Taking the package from me was easy enough. Getting it open was hard. The tape was gummy and the fabric threads running through it fought my blade, too sticky and old to be sliced clean even with a sharp edge. He finally wrested it open and the package burst apart, eager to breathe and vomit up its contents after years of being held in by a corset of plastic and glue.
Something triangular went bouncing across the area rug, a dried, withered bit Newt made a beeline for as soon as he saw movement. I pounced first, barely making it in time to grab at the folded-over scrap before my cat dug his teeth into it. An enraged mewl rumbled from his tiny throat, his chest puffed out and his tail bristling, ready to fight me for his prize, but I flicked a belled stuffed mouse out from its hiding place next to one of the boxes and he bounded after it, distracted and happy.
“Huh.” I pulled myself back up onto the couch, examining what I had in my hand. “I’ll be damned. Well, I’m sure I am, but it’s definite now.”
“What is that?” Ryder recoiled, much like he’d done when he found me snipping my fingers apart. “That looks like—”
“Yep, fits right in,” I said cheerfully, holding my hair back as I fit the piece into the notch taken out of my ear. Except for some looseness from years of drying and a bit of growth, the triangular bit was a perfect match. “Looks like this is what Dempsey was given to sniff me out with. Like a puzzle piece. Find the elfin this fits to. Better than a glass slipper.”
“Some paper, looks like a contract, but there’s no names,” Ryder commented, spreading them out on a box lid. “Only numbers, like a code and money amounts, higher if you’re alive, and when he needed to be in SoCal to get his money. They gave him six months to find you and bring you over.”
“Took him a few,” I admitted. “I wasn’t very cooperative.”
“No, I can’t imagine you were. You’re not cooperative now,” he drawled, rolling his eyes at me. “This, now, this I know.”
The large square piece of silk he slipped out of the broken package was dull, as worn from age as the tape, or perhaps even more. Speckled with brown spots I suspected were blood, the silk’s cobalt hue faded toward the edges, leached to a robin’s-egg hue from water damage. It was double-sided, plain on one, but when Ryder turned it over, I saw an elaborate sigil of a silvery white dragon picked out in shiny threads, the colors shimmering when he ran it over his hand. There were bits of blue and green worked into its ridges, a fierce Asiatic draconian face captured in mid snarl. It was a simple sweep of floss, beads, and silk, more of an impression than a true rendering, but the sight of it left me perplexed.
“A Clan sigil.” Ryder caught my confusion with a glance. Then, figuring I needed more of an explanation, he continued, “Something like this is given to a child at birth, or when they’re named. It’s a formal welcome to their House. Their Clan. I recognize this one. It’s a dead Clan. The Xishari. I just don’t know why Dempsey had it.”
“You know a lot about dead Clans?” I turned the bit of mummified flesh over in my fingers. “And how the hell does a Clan die? Everyone of that bloodline bites the dust?”
“Or if there’s one left and she renamed herself, making a new Clan.” Ryder brushed the square out, spreading it over his thigh. “It’s considered to be ill luck to be the last of a Clan, especially if they’ve all fallen in battle. That’s what happened to the Xishari. Everyone was killed after the Last Great War with the Unsidhe. Before the Merge. Only Sebac remained, so she set aside her blood name and formed her own Clan, the Sebac. That’s how I know about the Xishari. She was the last of her Clan and then the first of her own. It’s a part of our family history. There are a few dead Clans, but this sigil, I know very well. It’s a cloud dragon. It was their mark.”
“Huh.” I mulled over what he said, scratching at the dragon scale under my skin. After a moment, I held the bit of my flesh Dempsey meant to send to his brother and turned it over so Ryder could see the Xishari sigil inked into the triangular slice. “Then explain to me why it was tattooed onto my ear and why Tanic cut it out.”