Niklas takes the contraption from Tessa and runs his palm along the surface. “My best guess is that it’s a puzzle box.”

“So how do we open it?” Bram asks.

Niklas shakes his head, his fingers still roaming over the surface. “They’re all different. Some open to a distinct series of movements on the surface, some open only in a designated location, others work with a specific fingerprint.”

“Like the lock on our room,” Tessa says.

“Yes,” Niklas says, “the magic is a little different, but the principle is the same.”

I think of the box that my mother had commissioned to hold my father’s bones. It was made by Midwood’s town Mason, beautifully crafted from the crushed fragments of a whale’s rib cage and inlaid with diagonal stripes of lapis lazuli. It had a lock that would only open—was supposed to only open—for me or my mother.

And yet Latham managed to steal my father’s remains anyway.

The memory rekindles my anger. Which, I suppose, is better than the frozen awareness of Bram next to me—the pressure of his humerus against my own, the way our patellas brush together, separated only by cloth and skin. Anger focuses my mind. Fashions it into something blade-sharp and ready for action.

“What are we going to try first?” I ask.

Niklas sets the box down and stares at it uncertainly for several long moments. “I think the series of movements is the most likely.”

“So give it a go,” Talon says.

Niklas swallows. Cracks his knuckles. And then with his finger begins to trace a pattern on the surface of the bone—a quick swipe downward, a half circle back up, and then another. We all watch him, transfixed. It takes me a moment to figure out what he’s doing, but when I do, it makes sense. His fingers are tracing letters, moving slowly, deliberately. B-O-N-E G-A-M-E-S. As he reaches the final curve, we all lean forward, our breath held against our ribs with wild hope.

But nothing happens.

Niklas’s shoulders slump. He deflates a little.

“No worries,” Talon says, slapping him on the back. “We’ll try something else.”

And we do. We pass the box around the circle, each of us examining it from every angle. Testing out our fingerprints, looking for seams that might indicate a mechanism for opening, trying out different number and letter combinations: each of our names one by one, the sum of our ages, IVORY HALL, and even—courtesy of Talon—HELP!

Jacey tips her face toward the ceiling and exhales loudly. “This seems like a silly challenge. How does a guessing game serve any purpose?”

The statement makes me sit up a little straighter. “Wait. Maybe you’re onto something.”

She lifts her head, lips pursed. “What do you mean?”

“Norah said the purpose of the bone games is for us to learn to work together.”