Key Of Knowledge Read Online Free

knew from what Malory had discovered and experienced, that moments after this slice of time, the souls of the daughters had been stolen and locked away in a box of glass.
    Pitte lifted a carved box, opened the lid. “Inside are two disks, one with the emblem of the key. Whoeverchooses the scribed disk is charged to find the second key.”
    â€œLike last time, okay?” Zoe gave Dana’s hand a hard squeeze. “We look together.”
    â€œOkay.” Dana took a slow breath as Malory stepped up, laid a hand on her shoulder, then Zoe’s. “Want to go first?”
    â€œGosh. I guess.” Closing her eyes, Zoe reached into the box, closed her hand over a disk.
    With her eyes open and on the portrait, Dana took the one that remained.
    Then each held her disk out.
    â€œWell.” Zoe stared at her disk, at Dana’s. “Looks like I’m running the anchor lap.”
    Dana ran her thumb over the key carved in her disk. It was a small thing, that key, a straight bar with a spiral design on one end. It looked simple, but she’d seen the real thing—she’d seen the first key in Malory’s hand, burning with gold, and knew it wasn’t simple at all.
    â€œOkay, I’m up.” She wanted to sit, but locked her shaky knees instead. Four weeks, she thought. She had four weeks from new moon to new moon to do if not the impossible at least the fantastic.
    â€œI get a clue, right?”
    â€œYou do.” Rowena took up a sheet of parchment and read:
    â€œYou know the past and seek the future. What was, what is, what will be are woven into the tapestry of all life. With beauty there is blight, with knowledge, ignorance, and with valor there is cowardice. One is lessened without its opposite.
    â€œTo know the key, the mind must recognize the heart, and the heart celebrate the mind. Find your truth in his lies, and what is real within the fantasy.
    â€œWhere one goddess walks, another waits, and dreams are only memories yet to come.”
    Dana picked up a snifter of brandy, drank deep to untie the knots in her belly. “Piece of cake,” she said.

Chapter Two
    â€œM CDONALD’S introduced the Big Mac in 1968.” Dana swiveled lazily in her chair at the library’s resource desk. “Yes, Mr. Hertz, I’m positive. The Big Mac went system-wide in ’68, not ’69, so you’ve had a year more of the secret sauce than you thought. Looks like Mr. Foy got you on this one, huh?” She laughed, shook her head. “Better luck tomorrow.”
    She hung up the phone and crossed the Hertz/Foy daily bet off her list, then meticulously noted today’s winner on the tally sheet she kept.
    Mr. Hertz had nipped Mr. Foy at the end of last month’s round, which netted him lunch at the Main Street Diner on Mr. Foy’s tab. Though for the year, she noted, Foy was two points up, so he had the edge on bagging dinner and drinks at the Mountain View Inn, the coveted annual prize.
    This month, they were neck and neck, so it was still anybody’s game. It was her task to officially announce thewinner each month, and then, with a great deal more ceremony, the trivia champ at year’s end.
    The two had kept their little contest going for nearly twenty years. She’d been part of it, or had felt like part of it, since she’d started her job at the Pleasant Valley Library with her college degree still crisp in her hand.
    The daily ritual was something she would miss when she turned in her resignation.
    Then Sandi breezed by with her bouncy blond ponytail and permanent beauty-contestant smile, and Dana thought there were certain things she would definitely not miss.
    The fact was, she should have given her two weeks’ notice already. Her hours at the library were down to a stingy twenty-five a week. But that time could be put to good use elsewhere.
    She’d be opening her bookstore, her part of Indulgence, the communal business she