Garret sighed. “Why are we doing this again?”

“Because you promised Nana that you’d get to it; four years ago,” Edmund said with a pointed look. “It's not so bad.”

“This place is somehow bigger than I remember,” Sebastian muttered as he eyed the room.

The room was practically stuffed top to bottom with miscellaneous boxes and random clutter, mostly covered with a veil of dust. It reminded Seb of the junk drawer in his mom’s office. Except there were less messily written sticky notes and more possibilities of rodents inhabiting some forgotten corner.

“I should have asked for more brownies.”

“You’re getting brownies?”

“No one is getting brownies if we don’t even get started here, guys. Come on, we can take it one box at a time.” Ed encouraged, moving to get started while Garret and Sebastian exchanged an unenthusiastic glance.

They knew that when he got started on something, Edmund committed to finishing. No amount of complaining was going to help their case. If anything, he’d probably revoke their brownie privileges. That unspoken threat motivated the two into starting as well. The first couple of boxes were mainly holiday decorations and old things from Ed’s childhood.

At one point, they even found his crib, which Sebastian cooed over, much to Edmund’s embarrassment. Garret only encouraged the whole thing with stories about Baby Eddie. Then the humiliation increased when they found a box of baby clothes. It was a wonder that moths had yet to devour them.

“You had such tiny feet.”

“I was literally a baby.”

The deeper into the attic they went, the further back in time they seemed to go. There were things from Garret’s own childhood that he hadn’t seen in forever. Including a wooden rocking horse, he’d completely forgotten about.

“Did it have a name?” Sebastian asked.

“Poppy.”

“Poppy?”

Garret raised his hands in innocence. “I didn’t name the thing. Mandy did.”

Edmund frowned. “Who was Mandy?”

“My older sister, your Aunt Amanda. She left a long time ago but that horse was hers first and she wouldn’t let me forget.” Garret remembered with a fond laugh.

“Oh, you don’t talk about her much.”

Garret shrugged. “Like I said, she left a long time ago. I was only twelve and we weren’t as close as we could have been... We don’t have little ones around right now, but what do you think of keeping Poppy, hmm?”

“If you won’t, I will. This is a beautiful horse.” Sebastian commented.

Edmund raised an eyebrow. “What are you going to do with a rocking horse?”

Sebastian shrugged. “Save it for the future. This is a classic toy right here, after all.”

“Guess we’ll keep it then.”

There was a short pause for lunch before the trio dove back into their work and travelled deeper into the past. Uncovering some interesting artefacts from the various hobbies that Garret’s parents and even grandparents had gotten into over the years. It was around sunset when they reached the oldest of the junk. Things from when the house had first been built four generations ago.

“I think we can stop here for today,” Edmund said. “That was a lot of stuff.”

Garret nodded. “No kidding. I’m genuinely surprised that we didn’t unearth anything bigger than spiders, though.”

“To be fair, those things were rather big. Of course, neither of you wanted to be near them, so I was the only one to get a close enough look while taking them outside.” Sebastian remarked with a teasing smirk.

Ed rolled his eyes. “At least we didn’t turn into frightened statues at the sight of a doll.”

“That thing looked haunted.”

“If it was, we could handle it.”

“You two don’t actually believe in ghosts, do you?” Garret laughed.

“What, no- look at this thing,” Sebastian said, quickly changing the subject as his nerves spiked.

The thing he’d pointed out though was an odd-looking jewellery box covered in enough dust that none of the guys could tell there was a picture on the lid until they’d wiped the stuff off. There was a beautiful realistic blue moon against a sky of blended dark blues and purples, with tons of tiny stars all dotted around. Some strange symbols were written above the moon, and below, in English, was a name.

“Cassandra? I don’t remember that name,” Garret said thoughtfully.

“Could she have been a part of your great-grandfather’s family? Or his wife’s, maybe?” Sebastian wondered.

Edmund shrugged. “Doesn’t really matter who it belonged to. Is there anything inside?”

Garret lifted the lid to check and almost immediately dropped the box in shock. A very realistic wolf’s face stared back at the three. Its dark blue eyes looked almost black in the dim lighting, yet stood out as if they were watching your every move.

“Fuck, that looked like it was going to jump at me.”

“It looks like it’s made of bronze. Except for the eyes.” Sebastian muttered. “Glass?”

Edmund shrugged. “Looks more like gemstones.”

“Looks creepy as hell. Whoever Cassandra was, she sure had interesting taste in jewellery.” Garret said as he closed the lid with a slight shiver.

“So, keep?”

Garret gave Edmund a have-you-lost-your-mind-expression. “If anything in this attic is haunted, it’s probably this.”

“I know that you guys were going to donate most of this stuff, but could I maybe take this one off your hands? If you’re not going to keep it, Persephone might be interested in it.” Sebastian commented.

Edmund nodded. “Yeah, the emporium is full of stuff like this. We could probably sell her some of the other old stuff we found too.”

Garret shrugged. “As long as I don’t have to deal with it. Who wants dinner?”

The older man turned and went to leave the ladder, not noticing how the teens exchanged a glance and looked back at the jewellery box with interest and worry. It seemed that there was a bit more to Edmund’s family tree than he’d realised. And whatever they’d just uncovered would not be easily forgotten...