Beyond The Shadows (Shadows Saga bk3) ON HOLD

Chapter 6- Book of Shadows

They didn't even finish their food before quickly going up the stairs and straight to the room that held all the boxes. They stopped just inside the door, their excitement quickly fading. It could take them days to sort through all of those boxes.

"What on earth did you bring with you?" Emmett asked.

"This isn't just mine, it's Natalie's as well. We had the entire house packed up and ready to move in. When we got news of an election instead, we just kept the boxes in here and only unpacked what we needed."

Mara felt Marx's hand move to hers, gripping it tightly. She took comfort in his touch; she knew she was going to need it. This room was riddled with memories. It was like a land mine ready to be set off by the littlest thing, much like her. Who knew what each box had in store.

As they started looking though, she noticed Natalie had at least some labeling a on the boxes. There were some labeled kitchen, others with living room, but that was about the extent of it. Other than that, they were mark free, ready to be opened.

Mara sat down and took a deep breath, diving into the first box, and finding some office supplies. There was a printer which they no longer had use for in the Magical Realm when she could create a copy of anything with her powers alone. There was a smaller box with paper clips, writing utensils, a stapler and other small tools.

She pushed the box to the side without looking at the rest. Mara knew it wouldn’t be in the box. Natalie had a system for packing the boxes, and the book wouldn’t be in with the printer.

She looked around, seeing what her friends had found in their boxes. Trixle had found a box with Mara’s winter clothes, Emmett had found a box that had random junk from their basement, but Marx had found something different entirely.

Something small and square was in his hands, and when Mara looked closer, she noticed it was a picture frame. The frame held a picture of Natalie and her when they were on vacation. It had happened the summer before she found out who she was and what she was.

Mara felt a tightness in her chest as she looked at the smiling faces behind the glass. It was like the picture was from an entirely different lifetime, which it sort of was. So much had happened in those couple years, so many things had changed. Mara would never see that smiling face again, and she wondered if she would ever smile like that again herself. It was a smile of a carefree teenager, a girl who’s biggest worry was getting through high school, not figuring out how to run a kingdom or finding the people who murdered her aunt.

“It won’t be in there,” Mara whispered.

Marx turned toward Mara, picture still in hand. “You should keep this, put it up in your room.”

Mara shook her head. “That was a human girl out with her human aunt. That picture was a lie. That’s not who I am, that’s not who we were.”

“That doesn’t change the fact that it was a good memory with your aunt. You need to hold onto those memories. Don’t let yourself be clouded with all the negatives.”

Mara held her hand out, taking the picture from Marx. She wasn’t sure she really wanted a reminder of what her life had been staring at her every morning she woke up, every night before she went to bed, but Marx was right.

She set the frame down beside her carefully and cleared her throat before reaching for the next box.

When box after box had the same result, Mara grumbled. She laid back on the ground in annoyance. “There has to be an easier way to do thi-”

She cut herself off and smacked her forehead. “There is a much easier way to do this.”

Mara sat back up and closed her eyes. She started focusing on the book, every detail of it she remembered, the design on the front, and the picture of Urissa on the back. She concentrated on the couple of spells she had looked at when she first got the book from her aunt.