Page 137 of Harnessed in Gold

The same horrifying paroxysms that nearly knocked me out in the forge.

The next morning, Browne found dead birds scattered on the ground as if they’d dropped out of the sky. It was September, but the plants were leafless and their branches grotesquely contorted. Browne’s “pup” barked and growled at unseen threats, and the air reeked of “sulfur and blood.” These horrors occurred in a circle nearly a mile in diameter, with Browne’s house and forge at its center.

Aaron chimes in, “That’s what they were talking about at bingo, remember? That stuff about trees growing sideways and fish with no eyes?”

Leo nods, his gaze distant. “Has to be. Horrors like that are the stuff of legends. Literally.”

“So then Brownhillisbuilt on Browne’s Hill,” I realize aloud. “It was all the stuff he was doing in that forge that made it legendary.” Alchemy, necromancy, melting down faerie jewelry. No wonder people called it the Crossroads or the Pit of Hell.

On the very next page, Browne wrote that, because the bracelet’s “poison” was unleashed by the furnace, his only recourse was to bury it as the “Man of The Folk” had originally commanded.

“Butwhere?” Avery snarls to herself. Her eyes flit back and forth between the key and the journal. “He says here he made a lead box.” She slides the book to Leo. “Did I get that right?”

“For the bracelet?” I ask.

“Yeah.”

“It’s First Matter,” Leo mumbles as he reads. “It makes perfect sense.”

Aaron chuckles. “Itmight, but you don’t.”

“In alchemy, lead is the basest metal, therefore it’s neutral,” Leo explains.

Avery bounces excitedly. “And would neutralize energies!”

The gold in Leo’s eyes glimmers. “The lead box was Browne’s way of containing the bracelet’s power.”

“Um.” I hate to be a wet blanket, but they’re not seeing what I am. “But then doesn’t that mean that there’s no…supernaturalway of finding it?”

Avery drops her head back and moans, “Fuuuuck.”

“I might not even be able to feel it.”

Leo taps his chin with his pen. “I think you will,” he tells me. “Assuming the lead box is even still intact, it would only neutralize the bracelet’s magic; it shouldn’t have any effect on emotional energy.”

“But if it is intact, there won’t be any signs in nature,” Aaron reminds us.

“Which is why we need Betts even more,” Leo reluctantly admits.

I look away. He doesn’t need to apologize, not even with his eyes. I chose to be here.

“So it looks like the box was just Browne’s first line of defense,” Avery says, back to decoding. “Because he also built a little stone house in the ground to put it in.”

“That might actually make it easier to find and dig up,” Aaron surmises.

Easier for us? Or for Brier’s team?

Determined to work faster, I turn my attention back to the code,only to be distracted by the front door flying open. Topaz trudges in, eyes hard and mouth in a flat line.

“What happened?” I ask, heart plummeting to my stomach.

She goes still, hands on her hips and eyes averted. I may be imagining it, but she seems close to tears. With a blink, she snaps out of it, kicking the door closed behind her and stripping off her jacket. “Three canines dead. Two by copperhead bite, one by my dagger.” Propping herself against the door, she yanks off her muddy boots. “They were following me in the woods.”

River’s scouts.

“What kind of canines?” I ask.

She shrugs like she doesn’t care. All the more evidence that she does. “I don’t know. I’ve never seen this kind before.”