He uncrossed his arms as he thought. “You might be on to something.”
“I thought so. The thing is, I got more control over my natural abilities when I became a Were. That could’ve come with a cost.”
“That’s a really smart theory. How did you come up with it?”
“The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. As much as people’ve called me crazy, I don’t think I actually am.” I smiled. “If something’s not working, it’s time to try something else. Plus, Tia Rosa came by earlier. She said I needed to work on strengthening my natural abilities.” I started walking to the spell room. “Any chance there’s a book on that in here?”
“Claudia?” Daniel yelled through the house.
“Yeah,” she answered as she came down the stairs. “What’s up?”
“Do you have anything on sight here? I think I have a few books at my house, but my mom’ll be pissed if she sees that we’re working on something that’s not on the prescribed list.” His cheeks got a little pink.
“Prescribed list?”
He got redder. “She’s a little controlling.”
I gave him a bland stare. “I’ve noticed.”
We followed Claudia into the craft room. “Should have something here,” she said as she got down on her hands and knees and started searching through the piles of books under the worktable.
I shook my head. This was no way to store books. Someone needed to do some reorganization. I knelt down on the floor beside her and started digging through the piles.
After what felt like forever searching and coming up with nothing, Claudia dusted off her hands. “There’s another place I can check. Hang on.”
I stood up from where I was digging through the books, and Claudia came back with a box.
“Maybe in here?”
Daniel and her started inspecting the books, but something else caught my eye. I hadn’t noticed before that there was a hidden door built into one of the walls.
“What’s back there?” I asked.
“Back where?” Claudia said without looking up.
“Behind this,” I said as I walked to the wall.
“Nothing. What you see is what you get.”
“No. There’s something here.” I ran my fingers along the crease, looking for some sort of a latch. A small, thin piece of metal stuck up about two-thirds of the way up the door from the ground. I pushed on it and the door swung open.
“Way to hold back, Claudia,” Daniel said.
Claudia stared open mouthed at the closet. “I wasn’t holding back. I had no idea.”
The three of us crowded around to look inside.
“Wow. Look at this.” Daniel held up a little jar of something that looked like nail clippings.
“Oh my God,” Claudia said. “Those are so hard to find.”
Okay. They had my attention. “What is it?”
Claudia winced. “It’s gross. Trust me. You don’t want to know.”
Her saying that made me really want to know. I leaned forward, and knocked a book down. “I’m such a klutz.” I bent down to pick it up and paused.
It was brown with a teal colored seal—the one that I remembered my vision. I’d searched my whole bedroom to no avail and then forgotten about it. Then just like that, the book was here.
It was almost too perfect. Like I was meant to find it after I talked to Rosa.
But that couldn’t be right. Could it?
“What’d you find?” Claudia said.
“I’m not sure.”
I ran my hand over the book and hesitated for a second before grabbing it. Its cover was made of soft, flexible leather. I opened it, and the first page was signed with Grams’ name.
For Teresa. Don’t forget to use what you have to find the answers.
I shut the book and held it against my chest.
Holy shit. That was my abuela in the vision. I’d never even seen a photo of her that young, but now I knew why she’d seemed so familiar. Sometimes I was a little too dense for my own good.
Grams had been a really strong precog. She could see what was going to come, which was why she’d made a good coven leader. Luciana had some precognition, but all she could see were really vague things that might come to pass.
Rosa was right. Grams must’ve known what was going to happen to me. So, why would she ever name me as the leader? She had to have a back-up plan. I leaned against the countertop with the book. This was too good of a find.