The Nightingale Key

Rosalind got us into the archive workroom that night on the strength of being a Thorncastle, which turned out to open more doors than I'd ever managed with a staff badge. Priya met us there without asking a single question I didn't want to answer, which was its own kind of loyalty.

The brooch was back in secure storage, but "secure" at Fenwick & Vaughan meant a keypad Priya had the code to, and none of us hesitated long enough to call that a problem.

Under the workroom light, the seam looked exactly as it had before Gideon snatched it away — a hinge, a door, nothing to open it with.

"It needs a key," Priya said, turning it in gloved hands. "Something small. Look at the catch — it's shaped like a beak. A matching key would have to be shaped the same way."

My stomach dropped before my mind caught up with why.

"I have a key like that."

Not in the box from the attic — in a small drawstring pouch my grandmother had given me years before she died, told me never to sell no matter how hard things got. I'd always assumed it was sentimental junk. A tiny brass nightingale, no bigger than my thumbnail, its beak worn smooth from handling.

"It's at my flat," I said. "Twenty minutes. I can be back before Gideon even knows we're here."

Rosalind caught my arm as I turned. "Hurry."

I didn't stop for the lift. I ran the four flights down, ran the six blocks, tore the pouch open with hands that wouldn't quite cooperate, and ran back the way I'd come, the little brass key digging into my palm the whole way.

I heard the voices before I reached the workroom door — Rosalind's, raised, and underneath it Sebastian's, low and furious, and Gideon's smoothest tone gone thin and sharp at the edges.

I pushed the door open and stopped.

Sebastian Thorncastle stood in the middle of the room with the nightingale brooch in his closed fist, Priya backed against the archive shelves, and Rosalind planted between her uncle and the door like she meant to hold the line with nothing but her own body.

"Tamsin," Rosalind said, without turning around, "you're going to want to see this."