Stolen Sign

Chapter 3

I must have had another nightmare and fallen out of bed again.

That's the first thought I have as awareness comes creeping back. There's a hard surface beneath me, a dull ache behind my eyes, and my shirt is damp with sweat.

It's a condition I've awoken in too often since my parents' deaths.

I just hope it's not morning yet, so I can pick myself up and go back to sleep for a bit.

Then I open my eyes and see not the familiar sloping slats of my cramped attic space, but a high, ornate ceiling of fancy molded tiles in a strange, book-filled room.

Memory slides into place, and I bolt into a sitting position, heart hammering in my chest.

I'm at the Spellwrights' party.

I found my Sign.

And now I'm royally fucked.

As I unclench my fist and stare at the slender silver pen in my hand, my mind starts to race as fast as my heart.

Maybe it isn't a Relic. Maybe it's just an imitation Relic, and the real Relic is somewhere else, in a vault or something. I mean, what family would keep a Relic—an Ancestral Relic, no less—lying out in the open like that? Then again, the Spellwrights aren't just any family. No one in their right mind would dare steal from them because—

My mouth goes dry with fear as the thought takes form, like a dark shape emerging from smoke.

They'll kill me if they find out.

And not in a hyperbolic, euphemistic way, like when people say 'my mom will kill me if she catches me smoking' or 'my boss will kill me if I don't finish this on time.'

I mean they will literally kill me and dump my body in Harbor City Bay.

If the rumors are true, it wouldn't be the first time they'd solved a problem that way.

As with any valuable, rare commodity, there's a black market for Relics, and the Spellwrights run it. When Crafters mysteriously disappear, or turn up dead, there's always suspicion that the Spellwrights are to blame—that the victims crossed them somehow, or were killed for their Signs.

There's no way they'd let a nobody like me—a Lovecraft, no less—disrespect them by taking their Ancestor's Relic as his Sign.

Which brings me back to my first thought: maybe it's not a Relic, or maybe it's not my Sign.

As far as I know, a Relic can't be a Sign, and finding your Sign isn't supposed to hurt like being hit with a wall of bricks.

When Lyssa found her crochet hook, she'd just smiled, picked it up, and had little sparks jump from her fingers as she touched it. She'd showed it to our mom, and that was that. The antique-shop owner hadn't even charged her for it, as is customary. A Crafter can't help finding their Sign, and can't leave it behind once they have. If the object is for sale, or belongs to someone else, it's expected that the owner will give it to the Crafter as a courtesy.

In my case, I do not expect the Spellwrights to uphold this tradition.

Ancestral Relics are priceless and hold enormous significance and power. If this Relic is my Sign, then that power would become mine—and that, I'd wager, is a problem the Spellwrights will want to solve.

So, if it is my Sign, I'll have to steal it.

Before I do anything, though, I have to be sure.

Pushing myself to my feet, I cast about for something to write on. Finding nothing, I pull a book off a shelf at random and flip to the back where, thankfully, there are a few blank leaves.