CHAPTER 31

Yuki shook her head. "Nope. I'm supposed to keep you out of trouble. Ratu did a brief inspection this morning and didn't detect anything dangerous."

"Her actual word was 'interesting,'" Beth interjected. "She didn't detect anything 'interesting' and declared that she thought you could handle it."

"But we won't know until you open it, so it's my turn to watch you." Yuki bowed her head.

"Ah." Mike slammed the rest of his breakfast, then worked his way through his coffee. After being locked in an extra-dimensional wardrobe last month, the household had discussed heightened security for him, particularly if weird things started to happen. His mysterious shipment definitely qualified as weird. "Well, I guess we should get this show on the road, then."

"I'll get Tink." Beth left him alone with Yuki while he put his plate in the dishwasher.

"So, I know this is a sensitive subject, but... any idea what Emily put in storage?"

Yuki shrugged. She had been locked away in her tower when Emily had died and the house had reset, which meant that she still had her memories from before the reset. Everyone else only regained them if Mike discovered something or somebody new. "Hard to say. Between how much stuff has gotten broken and how much is already missing, I really don't know what she could have gotten rid of. The rats came after I did, and they moved quite a bit of stuff around. I will say that a magic box that has done its best to come home on its own is beyond me."

"Ah. Well, thanks anyway." He finished his coffee and rinsed the cup out before putting it on the drying rack. "Shall we?"

"Yes." She followed him past the small kitchen table and into the dining hall. The rats were still watching the box on the ceiling intently, and Mike took a seat at the table and waited.

Beth and Tink showed up and sat down. Tink was covered in dirt, but he didn't bother asking what she had been up to. Beth set Jenny down on the table, the doll's vacant eyes staring across the room.

"Should we open the other boxes first?"

"Your call," Beth told him. "Let's itemize what we have, though. Make sure stuff goes where it needs to instead of making a big mess."

"I miss the good old days when we could just throw stuff in the trash if we didn't want it." He picked up one of the boxes that had been stacked against the wall. Tink slid him a box cutter, then readied her hammer.

"Here goes." He could feel the whole room tense up, and he pushed the blade of the box cutter into the thick tape that had sealed the box shut. He moved slowly, half expecting something to jump out at him. Satisfied that he was probably safe, he put the box cutter on the table and opened the flaps.

"Oh," he muttered, staring at the pile of styrofoam popcorn inside. He was going to have to feel around with his hands. Shaking his head in disgust, he stuck his hands inside and felt around, his fingers closing on something hard.

"What's behind door number one?" he asked in an announcer's voice, and pulled the object free.

Dana watched Tink go into the house with Beth, a small frown on her face.

A minute ago, they had been testing one of the drones using a magical stone as a power source. The drone had behaved perfectly for about fifteen seconds, then started chasing Tink through the yard, ignoring its remote. The goblin had taken a nasty fall into one of the potted plants, shattering the pot with her thick skull and covering herself in damp dirt.

With a deluge of angry words in goblin, Tink slid the goggles over her eyes and picked up a chunk of pottery. Her aim had been perfect, and she smashed one of the rotors.

The drone spiraled out of control, rising up while spinning. A strong breeze caught it and carried it across the yard while Dana frantically tried to land it before it landed in someone else's yard. The drone seemed to respond somewhat to altitude controls, but only intermittently.

On its way down, the drone caught on the edge of the large iron gate in the back of the yard, then tumbled into a death spiral on the other side. That was when Beth had arrived and asked Tink to come with her.

Dana walked up to the large iron gate and put her hands on her hips. The stone wall wasn't great for climbing by any means, and if Tink had been here, she could have easily given the goblin a boost (or the other way around—Tink was quite strong). Grabbing the gate with both hands, she gave it a shake.

It didn't budge. The old lock on it had some rust, but looked otherwise functional. She sincerely doubted that Mike had the key to it, though. They had never had any reason to check out the woods behind the house, and she certainly hadn't seen a key lying around that looked nearly as big as the keyhole was on this particular lock.

"C'mon," she muttered, sticking her arms through the bars. The drone was still several feet away from her outstretched hands.

The drone itself wasn't important, but the magical stone inside of it was. She hated to even take her eyes off of it, worried that some passerby might pick up the drone out of curiosity. She pressed her face against the bars, looking along the edges of the forest behind the house.

There were no trails to be seen, and no signs of life either. It seemed odd to her that so many houses backed to this forest, but nobody was back there. It seemed like the perfect place for an afternoon stroll. The gate was made of thick bands of iron with decorative spikes at the top beneath a brick arch. The arch wasn't high enough for her to fit through the gap, but if she scaled the gate, she could easily get on top of the wall instead.

She put her hands and feet on the gate and started to climb. When she was halfway up, her foot slipped off of one of the bars and she fell backwards, the iron spike at the top she was using as a handhold bending until she slipped. She fell flat on her back, the wind knocked out of her.