Jen Davies was the freelance reporter who last year had exposed my roommate Phoenix’s memoir as fraudulent. I’d later learned that she belonged to the Grove (and that she felt bad about her treatment of Phoenix). After I was initiated to the Grove, Jen confided to me that she and a group of other young members had formed a splinter group, called Sapling, which questioned the ultra-conservative policies of the Grove. If anyone could tell me more about what the Grove was intending to do next week when they came to Fairwick, it would be Jen.

I reached her voicemail and left a message to call me back. Then I stood in my foyer wondering what to do next. Even with Bill’s ministrations the house still needed cleaning and I needed to do that reading before my new tutor showed up. I suddenly felt exhausted and unable to choose which I preferred: for Duncan Laird, DMA, to think I was a slob or an idiot. Of course, he was bound to be impressed when I showed him the Aelvestone …

The Aelvestone. With a guilty start I realized I hadn’t told Liz or Diana about it. How could I have forgotten? I must have been too distracted by their news about my new tutor. I should call and tell them now … but first I should check on the stone to make sure it was still okay.

I went upstairs to my bedroom and opened the drawer where I’d put it last night. The drawer was empty.

I’ve just forgotten which drawer it’s in, I told myself, my heart beating faster. I opened all the little drawers. Shells, stones, feathers … all the little oddments I kept, but no Aelvestone. There was only one drawer left: the one in which I kept the Dahlia LaMatte’s iron key, but that one was locked. It couldn’t be there …

I got out the key from my night table and opened the locked drawer. Beside the iron key lay the Aelvestone, the flannel cloth folded neatly beneath it.

How the hell had it gotten there? I wondered, lifting the stone and cradling it in my hand. The only explanation I could imagine was that I’d gotten up some time in the night and moved it. Only I had no memory of doing that. As far as I knew, I’d spent the night making love to Liam in Faerie … but then at the end of the dream he had handed me the Aelvestone and told me to lock it up. Maybe I had gotten up then and moved it. It was disturbing not to remember doing it, but I’d heard of people on certain sleeping pills getting up and doing strange things they couldn’t recall later – and last night the Aelvestone had certainly acted like a powerful narcotic.