Total pages in book: 69
Estimated words: 67614 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 338(@200wpm)___ 270(@250wpm)___ 225(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 67614 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 338(@200wpm)___ 270(@250wpm)___ 225(@300wpm)
“More burying,” I murmur. “Okay, let’s do it. We can get out some aggression by killing this thing.”
“That’s exactly what we’re going to do. Kill this son of a bastard.” Giles raises the hammer over his head and then smashes it down on the crystal, shattering it into several pieces.
There’s a sharp scream, and blue light comes up out of the stone. Giles and I both jump back and watch as that scream fades and the light climbs into the sky and then dissipates.
“Are you kidding me?” I didn’t realize I spoke out loud, but Giles’s gaze whips to mine. “It was that simple the whole time?”
“It needed a power source and a place to hide. Now, that’s all gone. I think it was that simple.”
I advance on the stone, and together, Giles and I smash it into tiny pieces, then separate it into little piles, filling cheesecloth bags with the remnants.
“We have to bury these in different places,” he says grimly. “And we don’t really have time to get permission.”
“We’ll do it on public land or in the woods. It’s dark, and we can do it quickly.”
Giles raises an eyebrow. “I never pegged you as the type to be okay with doing something illegal.”
“Is it illegal to bury crystals in this state? We’re returning them to the earth, that’s all.”
“I really love you.” He smiles proudly. “Come on. Let’s do this.”
“I have to put Merlin inside.”
I take the cat indoors and open the crate. He comes out right away and sniffs the air. His back twitches, but then he curls up into a ball and begins taking a bath.
“I think he just gave us the all-clear.”
“I can’t sleep.” I whisper it to Giles as we face each other in the bed, resting our cheeks on the pillows but looking at each other. “But I’m so tired. It was a crazy evening.”
“What are you thinking about?” He reaches out and brushes my hair off my cheek.
“What do you think?”
He chuckles softly. “I know. My mind is going a mile a minute, too.”
“How was it that easy? What if it’s not really gone, and this was only more games? Not to mention, we just destroyed a crystal that’s been in your family for more than three hundred years. That’s heartbreaking.”
“At the end of the day, it was just a rock, Breena.”
“You don’t believe that.”
He lets out a breath. “It’s true. I think there is great power in crystals. No, I know it. They are a conduit for energy, and they can heal. They can comfort. They can inspire love, productivity, and provide protection. But because they absorb energy, and because that particular stone has been in my family for so long, it makes sense that it used the stone to get to us. Labradorite is so powerful. It actually raises consciousness and grounds the spirit, which is exactly what it needed. Now that’s gone. And if you think I won’t burn the entire world to the ground if that’s what it takes to keep you safe, you don’t know me very well.”
“I know you would. I know it. Have you noticed that even Molly has been quiet since we got home?”
He pauses and seems to listen. “You’re right. Maybe we’re all in recovery mode tonight.”
“I’ve never dug so many holes in my life.” I shift and pull the covers higher, tucking them under my chin. “Also, I should probably feel a little guilty that we buried some right next to Henry Thoreau’s cabin at Walden Pond, but I’m not sorry.”
“The best part was getting to check you for ticks when we got home.” He waggles his eyebrows, making me giggle. “Henry might have gotten a kick out of it in his day.”
“I wonder if Jonas ever met him,” I say, thinking it over. “You know, at that time, Henry was good friends with Louisa May Alcott and Ralph Waldo Emerson. That was in the mid-eighteen hundreds. I wonder if Jonas knew of them then. He might have even walked past them on the street.”
“Isn’t that wild to think about?” Giles asks. “I mean, we know, logically, that Jonas has been on this Earth since the middle of the sixteen hundreds. But when you break it down like that and think of all the history he lived through, even just here in this little part of the world, it’s mind-blowing. He was here when the minutemen were, during the Revolutionary War. It’s really wild to think of everything he’s seen.”
“It almost hurts my brain when I do think about it,” I admit. “And yet, despite all of that, he seems so…normal.”
“He could probably use some therapy, but no one would believe him,” Giles replies. “I know I’d need to talk to someone if that happened to me.”
“Maybe he talks to Lucy. I know it’s not the same, but at least he has someone he can confide in now. For hundreds of years, he had to keep the secret to himself. That must have been torture.”