Page 116 of The Shade of Things
Since the item was magic, Delilah rocketed back into the KH and off we went for another sock. Each new tree I inspected required a new door from the KH and thus a new sock. Pyotr was kind enough to let me leave them with him until I left for good this visit.
The next hour was almost as tedious as it was painful. One or two mild shocks might not have mattered, but Delilah tested dozens of items. My shadow was unaffected, but my hair stood on end, my heartbeat jumped around like it was in a mosh pit, and my hands had mild burns on them making me feel hot, cold, and light-headed.
Pyotr didn’t have anything to treat them, though he impressed upon me that garden stores carried lovely aloe vera plants.
I sat down on the small pile of socks I’d accrued to rest. “What is the point of a scorpion with hands?” I shuddered, my words slurring from pain. “It rapped on the glass of its tank.”
I’d found only two nonmagic items so far: a bottle of wine that didn’t have a snitch alarm on it, and a taxidermied horse that did. I doubted the elderly man who showed up to check on his possession, speaking to the dead horse in soothing tones about how his ex-wife would never get her hands on his baby, also had the Ascendant, but I took his photo as Zev had requested.
I stumbled to my feet, woozy.
“You don’t look good,” Pyotr said. “Stop now.”
“Can’t. Three more.” I took the sock he handed me and blotted sweat from my chest and armpits.
“You desecrate sock,” he said.
I wagged a finger at him. Maybe three. It was hard to tell. “The sock is mine to do with as I please.”
Delilah stalked ahead of me through the gloomy path to our next door, her solid form flickering.
My entire body was tense from the strain of keeping her whole, but I had to keep her animated until the final tree was examined. I sang “I Will Survive” in my head like it was a magic chant, refusing to think of the consequences if I didn’t find the Ascendant.
I needn’t have worried, because the second to last tree contained an old-fashioned black phone sitting atop a small table adorned with mother-of-pearl. I perked up, my gut saying this was it, and sure enough when Delilah, now hanging from the ceiling, pressed the detector against it, nothing happened. I slumped in the doorway, partially out of relief, and partially because I was running out of energy to stand up.
On my order, Delilah shook the phone to activate any snitch alarm. I dismissed her, peering through the cracked-open KH door, my cloaking on and my camera at the ready.
The old-fashioned phone rang. And rang. And rang. Its trills grew more and more insistent.
My fingers twitched, wanting to answer it, but the threat of tree impalement was stronger, and I stayed where I was until the ringing stopped.
The moonlight from outside illuminated the person who stepped in.
She was small, thin of form, but old. Her movements were all very deliberate, though quite canny—despite her white hair and bony fingers, she was quick under her shawl, and her eyes bore a glint of fire as she scanned the tree.
Eyes I knew all too well. Eyes I had laughed with.
Tatiana.
My phone hit the ground, and my cloaking fell away. In my flinch, my elbow whacked the door, which swung wide open to reveal me.
Emotions flitted over Tatiana’s face too fast to decipher, and she clutched the chunky beads on her necklace.
I put a hand to my head, unable to think through the hurt and rage brewing inside me. All this time I’d agonized over keeping her in the dark, worried myself sick over any betrayal, and she had the magic amplifier? No, she couldn’t.
“It’s a trick, right?” I twirled a finger around the tree. “You set all this up trying to find out who has the Ascendant?”
“The what?” Her annoyed look was pure “don’t talk nonsense,” yet the hand at her throat trembled.
A buzzing filled my ears, and I swatted the air as if to bat away a mosquito, but it was the sound of truth dawning. Not with a ringing clarity or a trumpeting peal, but flies landing on the cesspit of my broken beliefs.
“You’ve had it all this time.” I let out a half sob, half laugh. “Was everything a con to cover your tracks? The car accident, the stolen amplifier, having to rebuild your reputation?”
She did a double take, barely more substantial than wrinkles and the weight of her years. “How do you know about that?”
Oh. I grabbed the door frame for balance. I didn’t want to be right. “You killed my parents, didn’t you? Noah and Adele Blum. That’s how they got the jump on you. The shark. The great macher. You hired them to cause the accident and steal the Ascendant. Then you had someone get it back and kill them.”
Tatiana had gone still, her eyes wide. “Your p-parents?”
