They were in the room at Prospero Hall which their father didn't think they knew about; that was how it started. He had built in his study a private room behind the bookcase, and the redhead twins Tessa and Bellamy liked to toy around with his things in there when he was attending meetings or away on his work for the Prosperity Foundation, or whatever else he liked to get up to.
It functioned for him like a private treasure room, and for them like a way to get to know him in ways merely talking to him would never achieve. He had old model trains his mother — their grandmother — Eudora Prospero once cherished, before the aftermath of the Adventure Fair Massacre in 1959 left a burn on her name. He had paintings of himself, and photographs with all sorts of creators and innovators from Fort Merchant, Idyllville, and many others, including with Mother Mancer and the Archmage of the Veil, which watched over Inglenook as the top-level team of Royal Protectors.
And he had the box.
Bellamy found it first, and showed it to Tessa. "It's lead," he said as she examined it. "Think it's got a soul gem in it?"
"Sure, or maybe some ancient artifact," she scoffed. "It's got a keyhole, so it's locked anyway."
"Huh, can't you just pick the lock?"
Tessa glanced at him, raising her eyebrow. "Who's been telling you these things about me?"
Bellamy shrugged.
"Will you guard the door for me?" Tessa asked.
Bellamy glanced at the door and nudged his body toward it, while Tessa took a safety pin off her sweater and swirled it around in the lock a bit. It didn't budge, but surely there must have been a key somewhere.
"If we can find the key, I'm sure that'll be a far better option," Tessa said, pinning the pin back to her sweater.
"I wonder where it is," Bellamy said.
"Not here," Tessa said, setting the box down and staring at it. "Come on, let's see if we can find it somewhere."
Their fruitless search lasted all the way to dinner time, which was held in the main dining room of Prospero Hall. Large, its high ceilings dangled with chandeliers, while its walls were covered in various relics the Prospero family had presumably collected in their time.
In attendance were Tessa and Bellamy, and their father Richard, plus the chief financial officer of Richard's charitable organization, the Prosperity Foundation, which helped survivors of crises move on with their lives and performed various acts of social outreach to the poor and struggling. Its chief financial officer was Penelope Grant, and she was seated at the table along with the three Prospero family members.
They were partway through a mostly-silent dinner when the questions began.
Tessa spoke first, her fork twirling in a bit of meatloaf. "How did our mother die?" she asked.
Richard blinked at her, glanced at Penelope, then back at his daughter. "She was killed by a bear," he said. "We were camping together, and I guess it must have smelled something on her." He took a bite of potato. "She didn't make it to morning, and, well, there was barely anything left to bury. Not that there needed to be anyway."
"Why not?"
"Most of our family choose cremation," he said. "It's our ties to the concept of the phoenix; burn our bodies, and our flesh is born anew. I gave her the same respect. Buried her ashes in the earth, but apart from that, there was nothing left."
Tessa stared at her meatloaf, while Bellamy drank his iced tea. Penelope monitored the looks on everyone's faces rather carefully for her part.
"That was a long time ago, wasn't it?" Penelope asked, to the room in general.
"When we were 3," Bellamy said. "I don't remember her, but it was all over the news. She was related to the rest of that family, the Valentines, so I guess she was pretty popular already by then."
"Not popular," Richard said. "But yes, the Valentines...Adelaide, and her sister Tuppence...fairly famous, especially in the wake of that business with the Snowden warlock. I never thought it was fair what happened to that Hale girl."
They each nodded, taking their own bites of meatloaf and carrots and roast potatoes, and drinks of their iced tea, as the radio in the corner played gentle dark jazz music, a favorite genre in Inglenook.
"What put that on your mind tonight, by the way?" Richard asked of Tessa.
Tessa shrugged. "Dunno. At school, they've been talking about Soultide and the Alderghast and all that, so..."
"Well, that's a bit strange for a springtime subject," Richard said. "It's only been a few weeks since the last one."
"I guess this stuff lingers sometimes," Bellamy said.
"She doesn't have a ghost, right?" Tessa asked. "The Alderghast took her when it was time that year?"
Richard raised his eyebrows. "As far as I know," he said. "She wouldn't have wanted to waste away in a soul gem like that, and we all know what happens to ghosts when they're not moved on for too long."
"Better to just let the course of nature take her with it," Bellamy suggested.
"Which means, I'm afraid, we won't be seeing her again," Richard said. "Penelope, I'm glad you joined us tonight."
Bellamy glanced at her, while Tessa stared at her plate.
"Right," Penelope said. "It's been a wonderful meal. Tessa, did you cook this?"
Tessa glanced at Penelope, her blue eyes distant behind thick, black-framed glasses. "It was one of the cooks, I think." Her fork twirled. "I don't think I could make a meatloaf. I'd just burn it anyway."
"I'm sure you're a wonderful cook, Tessa," Penelope said. "I'll have to give you a few recipes and see what you do with them."
Tessa nodded, her faded look betraying nothing about her reaction to that idea.
The rest of the dinner continued more or less the same way, until Penelope needed to head home and Richard needed to retire to his study. Tessa and Bellamy were left no closer to opening the box they had found; but, as Tessa revealed once she snuck into Bellamy's room later that night, she had snatched it from Richard's treasure room on their way out.
"Weren't you wondering who told me you pick locks?" Bellamy asked as she set the box down on his desk, along the wall opposite his bed.
Tessa nodded. "It just happened to come with me. Do you think we could just smash it open?"
"Sure," Bellamy said. "But then there would be no box left."
"Well, I wanna know what's in it," Tessa said. "How about..."
She gestured for him to move away from the box. "What are you doing?" he asked.
"It's lead, so it resists basically any magic," she said. "But what about something that's not magic?"
She twirled her fingers in the air, a few feet from the box, and Bellamy could feel radiations of warmth as her spirit channelled the molecules into superheated air particles.
"When fire burns, and secrets kept, my heart so yearns, my spirits wept," she intoned, collecting a focused burst of air between her fingers. "Let this flame burst the lock, let this answer be my rock, and my power burst forth unto thee."
The burst of air shot like a bullet straight for the lock on the box, the superheated air — despite their magical origins — melting just enough of the lock to let the box pop open.
Bellamy reached for it, tapping on the lid to see if it was still hot. "I thought you weren't supposed to do that anymore," she said.
She shrugged. "What the Protectorate doesn't know. Besides, I'll be licensed soon. Licenses are really just there to tell someone else you can do something you already know how to do anyway."
Bellamy scoffed, and opened the box.
The box, as it turned out, was not for a soul gem or anything like that. It actually contained a mass of letters, on various bits of paper, addressed to their father from someone named "D██████".
"That's strange," Tessa said as she examined a few of them. "They're all scratched out, look." She showed Bellamy a few.
"They're signed by him, but the name's been blanked away," he said, summarizing the situation fairly well.
"Do you think he didn't want anyone knowing who these were from?" Tessa asked.
Bellamy shrugged. "Maybe he didn't want to remember who they're from. They're all random stuff anyway. Most of these don't make any sense. They're either in a fake language or they're just jumbles of random words. When they aren't, it's just introspection and stuff about the forest."
Tessa was busy with one of them as he spoke, which apparently was not quite a jumble. "Not all of them," she said, handing him the letter.
"'Under the mourning sky, the wind scatters the ash'," he recited, reading from the page in his hand. "'What happened that night was no one's fault, Richard, but we have done well to move on from it. I suspect no one recognizes me here, which is for the better, because if they knew I killed your wife, I'd be in Quagmire Prison before the bears can catch a fish'."
Tessa gazed into the distance, at a random bit of minty green wall near the desk. "Keep reading," she said.
"'I appreciate as always the resources you've helped me with'," Bellamy continued. "'I would be starving in these woods if it wasn't for your care packages, as there haven't been deer here for years, according to the locals. Something in these woods is evil, which must sound like a lark coming from me, but I'm only repeating what the townsfolk say. At the very least, no one else really comes here apart from the ones sticking their nose into the woods, and they all disappear anyway. If I don't manage to keep the urge away, I'll have a solid reason no one will ever come looking for whoever takes Adelaide's place next time. May your help keep us both happy and healthy. Much appreciated, my friend. Yours always, D██████'."
He set the letter down and glared at Tessa. "What the hell did I just read?"
Tessa glared at her new favorite spot on the wall, then glanced at him. "I don't think a bear attack killed our mother, Bellamy," she said. "I think she was murdered, and I think our father knows who did it."