Instead of the lover’s photographs she’d half-expected, the interior of the shell contained a knotwork design, enamel painted in rich colors. Curves of rich ochre looped and interpenetrated, weaving above and beneath a branch of turquoise. The design was picked out in silver—it was far brighter than the exposed outer case had suggested.

Miriam sighed and leaned back in her sprung office chair. “Well, there goes that possibility,” she told the press clippings gloomily. No photographs of her mother or long-lost father. Just some kind of tacky cloissoné knotwork design.

She looked at it closer. Knotwork. Vaguely Celtic knotwork. The left-hand cell appeared to be a duplicate of the right-hand one. If she traced that arc from the top left and followed it under the blue arc—

Why had her birth-mother carried this thing? What did it mean to her? (The blue arc connected through two interlinked green whorls.) What had she seen when she stared into it? Was it some kind of meditation aid? Or just a pretty picture? It certainly wasn’t any kind of coat of arms.

Miriam leaned back further. Lifting the locket, she dangled it in front of her eyes, letting the light from the bookcase behind her catch the silver highlights. Beads of dazzling blue-white heat seemed to trace their way around the knot’s heart. She squinted, feeling her scalp crawl. The sound of her heart beating in her ears became unbearably loud: There was a smell of burning toast, the sight of an impossible knot twisting in front of her eyes like some kind of stereoisogram forming in midair, trying to turn her head inside out—

Three things happened simultaneously. An abrupt sense of nausea washed over her, the lightbulb went out, and her chair fell over backward.