Lady Elianora should have taken the time to learn more about her younger grandchildren as people, not just as pawns in her own plans … because Cordelia’s fear washed away under a tidal wave of fury as she lay crushed in the pitch darkness between her triplets.

This time, there was no sweet-smelling spell-steam to confuse her. This time, she could focus … and she had sworn never to allow herself to be trapped again.

A moment later, Rosalind landed on Giles with a soft thump as Cordelia’s human body vanished from between them. A tiny black beetle scuttled on six swift legs up the flat sides of the chest. It slid swiftly out through the keyhole, squeezing easily past the big old key that sat so smugly in the lock.

Cordelia was free and uncaged once more … and Grandmother was about to discover just how troublesome her long-lost grandchildren could be.

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Eleven

From her perch on top of the locked cedar chest, Cordelia looked around Grandmother’s cottage with multifaceted beetle eyes and saw a dozen different views at once, arranged into a dazzling puzzle before her. Every different shape loomed overwhelmingly high; all the angles were off-balance, and Grandmother was nowhere to be seen. Was she even in the cottage any longer?

Cordelia reached out with two thin, secretive antennae and tasted the air, testing it for information.

She couldn’t hear anything in beetle form, but she felt the vibrations like a drumbeat. Grandmother was definitely here and moving around the floor.

If she’d been the one to train Mother in magic, she could turn Cordelia human again in a heartbeat.

Shifting forms, Cordelia fluttered up into the dusty rafters high above the room to listen and wait for the perfect moment. A dull gray moth wouldn’t be noticed hiding among all of these cobwebbed beams above the dangling tapestries—and moths, unlike beetles, had brilliant hearing. Picking a dark corner to perch in, she wafted her sensitive wings to catch every scrap of sound that floated up to her from below.

Grandmother was humming to herself. It wasn’t the family lullaby this time; it was a tune that Cordelia had never heard before, lilting and flicking like steps in a dance, and Grandmother sashayed across the floor as she hummed it. “Almost … almost there … oh my goodness, it’s the famous Lord Haldemere, isn’t it?”