Page 71 of Harnessed in Gold

Throat tight, I whisper back, “I know.”

When he releases me, I glance over my shoulder. Rime’s not watching, but guilt still prickles my skin. Because I don’t want Leo to leave my side.

I escape to the apse where it’s dark and cold, and that unnerving, otherworldly feeling I always get in old churches seeps through my skin to my bones. A few minutes later, as I take a walk down the chapel’s center aisle, I sense other familiar emotions: joy, grief, desperation, and remorse. Exactly what you’d expect to find in a church.

But the macguffin isn’t here; I’m sure of it.

My friends, it seems, are coming to the same conclusion. Avery is up on the dais, investigating the altar, while Aaron sits in one of the pews, his gaze aimed at nothing, but his ears attuned to everything.Meanwhile, in the back of the church, Rime paws at the walls like he’s looking for a secret door, and near the entrance, Topaz kneels and knocks on the stone floor. Knock, listen, frown. Knock, listen, frown.

“Betts!” Avery hisses, waving me up to the altar. Her eyes are wide and her fingers rest lightly on the base of an empty candlestick.

“What?” I whisper back, “Are youseeingsomething?”

Eyelids fluttering, she stares past me, looking once more before she drops her hand and her shoulders sag. “Yeah, but I don’t think it means anything.”

Leo appears out of nowhere, jogging up to join us.

“I found the candlestick here.” Avery pulls back the corner of the altar tablecloth and points to a crowded shelf underneath. “It looked so old and out of place, I thought maybe it had something to tell me.” She lifts it like she’s doing a bicep-curl and puffs, “This sucker is heavy.”

“But what did you see?” I prod.

She shrugs. “Just some weird windows.”

“Weird how?” Leo asks.

“Ornate, but high up and small, like a basement window.”

“Could you see the walls around them?”

“Not really. Nothing but gray.”

Leo nibbles his lip. “Can you draw what you saw?”

“I don’t have anything to draw with.”

“Hold on.” I dash down to the nave, returning a few seconds later with a stubby pencil and a flyer leftover from this afternoon’s prayer meeting, both of which I found in a pew rack. I hand them to Avery and joke, “I’d better not go to hell for swiping these.”

“Oh, you’re going to hell, witchling,” she teases as she clears a space on the altar to draw. “But not for stealing church pencils.”

With a hooked left hand, she expertly sketches a squat rectangle, broken into three sections by decorative arches. “They’re wrought-iron tracery, I think. And they had these little fleur-de-lis things ontheir top points.”

I’m blown away by the detail of her drawing. And her memory.

As the others gather in the center aisle, I study the candlestick one last time. It’s definitely an oddball, simple and rustic, too utilitarian for a chapel. What was it made for and where did it come from?

I join the team in time to hear Topaz’s report. “I think there’s some sort of cellar under here.” She stomps a boot on the floor. “But it might be nothing more than the old foundation or a crawl space.”

“I heard all sorts of things, but nothing weird for a church,” Aaron volunteers. “Talking, singing. What sounded like a lecture or a sermon.”

“Me too,” I say. “Everything I felt was just normal church stuff.”

“Dead end?” Rime asks.

“Maybe not.” Avery holds up her sketch and explains where it came from.

“When we go out, let’s walk around the building and see if it has basement windows,” Topaz suggests. She points to Avery’s drawing. “Especially windows that look like that.”

I take out my phone and order Avery to hold up the paper. When the others realize what I’m doing, they all do the same, snapping photos so we each have our own copy of the window in question.