Wolf under an oak tree.

I was busy meddling with my ring while Elana kept pacing back and forth, trying to think what the combination would be. We have tried all sorts of combinations; Jace’s birthday, His grandfather’s birthday, their wedding day but nothing worked, and now we are down to only three attempts, and I don't even want to imagine what would happen if we hit the wrong combination at the last attempt.

“Elana, did you try mind linking Mike?” this idea struck my brain after nearly two hours, and I mentally facepalmed myself.

“Oh my God! I completely forgot about that. Give me a few minutes, I will try that.” she said, and I saw her eyes glaze over, and she was concentrating. After fifteen minutes of complete silence, Elana let out a sigh and came over and took a seat next to me.

“What happened?”

“I am unable to contact Mike. It's like there is some sort of a visible barrier that is blocking my mind,” she mumbled, and my spirits dampened once again. Another escape route that we lost. But how is that possible, I mean, mind linking doesn't need any signal to communicate with, unless!

“This place is protected by a spell! That is why I am unable to communicate.” Elana finished my thoughts, and I closed my eyes, trying to think of any other way that we can use to break that damn door.

“Wouldn’t Jace or Mike come searching for us in the house?”

“I bet Jace must be going apeshit on everyone right now since you are lost or kidnapped by me!” Elena started to rumble again, and she got up from her place and continued her pacing, which was getting on my nerves at the moment.

“Elana, would you please stop it and give me some worthy information, right now?” I asked her in an irritated voice, and she stopped her pacing and mumbled a sorry before taking a seat next to me again. The room fell into silence once again while I searched my brain to crack the lock, and Elana was lost in her own thoughts.

“I don't think this information would help us,” she spoke again after a long time, and I turned my attention toward her, waiting for her to continue. “But grandma once told me that the locker combination in this room is used for almost all her other things, like the vault that is kept in the basement and stuff.” that piece of information gave a spark of hope again because the locker in here is the old fashioned one, where it doesn't self-lock after a few tries, so hopefully we can try a lot of combinations in that locker, and pray that one of it is the one that is going to save us.

“Why didn't you tell me this earlier,” I asked her and walked towards the cupboard and opened it to see the huge grey locker mockingly starting at me. I let out a deep breath to calm my nerves, and I tried pinning down a random combination of six digits, my first few tries were fruitless, but I tried all the combinations that I remember or that I saw somewhere.

And I randomly remembered a number that had such digits that I found written on a piece of paper, that I found when I went to check out the construction site. But what was the number?

I can only remember the first three digits that were 423

What is the other number? I kept searching my memory to find the rest, and that is when I remembered the entire combination. It was;

423162

I did a small happy dance and quickly typed the rest on the keypad and pressed enter, and simultaneously, I heard the mechanical sound of the locks moving, and then the door popped open.

“Elana, look! I opened it!” I yelled at her, and she sprang from the sofa and came running towards me and peeped in to see that I have indeed opened it.

“Wow, Iris, you are a genius. So tell me, what is locker combination, I will go and try it on the keypad there.”

“It is 423162,” I told her, and she gave me a quick hug before she sprinted towards the door, instead of following her, I was curious to see what was inside this locker, and I had two minds, but in the end, my curiosity got the better of me, and I opened it to see that there were a few jewelry boxes and an old diary. I took the smallest jewelry box and opened it to see the exact replica of my ring inside.

No wonder Walter was looking at this as if he has seen it somewhere.

I took the ring out of the box and removed my ring from my finger to compare them, both of them looked identical, but when you see closely, you can see that in the original ring, there is a small diamond at the tail of the wolf.

“Iris! The door opened, come on, let's go!” Elana yelled, which made me drop both the rings on the floor. I quickly bend down and took both of them and placed the ring that I took from inside, back in the box, and closed the locker before I ran towards Elana. I know what I did was wrong, and I didn't want Elana to know.

“What took you so long?” she questioned me when I reached the open door.

“I thought there was something inside my sandals, so I dusted it and wore it again.” I lied, and she nodded her head before she left the room first, and I followed her before having a last look at this place.

We traced back the path that we came from, and before we knew it, we were back inside the closet again, I quickly left the room, making my way towards the elevator. And when the elevator doors opened, I stepped in to see that Elana was still standing near the doorway, her face was red, and she looked scared.

“Aren’t you coming?”

“Iris, I am afraid that Jace will kill me at the first sight.”

“Till I am standing, I will not let him touch you, I promise. “ I told her in earnest, and after standing there awkwardly for some time, she came and got into the elevator with me.

The elevator ride only lasted for a few seconds, and every time the number on the screen decreased, my heartbeat increased a bit more, my hands started to sweat, and I continuously wiped it on my dress, and before we knew it, we arrived at the ground floor. With a ding that sounded like a church bell at midnight to me.