I moved to where the scrying mirror glowed blue on its wall, two imitation garnets floating in its glass—not above it, but rather behind the pane, as though I’d have to reach through the glass itself to get at them. I wondered which of the other two had snagged one of the tokens already; my money was on Rowan, who also knew about the scrying mirror from our strategy sessions. But Gareth might have learned about it, too, during his dalliance with Talia.

I really had to hand it to the Grimoire, when it came to the discombobulating ingenuity of this hunt. It was much more disorienting to have us stumbling around this way, blind to who had what, rather than physically scrambling around town after one another.

“Sorry, Dread Lady,” I mumbled under my breath, as I pressed my fingers to the mirror’s cool surface. “Please let’s not be too literal about this being your eye.”

For a second, there was no give to the glass, no yield at all—then it parted coldly under my skin, like some cross between mercury and frosty Jell-O. And as I reached for one of the remaining tokens, I felt the unmistakable brush of chilly fingers over mine, like a sly little hello or even well done from beyond the veil. Yelping, I drew my hand back as if I’d been stung, the garnet’s light dissolving into my palm.

A ghost of laughter echoed in my ears, and I thought I heard an amused whisper of “such beastly girls . . .” trail off at the very edges of my hearing.

Even having met the founder in the flesh—or in the spirit, as it were—once before, without Talia here as a buffer between us, it unnerved me enough that I suddenly and powerfully wanted to be gone.

I’d already figured out the last clue, the soul at the center of what the founders had made; it was Lady’s Lake, it had to be. But I wanted to leave that one for last. It felt like a closing of the circle, the culmination of the challenge, like something that should necessarily be done at the very end. But Caelia’s dream remained elusive, no matter how I racked my brain over what it might mean. Gareth had said something to me once, something quirky about his ancestor that had to do with sleep, or a pillow, or maybe a bed . . .

But whatever it was, he’d told me about it a decade ago, and now I just couldn’t quite put my finger on the memory.

Goose bumps still bunching my skin, I sat on the edge of Talia’s bed, dropping my head into my hands and I struggled to remember. Dream, sleep, rest, bed . . . with every passing moment in which I failed to piece it together, my panic grew. Gareth would’ve gotten it already; “Caelia’s dream” had been the clue he muttered to himself before he vanished from Castle Camelot. And though Harlows were technically the bookish ones, the history keepers best versed in the town’s secrets and lore, I knew better than to underestimate Rowan—who’d demonstrated strength, wit, and a bullish tenacity a lot like my own. If he ended up winning, I couldn’t really have any problem with it. It would be, in a way, Linden’s victory, too, which I could only be happy about.