I shook my head. “I don’t know yet.”
I stalked back and forth in front of the monitor, examining the photo from top to bottom and side to side. The wooden desk. The pens and pencils strewn across the glossy surface. Drake’s Reaper mask perched next to a wad of paper clips. The long, slender papers lying on the floor beside the desk—
My eyes narrowed, and I stopped in front of that part of the photo. Papers…something about those papers…
I remembered Lance reaching into the drawer, pulling out a handful of papers, and tossing them on top of the desk. The papers had slipped off and landed on the floor, and I’d snuck a glance at them. But they hadn’t been papers at all—they’d been tickets.
And just like that, I knew the clue that solved the mystery.
I stabbed my finger at the monitor. “Those are tickets to the Fall Costume Ball. Lance pulled them out while he was rooting around inside the desk for the chimera scepter.”
Zoe frowned. “So what?”
“So Lance had more than half a dozen tickets. Not just one or two for himself and a date. Why would he have so many tickets printed out? Especially when they get emailed to people’s phones too? Unless…”
“Unless he was going to invite all his Reaper friends to crash the costume ball.” Ian finished my thought.
“Exactly.”
Takeda looked at Mateo. “Where’s the costume ball going to be this year?”
Mateo’s fingers flew across his laptop. “Looks like the ball is being held this weekend at…the Cormac Museum.”
He kept typing, and photos of the museum appeared on the monitors one after another. The more pictures appeared, the more certain I was that Lance, Drake, and Sisyphus were targeting the museum.
Because it was filled with artifacts.
Weapons, armor, jewelry, clothing, paintings, statues, and more flashed by on the screens, almost too fast for me to follow. I waved my hand at the monitors.
“That’s what makes this place so special,” I said. “Lance and Drake must be planning to use the costume ball as a cover so they can sneak into the museum and steal whatever artifact Sisyphus wants. Maybe even multiple artifacts, given how many are there.”
“And the chimera scepter?” Mateo asked. “What are the Reapers planning to do with that?”
Takeda stared at the monitors. “The same thing they did at Lance Fuller’s mansion: use it to cover their escape. The Reapers were probably hoping they could slip into the museum during the ball, steal the artifacts, and vanish before anyone realized what was happening, just like they did during the battle at the North Carolina academy. But Sisyphus is smart. He knew the Protectorate might figure out what he was up to, so that’s why he had Lance steal the chimera scepter—as insurance. So Lance can summon more monsters and stop anyone who tries to get in the Reapers’ way.”
I thought of how easily Lance had waved the scepter and made those chimeras appear in the office last night. Facing down those monsters would be a tall task for anyone, even Protectorate guards, making it that much easier for the Reapers to escape in the chaos and confusion.
“Do you think Sisyphus will be there?” Zoe asked.
“He’ll be there,” I said. “He’s gone to a lot of trouble to set things up. Working with Drake, having Lance steal the chimera scepter from the library, trying to kill us at the mansion last night. He won’t want to miss the grand finale of his evil plan.”
I couldn’t explain how I knew the Reaper leader would be there, but I did. I could feel it deep down in my bones.
“Rory’s right,” Takeda said. “Sisyphus will most likely be there to oversee the operation, which means that this is our chance to finally take him down. Now that we know what the Reapers are up to, let’s see if we can figure out which artifacts they might be after.”
Mateo hacked into the Cormac Museum’s computer system and printed out a master list of all the artifacts on display, along with photos and the location of each object. He split the list and the photos into five stacks, and we all sat at the table and studied the information.
The museum housed dozens of swords, daggers, spears, axes, and other weapons, along with a fair share of armor, everything from helmets to breastplates to gauntlets. Still, I couldn’t help but feel those items were way too obvious. Swords and armor could be found at myth-history museums all across the country, places the Reapers could break into at any time. So what artifact was so special, so powerful, so one-of-a-kind that Sisyphus was willing to risk being caught by the Protectorate to get his greedy hands on it? And what did he plan to do with the artifact once he had it? Those were the most important questions, but try as I might, I couldn’t puzzle out the answers.
And neither could the others. An hour passed, then two, and none of us could pinpoint which artifacts the Reapers might want or why.
“All right,” Takeda finally said, scrubbing his hands over his face. “That’s enough for tonight. We’ll come back at this tomorrow with fresh eyes.”
We gathered up our things and left the Bunker. The others headed back to their dorm rooms for the night, but I was too restless to go home, so I stayed behind in the library, and I wound up at Sigyn’s statue on the second floor.
I sat on the floor across from the statue and stared at the goddess, but her stone face remained still and frozen. Ever since she’d first appeared to me in that dream realm at the Eir Ruins, I had been on the lookout for Sigyn, expecting the goddess to be lurking somewhere in the library, either as herself or as the old woman Raven, but the only glimpse of Sigyn that I’d seen had been her statue. I wondered if I was doing what the goddess wanted by joining the Midgard and hunting down Lance, Drake, and Sisyphus or if she had some other job in mind for me, some task that I hadn’t even considered yet. No way to know for sure.
“What are you thinking about, Rory?” A familiar voice cut into my thoughts.
I looked over at Babs, whom I’d propped up against the wall beside me. Once again, the sword had been quiet all day, as if she’d been utterly exhausted by the fight with the Reapers and chimeras last night. She hadn’t said a single word during my classes, lunch, or even the briefing. But now her green eye was open and fixed on mine.
“Did you hear us talking in the Bunker?” I asked.
Babs rolled her eye. “Of course I did. Just because my eye’s closed doesn’t mean I’m not listening.”
“Well, I was thinking about the mission and the artifacts the Reapers might be after.”
“But that’s not what’s really bothering you, is it?”
I shook my head. “I keep thinking about everything Lance said last night and how he tried to recruit me to become a Reaper.”
“So?”