Hazel bit her lip. “Like Emma Winthrop? My mom might be able to access the psychiatric hospital’s records.” She sighed. “But it feels wrong. Like we’d be retraumatizing her.”
“Only one of the victims was committed, though,” Emrys reminded her. “There was another guy, Enoch something.”
“Pierce,” said Serena, returning Hazel’s phone. She looked pointedly at Hazel, but Hazel only shrugged. “Mr. Pierce?” Serena prompted. “He owns the antique store down the block.”
Emrys bounded off the bench. “Wait, really? Are you sure?”
Serena rolled her shoulders. “Sure, I’m sure. My dads have bought enough furniture from him over the years. He’s weird, but I always thought it was, like, normal weird. Not survived-an-encounter-with-a-murderous-timepiece weird.”
“You know him?” Emrys gripped Serena’s elbow. “Serena, you have to come with us.”
“On the contrary.” Serena pulled free of his grip. “It’s you two who will come with me. With any luck, Mr. Pierce will convince you to forget you ever heard of these relics.” She grinned. “And if we’re really lucky, he’ll be in the market for old, creepy books.”
Enoch Pierce, to Emrys’s eye, wasn’t weird at all. A tall, white man with graying temples and a neat sweater vest, he greeted them with a smile—one that deepened when he recognized Serena. He asked after her parents, and while they talked, Emrys allowed his eyes to drift over the shop.
There was furniture everywhere, wardrobes pressed back-to-back and crammed between bed frames and desks. Chairs were set atop tables, sharing the surfaces with lamps, pots, globes, delicate teacups … even a taxidermied beaver. Space was at a premium in New Rotterdam, where the average building was over a hundred years old, and shops made do with what they had.
It reminded Emrys of the Order’s reliquary, only wilder and more cramped. He realized with some dismay how easily a relic could be hidden there … but no. There was no telltale buzz behind his eye. Either his new senses were still developing or everything in the shop was utterly mundane.
Hazel turned the beaver around. “What?” she said, at Emrys’s questioning look. “I didn’t like how it was looking at me.”
“I’ll tell my dads about the escritoire, I promise,” Serena was saying. “But my friends and I … we’re here for another reason.”
“Oh?” said Mr. Pierce. He smiled again, but on seeing their stony looks, his smile faltered. “What is it?”
Emrys hesitated. Somehow, knowing that the unseen world was real didn’t make it any easier to talk about it. And if the wiki was right, Mr. Pierce had plenty of reason not to want to hear anything about it.
Hazel picked up the slack. “We’re doing research,” she said. “Trying to find a … an hourglass. An hourglass with red sand.” Mr. Pierce’s expression hardened. “We were online, and we saw your name, and—”
“I don’t talk about that,” said Mr. Pierce. “Who are you, again?”
“They’re with me,” Serena said quickly. “Sorry. We know how rumors can get out of hand. Especially online. What we read, it probably isn’t even true—”
“It’s true.” Mr. Pierce’s eyes locked on Serena. “I know what story you mean. It’s all true. But it was a long time ago. A different life …”
“Please,” said Hazel. “It’s important. Anything you can tell us, anything at all.”
Emrys stepped forward. “A boy at our school is d—”
“He’s missing,” Serena interrupted.
Emrys nodded. “Right. Missing. And I … I saw something. Red sand …”
Serena shot him a look. That was new information to her.
Mr. Pierce sighed wearily. “I always hope that it’s over. That she’s gone. But she’s never gone for long.”
“She?” prompted Emrys.
At the sound of his voice, Mr. Pierce snapped to attention. He turned on his heel and strode quickly to the door. Emrys worried he was about to throw them out. Instead, the man locked the dead bolt, and, peering through the glass door, he turned a sign over from OPEN to CLOSED.
“Wait a minute—” said Serena. She stepped forward, but Hazel put a steadying hand on her elbow.
“Hold on, Serena,” she whispered. “It’s okay.”
“You have to understand.” Mr. Pierce turned away from the door to look at the three of them, one after another. “The last time I told anybody this story, I was thrown into jail. People don’t want to hear this.”
“We do,” said Hazel.
Emrys nodded, gripping the straps of his tote.
“Yeah,” Serena said, but she sounded hesitant. “Go on.”
“It was December, 1984. Just before Christmas. I had been playing football at the YMCA.” He shook his head. “My dad’s idea. I never liked football. I was alone in the locker room, the last one to leave. And I looked up, and … there was this hourglass, just sitting there on the bench. Seemed to have come from nowhere. I still wonder who left it there.”
Emrys’s throat went dry. It was monstrous to imagine someone leaving a dangerous relic where it was bound to hurt someone. But according to Van Stavern, the Yellow Court routinely did that exact thing.
“What did you do?” asked Hazel.
“Nothing,” he answered. “I noticed it was broken—clogged up, I figured. I almost flicked the glass, but then thought better of it. I figured it had to belong to somebody, and that the owner would be back to pick it up. I didn’t want to be accused of anything. But then the sand started moving.”
“You didn’t touch it?” Hazel asked. “You’re sure?”
“I’m sure,” Mr. Pierce answered. “I was still a few feet away.”
Hazel shot Emrys a look, and he knew what she was thinking. If the relic triggered its trap without physical contact, then anyone who even looked at the thing was in danger. How were they supposed to retrieve it without looking at it?
