“No,” Kierse said automatically.

Gen sighed. “You don’t get to make the decision.”

“You’re not part of this.”

Gen whipped around to face Kierse. “I sat through every meeting. I live here. I am every bit a part of this as you are. I have magic, and I can handle myself. I want to do this.”

“Why?” Graves asked before Kierse could object further.

“What do you mean, why? That’s an artifact of my people’s history, too, right?”

“So, you want to use the cauldron?”

“No,” Gen said slowly. She lifted her chin and met Graves’s imperious look. “I don’t need to be healed. I am a healer.”

Graves’s brow cleared in understanding. “Ah, you want to learn from it.”

“If I can…”

“I can’t promise it will teach you anything,” he said.

“You’re actually considering this,” Kierse said.

It was unfathomable. Not because Gen wasn’t competent.

She was and always had been. She had an inner strength that many people underestimated.

She was the backbone of their trio. Kierse had seen how well she could use her new magical abilities, but she still couldn’t help but want to protect her.

It wasn’t that she was an innocent, not with her upbringing, but she was pure in so many ways.

Untouched by the horrors of the world. Even Anne Boleyn loved her. She was the best of them.

“I will consider all options,” Graves said.

“But we do need an extra pair of hands now that Schwartz is out. You and I are stealing the cauldron. Laz is already in the hotel putting together the warding system from Walter. Nate is controlling our exit. George is the getaway car. Edgar has to be there for loading and unloading and Schwartz will be covering him. Isolde is baking. Walter is running security. Do you have someone else in mind?”

“No,” Kierse said. She knew the plan. They’d gone over it a hundred times, tweaking until they were sure they’d considered every possible angle. This new wrench certainly didn’t help anything.

“I can do it,” Gen told her.

“I know you can,” Kierse told her. “I hate risking you.”

“You don’t have to worry about me.”

Kierse grasped her hand. “We worry about each other. It’s how we survive.”

“Gen should be fine to manually switch off the system. I can walk her through it,” Walter said.

“In two days?” Kierse asked with a sigh.

“I. Can. Do. It,” Gen repeated.

“There’s another issue,” Walter said.

“What now?” Graves grumbled.

“Kierse was going to be the distraction for the Curator while you switched out the boxes,” Walter said. “But the window just closed.”

“What does that mean?” Kierse asked.

“I ran some numbers and estimate it at four minutes and thirty-four seconds on average.” Walter looked at their blank faces. “That’s how long you’ll have to get the cauldron out.”

Kierse and Gen exchanged confused looks, but Graves got to the conclusion first.

“Kierse has to steal it,” Graves said slowly.

“Yes,” Walter said. “The Curator will need to be elsewhere. And we’ll need the more talented thief to make the switch.”

“And a bigger diversion,” Graves said.

“Schwartz might be needed after all.”

“Are you saying that I won’t be able to talk to the Curator?”

“It’s that or the cauldron,” Graves said.

Kierse stilled under those words. She hadn’t had any more success with her memories than she’d had before the psychiatrist. She’d thought that speaking to the Curator might be a way around her mental blocks.

She could learn straight from the source about the night he’d put the spell on her.

That chance, or the cauldron that Graves had been after forever—she didn’t want to make that choice.

And yet she felt as if it had already been made for her.

She wouldn’t meet the Curator. She’d have to find the memories the old-fashioned way.

“Fuck,” she said, pacing toward the closed window at the back of the brownstone.

“Gen, you’re in. Walter will fill you in on the system,” Graves said. “I’ll call the rest of the team in for a meeting.” She heard the door open and close behind them and the soft tread of Graves’s shoes as he approached her. “This doesn’t have to be the only way you meet him.”

“Yes, because after we steal one of his most prized possessions, I can just schedule a meeting.” She shot him a look.

“When you’re long lived, you have more than one opportunity to go after the things you want.”

She hung her head. Getting the cauldron was the priority, but she didn’t know if she would have another shot at getting to meet the Curator.

“We have to try again,” she said on a sigh of frustration.

“To get past the block? Are you sure you’re ready for that?”

“What other choice do I have?”

“You just recovered your stores,” he said. “And you need them all for the heist.”

“Then I can go out and steal to replenish them.”

He studied her. “All right. I do think that it’s better for you to face this fear and try to break through the barrier than to walk into the heist wanting to meet the guy.”

“I wouldn’t jeopardize the mission.”

He raised an eyebrow. “Oh, really?”

She laughed. “I never plan to go off script.”

“The script just happens to be in rewrites whenever you’re on screen?”

“Exactly,” she said with a grin. She dropped her head and sighed. “All right. We’ll try again.”

“Good,” Graves said, guiding her back toward the chaise. “Where do you want to start?”

Kierse didn’t know. The doctor said that she needed to face what happened to her parents. But she didn’t know how to do that or even where to start.

Graves gave her a moment and then seemed to know she couldn’t answer. “Why don’t we just go back to the hallway and see if we can make it to the room? Don’t push against the block. I don’t want you bleeding all over my rug.”

She rolled her eyes at him and laughed. “Charming.”

His lips quirked. Kierse lay back on the chaise and closed her eyes. The hallway. She wanted to go back to the hallway. She didn’t know how to face it, but what other choice was there?

She started to tremble. There was a reason that she’d been avoiding this. The fear seemed to creep up her throat until she felt like she was going to scream.

Was this what the trauma felt like? This relentless fear that she was going to see something truly awful and never be the same again? She’d survived abandonment and an abusive thieving guild and the Monster War. How much worse could it be?

And why did her brain say that this would break her? That this would be the thing that finally put her in the ground?

“Wren,” Graves said softly.

His bare hand touched her arm, but she hadn’t pulled her absorption down. She reached for it and nothing happened. Silence filtered through the buzzing in her ear. She couldn’t touch her magic. No, she could touch it, but it wouldn’t release.

“I can…I can do it,” she whispered.

With what felt like a rip, she tugged her absorption free and Graves’s magic settled into her.

She dropped into Graves’s library. The same place she was currently sitting, but it was her younger self looking up at him through suspicious eyes as her parents negotiated for him to take care of her.

She hadn’t meant to take them there, but the smell of the library had taken over her senses. They were back at the beginning again.

“Did you bring something to barter with?” Graves asked.

“Yes,” Shannon said.

Her father removed a hunting knife from a sheath at his belt. He dropped the heavy tool onto the table. It was long, sharp, and used, the leather of the handle worn. An emblem—a stag’s antlers inside a Trinity Knot—was burned into the metal.

“Is this sufficient?” Adair asked. “It was blessed by the Fae.”

A sob escaped Kierse’s throat at the sight of her parents there together. Her father offering his own hunting knife for her safety.

The connection broke, and her absorption snapped back into place. She covered her face as all the joy of their faces bled from her.

“Hey,” Graves said, reaching for her. “This is too much. You do not have to do this right now.”

She looked up at him with glassy eyes. “You said yourself, I’ll have it at the back of my mind the whole time I’m at the Plaza if I don’t face it.”

“You might. But if you’re this upset at this one memory, will we be able to be able to work through the block? Will you be better or worse if we accomplish what we’re after?”

She bit her lip, unable to answer. She felt like she was going to crack in two at the very thought.

“Worse.” The word escaped her lips before she could stop it. She didn’t feel ready. She felt like she had to do this thing to get past it. Not that she was prepared.

“That’s all I need to know.” He retreated with a nod. “Let’s get through the heist. We can deal with the Curator and your memories after.”