I lie still for a long time, feeling scrambled and tense. The only thing that nearly gets me out of bed again is the idea of finding something to drink, but even that isn’t enough. After a time, I hear Dante’s and Percy’s voices drift up from the study; then Percy’s fiddle starts. I recite the cipher again in my head, same as I was doing the whole way home: A G C D A F.
I should feel worse for lying to Mateu Robles. But if it’s a choice between preserving his wife and saving Percy, it’s not a choice, not for me. Someone deserves to make good use of what he’s wrought, and it’s certainly not the damned duke. It’s me and Percy. We’ve as much a right as anyone. More so, perhaps, because we aren’t extorting kings or selling souls or philosopher’s stones. We’re trying to stay together. I’m trying to keep us together.
I rebuild my surety of that, one shaky brick at a time, as I lie there in the blood-colored room, which grows darker as the night ages.
You’re right, you’re right, you’re doing the right thing for the person you love.
A sliver of moon is visible between the chimneys when Percy comes up and starts shuffling about, dressing for bed. He must think me asleep, for I can tell he’s making a good effort to be as silent as possible. Say something, I tell myself. Apologize. But instead I lie still, pretending to be sleeping, until he gets into bed beside me, our backs to each other with a canyon between us.
I wait until his breathing evens out into soft snores. Then I get up, put on my shoes, and go belowstairs.
There are still cinders popping in the study grate, and by their light I spot Percy’s violin case beneath one of the chairs, a wad of loose music bundled beside it. The Baseggio Box is there too, on the desk. The moonlight pearls along the dials. I pick it up and spin the first dial into place. The engraved A is worn down and slick, like it’s been touched often.
Robles could have lied. He had no real reason to put his trust in me. But he had no one else to turn to, and desperation is a strange soil. It turns up reason like intruding weeds.
I slide the rest of the dials into place, the first six notes of a song to summon the souls of the dead.
And then I hear a very soft click.
The drawer of the box pops out of place and inside, on a bed of dusty silk, is a small brown bone cut to the shape of a key.
I touch the tip of my finger to the bow, stroking the coarse grain of the bone. A shiver goes through me, like a winter breeze through a window. Somehow, it feels more real with my finger on the key: the gravitas of an alchemical heart that can heal all and the woman who died but not all the way for it. It feels humming, like the moment after the last notes of a song have been played.
Above me, the floorboards creak.
We have to leave for Venice—tomorrow. And we have to take this key with us or Percy’s last hope will be gone. If I take it now, in the rush of next morning and the send-off they might not have time to notice. We may have quit Spain entirely before they come calling.
I can hear footsteps on the stairs, and I know that if I’m going to walk out of the house with the key, I’m going to have to hide it now, so I toss the box onto the desk, then snatch up Percy’s violin case from under the chair and stash the key in the rosin drawer beneath the scroll. I slam the lid shut and slide the case under the desk with my foot as the study door opens.
I can’t say I’m surprised when Helena appears. I do feel significantly more trapped than I expected to. She’s not very large, but she’s tall, and I am neither of those things. One step over the threshold and she seems to fill the whole room. She’s wrapped in a dressing gown the color of heated bronze. The neckline is gaping, and her hair is down and mussed. And there must be something wrong with me, because my brain briefly flirts with the notion of how gorgeous she is.
“Mr. Newton said you went to bed,” she says, her voice a smooth purr like a shuffled deck of cards.
“Came to fetch his violin.” I nudge it with my foot for emphasis.
She takes a step toward me, the lapels of that open wound of a dressing gown sliding a little farther apart. She’s clearly got nothing under it. “And you dressed to fetch it?”
“Well . . . didn’t want to be caught wandering about the house in my underthings.” It takes a Herculean effort not to look straight down the neck of her dressing gown when I say that. The lapels give her breasts narrow handholds with which to keep themselves out of sight.
She’s very close to me now. I can see the brittle shadows her eyelashes cast against her cheeks. I take a step back, and my heels knock into the desk. “I heard you had a bit of trouble with the law earlier.”
“Something like that.”
“Did you find what you were after?”
“I wasn’t after anything. Just stole some potatoes. It was daft.”
“I mean in prison.”
My heart stutters. “How did you . . . ? I wasn’t after anything.”
She tips her head, arms folded and one finger tapping her elbow like she’s keeping time to a melody. “The problem with trusting Dante,” she says, “is that he doesn’t know whose side he’s on.”
I start to back away from her again, though there’s nowhere for me to go except straight into the desk. I nearly sit atop it just to put more space between us. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“I know you saw my father. Did he tell you how to open the box?”
“We didn’t see your father.”
“Did you promise to save my mother from the sinking island in exchange for the cipher?”
“Your mother’s trapped,” I say. I can’t help myself. “Doesn’t that matter to you?”
Her eyes flash with triumph, and I know I’m caught. “So is my father. Tell me how to open the box.”
“I don’t know.”
“You’re lying. Open it for me.” She reaches for the box, and the moment before her fingers fasten around it, I realize that in my haste to hide the key, I didn’t shut it all the way. When she picks it up, the drawer slides out of place and clatters to the floor, empty.
We both stare down at it, like it’s a firecracker dropped between us. Then Helena says, “Where is it?”
I swallow. Lying is pointless at this juncture, but I’m clinging to ignorance with everything in me. “Where’s what?”
“Where is the key, the damned key that was in here!” She flings the box against the wall and it rebounds with a thunk. I flinch. “What have you done with it?”
“Nothing!”
“Where is it?” She makes a snatch for my pocket, and I twist out of the way. “Give it back to me.”
“Get out of my way.”