“Amy? Look at this.” Dan stood in front of a metal grate. Behind it was a small room. He pushed open the grate and walked in. It was like a mini-amphitheater, only with dead people as patrons. Skulls were arranged in piles around the room, stacked atop leg bones and hip bones. Flat, narrow ledges ran around the room, serving as seats. There was a clear, flat, raised space along the far wall. Over it was an arrangement of bones in the shape of a giant letter.
“Maybe the original guy who did the chapel – maybe he was a Vesper,” Amy whispered. Somehow, whispers seemed appropriate here.
Dan moved around the space. “Look at this candle.” He held out a candle with wax dripped down into the holder. “It’s been used recently – there’s no grime or dust in the wax.”
“But there’s no computer here,” Amy said. “Please don’t tell me we have to dig through the bones.”
“No, look how they’re arranged – it would be impossible to move them and stack them again so perfectly. I think you’re right – it must have been a laptop.”
“But there had to be a power source,” Sinead insisted in Amy’s ear. “Can you find an outlet anywhere?”
Dan and Amy shined their penlights on the walls close to the floor. Suddenly, Dan caught sight of something. He knelt on the floor. “Whoa. This would be so easy to miss. Did they have USB ports in the Middle Ages?”
“Try it!” Sinead said quickly.
Dan fished in his pack for a cable and hooked up his computer to the USB port. He scanned the drive. Nothing came up. “It’s been wiped.”
“I’m going to hand the phone to Evan – he’ll talk you through it. You might be able to scrape something off it.”
Dan settled with his back against the wall, computer in his lap. As Evan read out a list of codes, he typed them into his computer. The USB icon flashed.
“I think something’s coming through … it’s a file.” Dan clicked on it. “Some kind of report. But it’s only a few sentences.”
“Save it to your hard drive and then e-mail it here.”
Dan read the document as he pressed SAVE. “It won’t save,” he said. “Or send. It’s encrypted somehow. And parts of it are blacked out.”
V-1 report
infiltrated family w/two children. Left MA w/mission complete. Information successfully destroyed. No suspicion from G. Coverup successful. Mother deceased. Children are
“It’s disappearing,” Dan said. “The words are disappearing!”
“It’s an automatic wipe!” Sinead cried. “There could be an alert attached to it. You’d better get out of there.”
Dan flipped over onto his knees to quickly stuff the computer in his backpack. He held his penlight in his mouth. As he zipped the pack, the light wavered on the old stones. He stopped. Someone had carved their initials into the wall.
Amy stood at the door. “Come on, Dan!”
He ran his fingers over the carving.
“Let’s go!”
Dan wrenched himself away.
As he followed Amy’s wavering shadow down the passageway, it seemed to flicker and then fade. And the shadow behind him seemed to grow.
infiltrated family
two children
MA
information successfully destroyed
Mother deceased
no suspicion from G
And the initials seemed to flame and burn inside his brain.
A.J.T.
At the end of a passageway was another door, small with a pointed arch. There was only a sliding iron lock. Amy pushed it back and opened the door. Gray light flooded the passageway. They stepped out into a soft rain and picked their way through the graves.
“Amy,” Dan said, stopping. The smell released by the rain was of dead leaves and cold stone, and he could taste it in his mouth. “Amy …”
His sister turned impatiently. “We have to make the bus… .”
“Amy.” He spoke her name for the third time. Wasn’t that the charm in every fable? Say a name three times? And the parent turns into a witch, a wolf, a beast.
“I saw initials carved there… . A.J.T… . and the report … it proves it.”
“Proves what?
Dan wheeled to face her, anguish twisting his features. “That our father was a Vesper.”
Amy stumbled against the cold stone. She sat down and rested her forehead against the cemetery marker. It was like Dan was hurling stones instead of words.
“There were his initials, right there,” Dan said. “And the date – he was eighteen. In some sort of weird, spooky Vesper hideout!”
“It’s three letters in a certain combination,” Amy said. “A.J.T. It could be Albert John Toboggan. It could be Adam Jeffrey Turquoise. It could be anything!”
“What about the document? Infiltrating a family in Massachusetts? Two children? Information destroyed? What information?”
Amy shook her head violently. “I don’t believe any of this. You shouldn’t, either. We’ve been through this before, Dan! We’ve already been afraid that our parents were the bad guys. We know they weren’t!”
“And what about no suspicion from G? It’s Grace!”
“There’s a G in Jane’s notebook, too.”
“That could be Grace as well. What if Jane was a Vesper?”
“She wasn’t a Vesper!” Amy barked this furiously. She had grown fond of Jane. She refused to believe she could have been part of such a despicable organization.
And her father couldn’t have been, either.
“What if he’s not dead?” Dan asked in a hushed tone. “What if he’s still a Vesper?”
Amy shook her head as the enormous weight of Dan’s words hit her. She swallowed, feeling sick. “No.”
“The fire … he was concealing the evidence!”
“Isabel Kabra set that fire! We know that! And we buried him. They found his body, okay?” Amy was yelling now. “Don’t you think Grace would have checked?”
“Checked what? Fingerprints? He died in a fire. Except maybe he didn’t. Somebody did. How are we supposed to know who it was?”
“Dan, we were there that night. I remember parts of it. I know Dad was there. I saw him!”
“Yes, he was there. But maybe he escaped. Do you remember the circus girl? She said that V-One had a burn.”
Amy stood back up on shaky legs. “This is all circumstantial. You’re really jumping to conclusions.”
“Are you the only one allowed to have instincts, Amy?”
“Our father was not a Vesper!” She glared at Dan with all the fury that blazed inside her. “Since when are you so quick to denounce him?” she demanded. “He was your hero!”
The lost look in Dan’s eyes frightened her. “Since I grew up.”
Even through her anger, Amy felt something pierce her heart. Fear. She was so afraid for her brother. Had he really lost his childhood? Was that what the Clue hunt had done?
The Vesper phone buzzed in her pocket. She felt revulsion rise in her throat. She hated Vesper One. She hated all of them. She accessed the text.
Greetings, children. Time is running out.
Amy scrolled down. It was a low-resolution photograph of the hostages. Clumped together, made to sit in a line in their jumpsuits. Staring at the camera.
They returned to Prague in silence. Amy had sent a text to Attleboro, not trusting herself to speak.
NEED TO CONTACT ERASMUS IMMEDIATELY. HAVE HIM CALL OR TEXT US WITH A TIME TO SPEAK.
They sat in an outdoor cafe in Old Town Square, watching the darkness fall. Across the square, tourists gathered at the top of the hour to see the famous Astronomical Clock. Amy heard it bong six times. They ordered a dinner they didn’t want. To Amy, it felt like the end of the world. They would get into the library somehow tomorrow; she had enough faith to know that. But whether they would find the de Virga or not …