After fifteen minutes spent sneaking around back of the shelter to stay out of Newberry's sight, Jim ran home so fast he almost flew past his house.
His ribs hurt, and when he stepped inside, he stopped to let the pain ease before going into the basement.
The stairs were just as he remembered, shallow and uneven. And they still creaked. He used the ticking amulet's glow to light his way down.
When he reached the bottom, he rounded the stairs.
His mom's paintings still covered the open space below the steps, but footprints and smudges in the dust on the floor said someone had moved them more than once.
Jim nudged the paintings to one side and ducked under the stairs. Strickler, at 6'2", would have had to squeeze in here and hope he didn't get those horns stuck between the stairs.
He had no idea what to look for. There was no obvious hiding place: no boxes, hinges, trap doors, or—
His fingers edged an invisible seam in the wall, a hidden two-by-two compartment. There's gotta be a latch, a lever, a spring—something to get it open. He set the amulet on the floor, and its glow cast fluttering shadows on the walls.
You wouldn't have made this so Mom couldn't open it.
He set Kronisphere beside his amulet and ran both hands over every inch of the wall.
No keyholes or impressions.
What'd you do? Password protect it? "Of course, you did," Jim whispered. "But what would you have used as a password?"
It had to be something his mom would know—something she could say from memory, but only repeat under specific circumstances. That eliminated most common English words and phrases as well as anything in Trollish.
No. Not everything Trollish was out.
His mom knew her name.
Jim dug for the memory of her recitation.
It was vague, but he had to try. He didn't have time to run back to the shelter.
"Ah! How did she say it?" Jim roughed his hair.
A tap on his shoe.
Kronisphere had rolled out of its bag and sat at his feet, its green glow eclipsing the amulet's blueish light. Inside the sphere, an image of his mother formed.
He scooped up Kronisphere, and his mother's voice filled the cramped space under the stairs. She repeated three words slowly, as if practicing them.
"You really do have a strange way of interpreting time," he muttered to the sphere.
Jim recited each syllable carefully. When he'd said the last one, the hidden compartment clicked open.
Inside lay The Book of Ga-Huel, a second glamour mask, a knife Jim thought twice about touching barehanded, and a small box.
Jim opened the box and immediately shut it when the glitter of a pair of gold bands caught the light.
He put Kronisphere back in its bag before taking the ancient book and shutting the compartment. It locked with a faint click.
Hauling Kronisphere, the book, and his amulet upstairs took a moment.
Kronisphere, he set on the living room couch, but he kept the amulet in hand as he laid the book on the coffee table. Once, he'd tried to burn this book. Now he was glad he'd failed. Many of its illustrations contained beings he didn't recognize. The page from Morgana's possession of Claire flipped past.
He reached an empty page and shielded his eyes, prepared for a blinding surge of light, but only a brief flash of gold flooded the pages with two inked illustrations.
An image of his mother filled one page, but it wasn't a detailed drawing like the images of Gunmar or other trolls earlier in the book. This image was more of a silhouette, like the pictures of Claire. On the opposite page was an image of Mr. Strickler, in human form, the way he used to look before his familiar was rescued from the Darklands, thereby trapping him in his troll skin.
A few words, scrawled in the margin beside both images, were in Trollish.
Claire could have read it without help, but Jim held his amulet over the words. He hadn't had the chance to test whether this amulet translated Trollish into English. He hoped it did.
As the amulet's light fell over the words, each letter morphed and twisted until what stared at Jim were completely readable English words.
"Barbara Elizabeth Lake." He held the amulet over the words beside Mr. Strickler's image. "Walter Gareth Strickler."
Jim shed the amulet's light over the rest of the page.
Nothing.
He flipped it shut.
Instead of locking the book in the basement, Jim grabbed his old backpack from his room and stowed the book and Kronisphere inside before pocketing his amulet and heading back to the shelter.
He hoped Claire had found a way to get Newberry's recorder, or, at least, keep her away from Mary.