Page 46 of The Filigree Key

“Sawyer, I’m so sorry—”

“You could just use the Lugus Spell,” Brandi suggested.

Sawyer went silent as we both turned to her.

“Flectere lucem? It’ll bend the light and make your stripes go all wavy like and obscure you from sight. So long as you don’t move.” Brandi gave us an indignant snort and perched her hand on her out-thrust hip. “I’m talentless, not a moron. They teach it to all third-years at Grimalkin.”

The tomcat looked away. “I didn’t graduate.” Then he gave her a baleful look. “I’m not even two yet, something you’d know if you’d actually looked past my potential score before you cheated me out into a field test!”

The golden stirring spoon slipped from the hedge witch’s fingers as her face contorted. Hot tears threatened to spill over onto her cheeks and smear more of her mascara. “I was desperate!”

Tendrils of glittering green magic caught both Sawyer and Brandi around the middle and yanked them apart before they could lunge at each other.

“Aaand we’re not doing this,” I said. The vines deposited the tomcat by the stairwell and shoved the spoon back into Brandi’s hand. “I swear, if it’s you two’s bickering that gets us caught, I’ll make you both regret it. One way or another.”

Silence reigned for a beat as we all craned our ears to the stairwell. Nothing. Then the pitter-patter of woodchuck feet scurrying overhead got us hurrying our own selves along. With a huff, Sawyer left his post to investigate the door embedded in the wall beyond the silversmith forge.

“Nearly done here,” I told him, situating jars and vials so they wouldn’t clink together when the bag inevitably bounced along in time to my stride. The foraging bag was so full I was worried there wouldn’t be any room for the cat. Already my spine was bowing to the side to offset the weight.

“Uh-huh.” A scrambling of his paws later, Sawyer had hoisted himself to peer into yet another keyhole. No sooner had he stolen a look than he launched himself halfway across the dungeon, his fur bristling.

Both Brandi and I yelped, the hedge witch going so far as to lob a handful of papaver seeds at him. I flicked her in the arm. “Don’t throw stuff at my cat. Thistle thorns, Sawyer, what—”

“It’s your grandmother,” he sputtered. “Iris Hawthorne’s in there snacking on tea and biscuits and reading The Hobbit! We’re out here risking life and limb and practically starving and she’s noshing away at book club!”

CHAPTER TWENTY

A snap and a spark punctuated the silent dungeon and then an Illuminate match came to life in my hand. The flare of sulfur-yellow light reduced to a simple tongue of flame, but no matter how I directed its light, not one ward illuminated.

Not one glimmer of white or yellow threads that should’ve created a spiderweb-like design across the door. Crouching down, I examined the keyhole myself. Even that tiny tunnel of metal was free of wards.

“I don’t see anything,” I said, confused. And no simple lock was enough to contain my grandmother.

Frowning, I used the rest of the match to inspect the doorframe and even the stones of the threshold. Nothing. I cast a glance over my shoulder.

Brandi immediately held up her hands, as if surrendering. “I don’t know a thing about that. Sometimes I think I hear music coming from the other side, but I’ve always dismissed it as a hallucination.” She chuckled once, and ruefully too. “Whenever he’s gone in there, I’m always back in my cell, over there.” The hedge witch pointed to the other end of the dungeon by the tunnel door. “At that point, I’m too exhausted to even think about trying to sneak a peek inside.”

Huffing a frustrated sigh, I dug my hand into my heavy foraging bag and extracted the little vial of filched Caer powder. As Sawyer paced bath and forth, growling, I blew the fine white powder over the door. It never hurt to be too careful.

Then, depressing the latch of the handle, I shoved open the door and stepped inside.

Iris Hawthorne was indeed reading The Hobbit with a pot of tea and a plate of Mrs. Bilberry’s biscuits—sliced and stuffed with thick pieces of ham—on the end table next to her velvet armchair. A wool blanket covered her legs and lap, a scarf nestled against her throat, and fingerless gloves kept her hands warm as she flipped the pages.

The door handle slipped from my stunned fingers as my grandmother lifted a condescending expression from the depths of her book. She’d clearly been expecting someone else, and she tore out her chair the moment she recognized me. Instead of rushing to embrace me, she flung the book at my head like it was a throwing star.

“Don’t let the door close!” she shrieked.

The book caught between the edge of the heavy door and its frame, creating a half-inch gap.

While there hadn’t been any wards preventing anyone from entering the room, there were plenty to keep anyone from leaving. Even without the aid of an Illuminate match, they glittered red and copper and crisscrossed the back of the door to such a dizzying effect I felt my stomach churn.

“Don’t look at them directly,” Grandmother told me, hustling over to the single shelf embedded into the wall. She yanked free a hardback copy of Pillars of the Earth, so thick she couldn’t grip it with one hand, and returned to the door, shooing me out of the way. She replaced The Hobbit with the tome, setting it on the floor like a doorstop. “Sorry, Ken,” she murmured. “Needs must and all that.”

With a sigh that revealed how much the simple act had worn her out, she trudged back to her chair. It was then, with the blanket no longer covering her legs, that I saw the magical binding that shackled her ankle to the chair, which was welded to the ground. It disappeared from view as she sat and resituated her blanket on top of her lap.

Her hair, which had been as steely as her character, was shot through with white. She’d lost some weight, too, her neck stringy like that of a chicken’s. Her fingernails were brittle and chipped in places, and the tan, olive-toned skin that ran in our family had turned sallow. I’d never seen her so thoroughly bundled indoors before, either.

Iris Hawthorne, matriarch of the most powerful coven on the East Coast, looked . . . frail.