“Either way, I’m glad that you’re all right.”

Bria hugged me, her care and concern even warmer and stronger than her arms wrapped around me. After so many years of thinking her dead, it always surprised me to realize that she was alive and here with me—and that she loved me just like I loved her. I wondered if I’d ever stop feeling that way. Maybe it wouldn’t be a bad thing if I didn’t. Because I never, ever wanted to take her for granted—or any of my other loved ones.

Bria pulled back. The motion made the primrose rune around her throat wink, and the sly flash of silverstone reminded me that there was one more thing I needed to do tonight—for both of us.

I held my hand out to Bria. “Come with me. I have something to show you.”

She frowned in puzzlement, but she wrapped her fingers around my bloody ones. I led her over to the back of the rotunda and the recess where our mother’s and sister’s rune necklaces had been on display.

“Remember when I told you before that there were some things in here that belonged to us?” I asked.

“Yeah?”

“Well, here they are.”

I stopped in front of the wall and held my hand out—

But the recess was empty.

The glass had been smashed, and I immediately began scanning the floor around the recess, but all I saw were splinters of glass and chips of marble. I stalked back and forth along the wall, searching all around me.

Nothing—absolutely nothing.

The robbers must have looted this spot along with everything else. There was no sign of my mother’s and sister’s necklaces and no telling where they were. Maybe they were mixed in with the pile of cell phones in the front of the rotunda. Maybe they were outside in one of the moving trucks or in one of the cases I’d seen on the getaway boat. Maybe they’d even disappeared into someone’s pocket when everyone was looking the other way. There was just no way of knowing. I could search the museum for days and never find them.

They’d been right here, close enough to touch, and now they were gone again, vanished once more like they’d never existed to start with. Pain stabbed through me at the loss of these last two pieces of my mother and my sister.

“Gin? What is it?” Bria asked. “What’s wrong?”

I just shook my head. I didn’t have the heart to tell her what I’d seen—and what we’d both lost.

Again.

Chapter 29

29

After that, things followed a predictable pattern. The po-po arrived, and all the fine boys in blue started taking witness statements and collecting evidence.