Everyone had times when luck ran out. Rose Beauharnais had once been forced to hide in a convent for a while. The women who had come to the shelter to run a daycare class were in much the same situation, but the source of violence was not limited to husbands; it could also be fathers, brothers, and so on.
They could not leave the shelter's protection. When it had first opened, it had only taken in military families. They had rushed in with nowhere else to turn, and later their family members had even come to the shelter to demand them back.
Leaving Paris and starting over in the provinces was also an option, but Georgiana was afraid that the people they were hiding from would find them again.
Just as she was considering what sort of system could protect them and then help them leave the shelter, freeing up places for others, Margarita came to announce that Rabastan Lestrange had arrived.
They were again in the small greenhouse where she had met Antoine last time. Rabastan sat in the pavilion drinking coffee, with a box on the table as well.
"Are you giving me a gift too?" Georgiana asked sarcastically, looking at the box.
"No. The Moldus found it while renovating Rue de Rivoli," Rabastan said. "The Seine River Administration handed it over to me. I don't know what it is."
Georgiana leaned closer to inspect it.
It was a golden box, looking like both gold and brass.
It must have been buried in the ground for a very long time. Even from a distance, she could smell the stench of rotting earth.
"There's something else I need to tell you. The party has been postponed."
Just as Georgiana was about to open the box with her wand, Rabastan