Page 73 of Truthfinder’s Promise

He yanked her to him, his mouth covering hers with a kiss that would have brought her to her toes, had her heels not already put her on them.

“You really do have trust issues,” he said when he released her.

“Told you.”

“Don’t sound so satisfied. I can work them out of you.”

She lifted an eyebrow. “I see humility ranks among your many amiable qualities.”

“I can get you the list of the rest, if you want,” he deadpanned, studying the sarcophagus lid. “So if it takes the pain of a death to fully open this thing…how does that work without killing someone?”

“Well, considering it took this pain as partial payment—” she lifted her bandaged hand “—I’d say the pain doesn’t have to come all at one time or all from one source.”

“Are you suggesting we line people up and rip off their fingernails one at a time until it opens up?”

Meredith tapped her nose in mock contemplation. “Well, between the two of us we have seven friends. If everyone donates a couple of fingernails, maybe a toenail or two, we could probably open this thing three inches by sundown tomorrow.”

“Can’t we just bring in a wrecking ball and crush the whole damn structure? Or bust through the floor?”

“Good suggestion. Well, not the wrecking ball part. It would draw entirely too much attention in a small town and lead Julian right to us before we’re ready. As for busting through the floor…” She closed her eyes and felt for the edges of the spell without much hope of finding them. She’d searched for something like it when she’d first come in and found nothing. She didn’t have any better luck this time, which meant the spell was only active and noticeable when drawing pain.

Her mother never could make anything easy. Meredith braced herself and jabbed her injured finger against the stone lid. A bright spark of pain ratcheted up her hand.

Since she was looking for it, this time she felt the spell as it activated and latched onto its structure, tracing the lines out. She’d gotten as far as the sarcophagus lid when it started fading. She jabbed her injured finger against her leg in a slow staccato pattern, just enough pain to keep the spell sitting up and taking notice.

After a minute of study, she stopped hitting her finger and let the spell fade. “I’m afraid a sledgehammer to the floor isn’t going to help this situation. The room isn’t impervious to physical destruction, but it would definitely require the kind of heavy machinery we can’t use for the reasons I’ve already stated. If we want in, we’re going to have to give it what it wants.”

“And how do we do that? Even if we had a hundred people willing to come in here and sustain small injuries, wouldn’t that also raise eyebrows in your small town?”

“Yes, and I don’t think it would work, besides. It isn’t the right quality of pain. The fingernail was, because it was violent and unexpected, and therefore I felt it more deeply. The kind of easy pain most people would volunteer for, and that we would be willing to dole out, isn’t going to move the needle much.” She held up a hand, forestalling whatever he would have said next. “I have an idea, just…give me a minute.”

“Meredith,” he said in a calm, reassuring voice. “Please hand over all sharp objects you might be in possession of.”

She rolled her eyes before she closed them. “Relax, I’m not stabbing anyone, myself included. Now shut up and let me think.”

She didn’t need to think so much as she needed to remember. The spell’s making was very specific. It required the pain of a death. While her mother could and had quantified the physical pain required to kill someone in that very specific manner, she had failed to put any further restraints on the interpretation of the requirement.

Pain didn’t only come in a physical form. It could be emotional, too, and oftentimes Meredith thought emotional pain was worse than physical. As for death…the pain of a death could be interpreted as the pain caused to the living by their grief over that death.

Meredith hadn’t thought she could hate her mother any more than she already did. But as she forced herself to recall the memory of the worst day of her life, her hatred for a dead woman grew a little bit more.