The next gallery was less crowded and easier to search. We split up again, and I made it through most of the art on my side of the room pretty quickly—it was all paintings of landscapes and statues of animals. I shone my flashlight on a vertical case containing some jewelry, but it was full of crowns and necklaces, pieces far older than our bracelet.
And then I shone the light on the art next to the case, and for a second, I was too startled to do anything but stare. There on the wall, above a bas-relief of three women with their heads bent together, was a carving of the thirteen-loop knotted symbol from the locket I wore around my neck: the same symbol that had led us on Mr. Emerson’s trail of clues. It wasn’t what we’d been looking for, but it wasn’t a coincidence, either. And just below it was an inscription in French. “Guys,” I whispered.
Jack reached me first and looked as surprised as I was. “Do you see the bracelet?” He looked at the surrounding artwork.
“No,” I whispered, and pointed to the inscription. “But look. What does it say?”
Stellan pushed past us, muttering to himself. “La Serenissima. One step closer to unlocking the secret through a union forged in blood,” he translated.
I grabbed Jack’s sleeve excitedly. The language was so similar to our current clues, we had to be on the right track.
“Unlocking. Maybe it’s about the password.” Jack snapped a picture of the inscription with his phone.
Stellan was squinting at the words. “The Serene One. That part’s not in French, it’s in Italian. La Serenissima, like it’s a name.”
“A statue? A painting?” I looked around for where it might be pointing.
A slam echoed through the museum, and all three of us jumped. Heavy footsteps sounded on the wood floor, and we scrambled behind the nearest statue’s base in a jumble of arms and legs.
The footsteps continued on.
“We should go. We can’t afford to be caught in here,” Jack whispered. I was half sitting on his leg, and I could feel Stellan’s pulse pounding where his back pressed into mine. “Even if La Serenissima is another piece of artwork, it’s probably not in this museum.”
We waited until the footsteps had faded to nothing, and then Jack hauled me to my feet and we hurried down the steps, out the door, and back out into the soupy air of Kolkata.
CHAPTER 6
The next morning—even though I’d crawled back onto my balcony after midnight and hadn’t fallen asleep for hours after that—I was up with the sun. I thought I might sleep better than usual knowing we were making progress, but I’d been wrong. I rubbed my shoulders, tired and stiff from the dancing and the lack of sleep, and sat down cross-legged on one of the low couches on the balcony, where the morning air was a little cooler than the temperature inside.
When I pulled out my phone to look at the photo of the carving Jack had sent me, I was surprised to see a text from just a few minutes ago.
Venice’s nickname is La Serenissima, it said. Stellan.
Why are you awake? I wrote back. He’d stayed elsewhere in the city, and had been up as late as I was. Does that mean the bracelet’s in Venice?
Maybe. Lots of Napoleonic history there. Would make sense.
The Mikado family would be visiting Venice in a few days. My father had mentioned that we’d probably meet them while they were there.
Venice is already on my itinerary, but not for a few days, I texted. Maybe by then we can figure out what “a union forged in blood” means.
By the afternoon, we were on a plane to the next family visit in Germany, and I was decidedly less apprehensive than I’d been on the way to India. Knowing that we were on the right track was a huge relief, and I’d even asked Lydia if we could add some museums to the schedule so I wouldn’t have to go behind the Saxons’ backs quite as much. We’d had a family meeting earlier to debrief the Rajesh visit, and sitting around with my dad and Lydia—and even Cole, though he was playing on his phone the whole time—was weird, but nice. All those fantasies I’d had about family over the years didn’t involve planning my arranged marriage, but minus that part, laughing and chatting with my father and sister was kind of a dream come true. And if all the families we’d be meeting the next few days were like the Rajeshes, even that part wouldn’t be too bad.
Unfortunately, they weren’t all like the Rajeshes.