Book Five: Save Yourself — 15.

Allie carefully slips Donna’s iron-chain necklace free while Donna sleeps, extracting the key. She sneaks to the study and tests the Cabinet’s Distortion Lock, confirming its disorienting force. Using the key nullifies the pressure, and she opens the Cabinet.

Inside, Allie notes infamous relics, then selects the martyr’s robe and folds the cracked Russian mirror inside it. When the heavy lock slides off the desk into the carpet, she momentarily touches it barehanded, nearly collapsing from vertigo. A door closes elsewhere, spiking her panic.

Colin unexpectedly appears, intoxicated, asking about Excedrin and offering a drug mixture instead. He complains about hostile investors and references King Sorrow with chilling flippancy. Allie feigns calm, agrees they’re “cool,” and distracts him as he staggers to the bathroom, narrowly preventing him from noticing the stolen robe on the chair.

Seizing the chance, Allie hides the robe and mirror under her parka in the entrance hall. She returns upstairs, replaces Donna’s necklace and key, and briefly comforts the sleeping Donna with a kiss, reflecting on their fraught bond.

Allie departs and waves to Colin at the door, heart pounding. As she exits the gates, a Shelby Boss Snake—unseen by her—pulls out and follows at a distance, signaling that her theft has placed her under covert surveillance.