Preston nodded. “And all the trees planted around the property are mountain ash. For someone who doesn’t keep any of his father’s books around, he certainly seems to have studied their edicts closely.”
Mountain ash, iron. Effy had even noticed a crush of red berries outside the cottage. Rowan berries were meant to guard against the Fair Folk, too.
Ianto had his father’s commissioned portraits of the Fairy King and Angharad hanging right above the stairs. Maybe that was another aegis. If he could keep the Fairy King trapped inside a frame, inside one of Myrddin’s stories, it would stop him from slipping through the front door.
Effy wondered if perhaps that was what Ianto truly wanted from her: a house that could protect him from the Fairy King. What if he, too, had seen the creature in the road, with its bone crown and wet black hair?
But what would the Fairy King want with Ianto? He came for young girls with pale hair to gild his crown. Men slept soundly in their beds while their wives and daughters were spirited away. That was what the stories said.
And the shepherd had told her as much when he gave her the hag stones. A pretty young girl alone on the cliffs up there . . .
She shook her head to dispel the thoughts. Preston, who had been gripping the edge of the bookcase with both hands, stepped back, sighing.
The bookcase wobbled, not inconsiderably—enough to reveal a knife-slit of space between the shelf and the wall. Effy and Preston looked at each other.
Without needing to speak, they both went to the far end of the bookcase and pulled. It made a heaving sound that Effy was sure would disturb the mistress—if she was indeed in the next room—but her pulse was racing and her mind didn’t linger on the possibility that they might be caught.
When they had gotten the bookcase far enough away, Effy could see that there was no wall behind it at all. Just an empty black space that became, as she stepped into it, a small room gouged into the side of the house.
“Be careful,” Preston said. “Effy, wait. I’ll get a candle.”
She didn’t want to wait. Her heart was pounding, but it was so dark that she didn’t really have a choice. She stood there in the cold room, seeing nothing on all sides, and oddly she was not afraid. It was so silent, the air so still. Effy could only imagine that whatever was in the room with her, if it had ever been alive at all, was already dead.
Preston came back with a candle and slid into the room beside her. It was a tight fit, and their shoulders were pressed together. She could feel his arm rise with his breathing, just a little hitched, just a little quick.
He shined the candle around, revealing dust-coated walls and cobwebbed corners, peeling plaster and gray spots of mold. Where the paint had been stripped away, a patch of brickwork was exposed, and the mortar was dyed black, as if with ink.
There was nothing in the room save for a single dented tin box. It was in the exact center of the floor, placed there with purpose.
Effy went to kneel beside it, but Preston thrust out his arm, pinning her back.
“What?” she demanded. “What is it?”
“Your knees,” he said, lowering the candle to point at them. “I’m sure they’re still raw and—” He looked flustered, one hand brushing through his untidy hair, and it took another moment for him to finally say, “Just let me.”
“Oh.” Effy watched as Preston knelt down on the floor. “I thought you were going to tell me the box was haunted.”
She couldn’t see his face, but she heard Preston’s now familiar huff of laughter. “It does look a bit haunted, doesn’t it?”
“I’m glad you don’t entirely lack imagination.”
Preston gave the box a gentle shake. “It’s locked.”
“No,” Effy said, her voice edging on petulant. “Let me see.”
Preston stood up, brushing off his trousers, and handed her the box. Like the rest of the room, it was covered in dust. Effy had to blow on the front to read the words stamped on it: PROPERTY OF E. MYRDDIN.
Her heart leaped. She tamped down her eagerness as she examined the rest of the box. Below his name was a little engraving of the same two saints, Eupheme and Marinell, their beards swollen like titanic waves. Effy got the same feeling she had felt while paging through those old books in the university library—like she was discovering something arcane and secret and special, something that belonged, in some small way, to her.
And to Preston, of course. She could tell from the dust that no other fingers had touched this box for a long, long time. There was a small keyhole in the front, but the metal felt very flimsy, no more substantial than the tin where Effy’s grandfather kept his neatly rolled cigars.