I arched an eyebrow at him. “I do?”
“We were supposed to have dinner together in Vegas, remember?”
“That was before, Val. The last time we were here, things didn’t end so well between us. We’ve never talked about that.”
“We can talk about it tonight.”
“That doesn’t sound like fun.”
“Dinner, Solina. That’s all I’m asking. As friends.”
“Friends?”
Val shrugged. “It’s up to you. I’ve learned the hard way not to push you.”
Giving in to Val would end badly, I suspected. But I missed his familiarity. I missed the part of him that had been a good friend. He hadn’t been acting like himself lately, and I wanted to know why.
“I don’t want to leave the Aerie,” I said. “But I’ll meet you at the beach after dinner.”
Val exhaled and smiled. He motioned toward the door. We left the house in silence, taking care to muffle our steps and let sleeping Valkyries lie. We encountered no one as we crossed the yard to the outbuilding, where the clash of metal announced Skyla and Embla were already at work in the gym. Val waited outside while I slipped into the shower room at the front of the building. The bright white room smelled of soap and harsh cleaners. Embla had bundled her bath things and a change of clothes on a bench near the community showers, but a quick check uncovered no sign of the library key.
Outside, I collected Val from his hiding place in the shadows and headed for the main house. “The key’s not in there,” I said. “Unless she’s got it on her right now.”
“We need to look in her room.”
“I don’t know where her room is. If she was in the dormitory wing that burned, then we might be in trouble.” My breath hitched, and I paused midstep. “What if the key burned, too?”
“I’ll bash in the freaking door, Solina, or I’ll pin down one of the sisters and sit on her until she talks. All this sneaky bullshit is getting on my nerves anyway.”
“Yes, we know subtlety has never been your forte, but I’m not eager to announce our activities to the whole Aerie just yet.” My gaze unfocused as I considered what to do. My brain hurt from all these unusual planning and scheming exercises. “I’ll go back inside, find someone awake, tell them I’m looking to talk to Embla, and which one is her room? Simple, right?”
Val didn’t argue, so I told him to hang out in my room until I had need for him. My ears popped, and he blipped out of sight. I choked on a breath of surprise, wondering if I would ever get used to that. I skipped up the house’s front porch steps, pushed open the front door, and stepped into the foyer. At the sound of voices coming down the hallway, I turned.
Two women, Amala and Naomi, if I remembered correctly, greeted me with warm smiles. I pursed my lips and put on an expression I hoped looked like genuine confusion and stopped in their path. “Sorry to bother y’all, but I really need to talk to Embla. You know where her room is?”
The tall woman, who I thought was named Amala, pointed at the ceiling. “She’s upstairs in the left wing, across from the bathroom, but I don’t think she’s there. She usually goes out to the gym in the mornings.”
“Oh yeah?” I turned and glanced at the front door. “Well, maybe I’ll check out there.”
“We’re going to breakfast,” said Naomi, a compact, dark-skinned woman who wore her hair in a soft poof haloing her head. She looked angelic, but I had seen her training in the gym. She was fierce and lethal with fists or blade. “Why don’t you come with us? Embla will probably be back soon. Maybe you’ll see her in the kitchen.”
I bit my lip and tried to look apologetic. “I’m not much of an early eater. I might come grab some coffee in a few minutes, though.” I stepped aside and let the two women pass before I turned and headed to the stairway leading to the second floor. The left wing had survived the fire, but the end of the hallway connected to the dormitory wing, so the structure had suffered a lot of damage. Smoke had marked everything, tinting the walls a sad, greasy gray, and the floor had buckled in places. I eased down the hall, looking for the bathroom and the room across from it.
The fact that Embla occupied a room in the main house spoke to her seniority in the Aerie. The youngest women lived in the dorm and shared a large communal bathroom. Embla probably shared her bathroom only with Tori and—before the fire had claimed her life—Aoi, another of the older women at the Aerie.
Someone had cleaned soot from the surface of Embla’s door, and its warm wood gleamed in comparison to the dirty walls around it. I turned the knob, and the door creaked open. Entering someone else’s room without permission or knowledge felt like a violation. My stomach rolled over in protest, but I discarded my misgivings and stepped farther inside. Embla had obviously cleaned. Her room showed no sign of the fire other than a faint smoky odor that would probably linger in the walls for years to come. She had furnished her apartment with simple charm: an antique, wrought-iron bed, an oak dresser, and a small bedside table with a brass lamp. I went to the little table first and fished through the bric-a-brac on top—hair pins, silver hoop earrings, reading glasses, but no key.
I fell to my knees and peered under her bed. Embla stored several pairs of shoes and an old metal box under the dust ruffle. I slid the box from under the bed, unhooked the latch, raised the lid, and found a bundle of photos. The box contained no keys, and I should have put the pictures away, but something about the subject of the first photo aroused my curiosity.
The initial image showed two young women hugging each other as they posed for the camera with huge smiles. They resembled each other—Embla and another dark-skinned woman who could have been her sister.
The women in the pictures aged, and the photos showed the woman who wasn’t Embla standing beside a handsome young man in uniform. In the next photograph, the woman held a baby. The baby turned into a toddler, a little boy, then a preteen. Then the pictures showed another baby, a little girl. Eventually, the images focused solely on the girl. All the next photos had either been taken from a long distance or had the grainy texture of a telephoto lens. I studied the woman and her two children, wondering why they held such interest for Embla. Maybe she simply cherished her family, and her connection with the Valkyries had impeded their relationship.
I thumbed through a few more photos in the stack and stopped cold.
In the latter part of adolescence, the girl in the photos was unmistakable. She stood in a grassy yard in front of a building that looked like a high school. Other teenagers milled about, but Skyla stood alone, her arms folded over her chest, a blank, unassuming look on her face. Dark hair hung in long ringlets to the middle of her back, but the bright eyes, strong chin, and sharp cheekbones formed her unmistakable face.
Skyla’s pose and stance suggested she was unaware of the photographer. What did it mean that this picture was here, in Embla’s room? My brain whirred like a set of old gears. It hiccupped and sputtered but produced no answers. I shoved the picture into my back pocket. The rest I set back in the box, which I returned to its place under the bed.
I had spent a lot of time studying those photos and didn’t know how much longer I had until Embla returned to her room. Panic tingled through my nerves. My pulse thrummed, and my hands shook as adrenaline drizzled into my bloodstream. Faster. Move faster. I pawed through Embla’s dresser, the only other piece of furniture in the room, and in the top drawer I found a jewelry box. The lid creaked when I opened it, which sounded like a scream to my raw nerves. Inside the box lay a strand of freshwater pearls, an old princess-style diamond ring, and a thin silver chain threaded through an old skeleton key. I rubbed my thumb over its tarnished surface. That’s got to be it.
I closed the jewelry box, slid the dresser drawer back into place, and eased out of the room, careful to check for sounds of approaching footsteps. When I judged the way clear of witnesses, I dashed down the hallway and burst through the door into my room. Val was reclined on my bed, feet crossed, head pillowed on his hands, twined behind his head.
I pursed my lips and narrowed my eyes at him. “Comfortable?”
Val ignored my question and rolled off the bed. “You found it, didn’t you?”
I dangled the key on its chain before his face. “Take it. Get down to the library, get your mental image, and get back up here so I can put it back.”
Val took the key but paused to brush a hand over my temple. “Calm down, Solina. I could hear your heart beating from across the room.”
“I’m no good at this cloak-and-dagger stuff.”
“We don’t have to worry about the CIA recruiting you, huh?”
I swallowed—anxiety had dried my throat. “Go, Val. I’m ready to be done with this.”
Val smiled, winked, and—pop—disappeared. I held my breath until he returned. He passed me the key, and I snatched it, scurried down the hall again, and dumped it into Embla’s jewelry box. As soon as I put my hand on the door to leave, I heard two voices in the hallway. One belonged Skyla, so the other was presumably Embla.
