My lip curled. Great. Now I’d seen my sister’s vibrator, a hot pink number with a little tail sticking out the front…or maybe it was for the back? Either way, it was a sight I couldn’t unsee.
“Why are you making this so hard, Cinder?”
I went for the underwear drawer next. I’d already seen what she put inside her hoo-ha, so I might as well rummage through what she covered it with. Black lace and pink satin. Nothing kinky, thank the goddess. Also, no book. I didn’t find it any of her drawers, so I moved on to the closet.
Shoving her shirts aside, I fumbled through the small space. Every pair of shoes, minus the ones she had on when she went MIA, sat in an orderly fashion along the wall. She had a few boxes on the shelf above the hangers, but none were big enough to hold the tome I was searching for.
I dropped to the floor, my knees thudding on the wood. I didn’t have a clue why she had felt the need to hide my book, but my irritation tipped to frustration. Next would come anger, and I refused to be mad at a dead woman. Possibly dead, I corrected myself.
“Seriously, Cin. What else are you hiding?” I felt along the baseboards, searching for a secret panel in the wall or the floor. Yes, Ember rummaged through her room when she first went missing, but my middle sister wasn’t the greatest at attention to detail. She’d told me she checked for hidey holes, and I’d taken her word for it so I wouldn’t have to come into this room and deal with the emotions it might dredge up.
I missed the heck out of Cinder. My parents too. But I refused to get all blubbery over it again. Tears wouldn’t bring them back. Actions might, but so far, none of our attempts had done a lick of good.
We’d tried scrying, location spells, talking to everyone who knew her, even in passing. Nothing. It was like she’d dropped off the face of the earth. We’d even filed a missing person report with the human police. She either didn’t want to be found or she really had disintegrated into the ether. That or she somehow got sucked through to the other side of the veil, and if that were the case, she was as good as gone forever.
Anyway, I’d managed to keep the feels in check thus far. No need to go slogging down memory lane now.
I followed the floorboards around the entire room and didn’t find any panels. Ember had done a good job after all. A sweep of my phone’s flashlight beneath the bed revealed nothing but a few dust bunnies. No latches. No disturbances in the wood. That left one place Ember might have missed.
Rising to my feet, I tugged on the mattress, but it didn’t budge. Weird. It wasn’t some ultra-thick support mattress. I should have been able to at least slide it to the side, but it was stuck. Magically stuck.
“Cinder, Cinder. I’ve found your secret stash, haven’t I?” I hovered my hands above the sheets, and sure enough, magic tingled on my palms. A simple weight spell held the mattress in place, or so I assumed. The cloaking spell masked the true magic, so she must’ve counted on that to do all the work. This weight spell was Witchy 101 stuff. I didn’t even need a potion to cancel it, as long as she hadn’t amplified it to fight back. Surely she wouldn’t do that to me twice.
“Light as a feather, soft as down, I turn this spell right around.” The air thickened and then popped, releasing the pressure as the charm disintegrated.
My stomach tightened as my fingers slid beneath the mattress. Lifting it was a breeze without the spell in place, and lo and behold, there on the boxed springs sat volume two of my sigil collection. Next to it lay a leather-bound book with the Tree of Life debossed on the cover. A piece of brown twine wrapped around it, securing the pages closed.
I grabbed them both before letting the mattress fall back into place. Why in the goddess’s name would she hide this volume? Or better yet, who was she hiding it from?
Not me. I’d memorized every sigil in this book years ago, and Ember couldn’t be bothered to learn them. I pursed my lips, my gaze shifting from my book to the leather one.
“Ugh. Whatever.” I had it back, and that was what mattered. Now I could get on with the cataloging I should have done a month ago.
I pulled the door shut behind me and made my way downstairs to the library, where I dropped into my chair and laid the books on the desk. The leather one I had never seen before, so I untied the twine and opened it to what should have been the title page. But this wasn’t a book. It was a diary.
Cinder’s diary.
I slammed it shut and fumbled with the twine. Once I secured it, I slid it into the drawer and rested my elbows on the desk, pressing my fingers to my temples. I didn’t keep a diary myself. My innermost thoughts were best left deep in the recesses of my mind, and my sister’s needed to remain in hers.
Eyeing the journal in the open drawer, I chewed my bottom lip. It was tempting, I’d give it that, and if I were ten years younger, I would have dived right in. At twenty-four, I could control my urges now…most of the time.
I shoved it closed and picked up the sigil volume, fanning through the pages. As I rose to place it on the shelf, a thick piece of yellowing parchment drifted to the floor. Huh. This book was old, but not that old. The pages had just begun to turn around the edges. The loose one could’ve been printed a few hundred years ago.
I snatched it up and sank into my chair before turning on the desk lamp. My pulse sprinted as I unfolded it and found a set of three sigils I had never seen before. Centered down the middle of the page, the symbols appeared hand drawn. The patterns of the ink indicated the artist had used a quill rather than a pen. Intricate arrays of curved and straight lines crisscrossed and coiled into elaborate designs no amateur could accomplish with a tattoo machine. These were graduate-level sigils, if I’d ever seen any.
The only other writing on the page was a single word beneath each design:
Chaos.
Mayhem.
Discord.
“What the ever-loving…?” I traced my finger over the top design. The coarseness of the paper felt rough against my skin. “Where did you get this, Cin?”
The back of the page was blank. No header or footer or even a page number to give a clue as to where it came from. A black magic tome, possibly? Maybe, but no sinister vibrations emanated from the page. I couldn’t feel any magic at all. Could Cinder have neutralized it?
I wasn’t sure, but curiosity had me itching to try one out. Power over chaos? Yes, please. With a snap of my fingers, I could have the library organized and cataloged in an instant. Maybe then I could catch up on my reading goal.
Long strides carried me out of the library toward the front of the building. My tattoo machine sat on its stand, a fresh supply of ink on the shelf above it. I set the parchment on the table, but I hesitated to set up the device.
My dad had warned me never to try a new sigil alone, and he was talking about the ones from our collection. Without knowing where this one came from, I had no clue how my body would react if I did it wrong.
But when was the last time I’d messed up a sigil—besides protection, which was the trickiest one? Years ago, at least. I was well on my way to becoming an Ink Master if I still had a master to train under.
I crossed my arms, tapping my foot as I stared at the page. Ember would be gone for hours. My inbox was empty, which meant no one had leads on any new disturbances in the veil. The coven wouldn’t need me for a while, and if anyone botched a spell, they could see our resident healer, Patrice.
The front door was still locked. I had an hour before the tourist shop was supposed to open. A smile tugged at my lips. “Let’s do this.”
Was it reckless? Probably, but Ember didn’t own the market on heedless decisions. Bookish girls could be rebellious too.
Besides, our lives had been total chaos for six months, first with my parents’ deaths and then with Cinder’s disappearance. A little control over the uncontrollable would be welcomed by us all.
I practiced first with pen and paper, gently tracing the design to get a feel for the dips and curves. Sigil tattoos had to be drawn freehand for the magic to work, so I drew it on another sheet and compared the two. It was as perfect a match as could be. Easy peasy. I had this.
With my mind made up, I poured the magical ink into my favorite well and rolled up my sleeve. If this sigil lasted the full six hours, imagine what I could get done. Excitement bubbled in my stomach as I attached the needle and turned on the machine.
The first curve of the design hurt like a bitch. The skin on the inside of the wrist was thin, which made it a painful place for tattoos. Chaos’s symbol was long, though, so I needed my entire forearm to make sure I got the proportions right.
