"Is there anything else Fae in there? Or anywhere in the shop?" I asked. "And who sold you that pin, Eleanor?"
"This ring, maybe," Jed said, taking a ring out of the case and placing it on the counter a good two feet from the brooch. "If I remember correctly, its wearer's chickens will lay extra eggs."
I threw my hands up in the air. "Thank goodness! We're saved!"
Jed gave me a cautious look. "I'm not sure—"
"It's sarcasm, granddad," Jack said. "It gets used a lot these days. Especially in life-or-death situations. And anyway, knowing the Fae, the eggs will probably explode."
"Or hatch little chicken-sized monsters," Eleanor said.
"Did Alejandro ever tell you about the basilisks?" I asked her.
Jack held up a hand. "Back to the point. How can we use the brooch to call the queen? I'm sure it's not as simple as dialing her number."
"I believe we need to match it to similar runes that they would have carved into stone," Jed said. "Pretty much a hopeless task to find that."
I held out my phone. "Would they look anything like this?"
Jed's eyes widened, and he picked up the brooch and held it next to my phone. "Those are exactly right! Where did you get that?"
I sighed. "Why? Why not carve runes in a nice, central, easily findable,dryplace?"
Eleanor looked confused. "Tess, what on Earth are you talking about?"
"I'm going back down the well."
After we explainedthat, I tried to get Eleanor to remember who'd sold her the brooch, or at least find the paperwork, and was unsuccessful at both. Eleanor, who was sharp as a tack, wracked her brain to remember, but she said everything about the transaction was hazy in her mind. And we couldn't find any paperwork on it at all, although she was always meticulous about paperwork. We had to be in our business. Criminals thought they could use pawnshops for fencing stolen merchandise, but no legitimate shop owner would let them, and we made sure to have the proper paperwork to prove to the police that we hadn't.
This time, though, Eleanor hadn't been able to find the paperwork anywhere. Not in paper files, not on the computer. It was as if the transaction had never taken place.
But we had the brooch.
"Somebody wanted you to have this, but didn't want you to remember them, clearly," Jed said.
"Can this be a coincidence?" I looked at all of them. "Jed, the brooch, the dagger … someway, somehow, all of this is connected."
Jack nodded. "I agree. And I don't like mysteries when it comes to the Fae."
"Maybe the portal to the Summerlands is fluctuating? The magic can be unpredictable, I've heard," Jed said. "That might explain some of this."
Nobody answered him, probably because none of us had the slightest clue.
Now for the tough part. "Should we contact Susan or Aunt Ruby to try the communication thing? I mean, I can't imagine lowering Aunt Ruby down a well, but Susan would do it. And they have more official town roles than I do …"
Eleanor and Jack were shaking their heads before I even finished speaking.
"No," Eleanor said firmly. "I love her, but your Aunt Ruby isnotthe person to talk to an angry Fae queen. They're all about delicacy and diplomacy and—God love her—Ruby will go in there with a sledgehammer instead of a silver spoon."
"She's not wrong," Jack said. "And Susan might not be great either. The Fae have a particular dislike for human law enforcement after their experience of being put in iron jail cells in the past."
I sighed. "So we're back to me going down the well."
"I can do it," Jack said. "It will be a tight squeeze, but Jed can lower me down and pull me back up."
"No! She's already expressed interest in you, if that troll was telling the truth. What if she reaches through some kind of portal and kidnaps you?" I shook my head. "No, it has to be me. I'm nobody special, so she won't want me."
"You'reveryspecial," Jack said. "And we're going to get some answers if it kills them."
