He was thirteen years old, and he had bodyguards.
His name was Atticus Picenum. He was an odd student and a devoted brother, and he did not know the truth about his family. He lived on Ridge Pike in Philadelphia.
He'd always had bodyguards, the way other boys had bikes or dogs. They were part of the furniture of his life: men in dark clothes who drove him to school, stood outside events, and sometimes turned up in places they had no business being. He had stopped asking about them around the time he turned eight. Nobody ever explained. Nobody told him much of anything, really, about who his family was or why the men were there. He had learned to spot the look adults gave each other when he got too close to a real answer. It meant not yet.
On a Monday morning in February 2008, he sat in the back of a familiar black car as it pulled out of the driveway on Ridge Pike. The house behind him was a manor in the old sense of the word, all stone and iron, the hedges cut back for winter and the upper windows dark against a pale sky. He watched it shrink in the rear window.
Then he saw the other car.
It was parked just past the gate, half blocking the neighbor's driveway. Fancy was the word that came to mind. Dark paint, a mirror polish, the kind of car you saw outside a charity gala, not on Ridge Pike at seven on a Monday. Whoever had come in it was already inside. The gate was swinging shut behind them.
Atticus was still staring when a car coming the other way slid past, and in its window he caught a face. The man was looking straight at him. A wide, pale scar ran from the corner of his mouth up toward his right eye, as if something had tried to open him like a letter. He wasn't the kind of person you looked at twice. He was the kind you wanted to stop looking at. Then the man winked.
Atticus turned away. His stomach dropped and didn't come back up.
His butler, Verona, rode in the front passenger seat beside the driver. He caught Atticus's face in the rearview mirror.
"What's wrong with you?" Verona asked, in the tone he saved for when he thought Atticus was being dramatic. Interested, and already unconvinced.
"I saw a guy with a bad look on his face," Atticus said. "He looked scary. And he winked at me."
Verona and the driver traded a glance in the mirror. "The car that passed us? That's a friend of your father's. I forget his name."
The driver reached over and turned on the radio. A good beat filled the car, the kind that was supposed to push everything else out of your head. For a minute it almost worked. Atticus watched the houses on Ridge Pike slide by. Then he thought about the scar again. The wink.
"Who is that guy?" he said.
The driver hit the brakes. The car lurched, and he swung around in his seat to look at Verona like a man who should have been warned about this.
"What on earth are you doing? And what is your name, driver?" Verona said. He did not quite shout.
"My name is Pentus," the driver said. "This boy wants to know who just went onto the property."
"Is this your first time working with the House of Picenum?"
"Yes." Pentus had the decency to look embarrassed. "I was a Navy SEAL. They hired me on the spot."
"Then here is what you need to know," Verona said, slowly, the way he'd clearly said it to drivers before. "If Atticus wants that answer, he asks his father. And even then, he probably won't get one. It is need-to-know. Now drive, please."
Pentus pressed his lips together and drove. The radio played. Nobody talked. Atticus leaned his elbow on the window and stared at his reflection in the glass. After a while he stared at Pentus in the mirror instead. Pentus glanced back once and then kept his eyes on the road.
They rode like that for a while, the city sliding past. Atticus had taken this road to school hundreds of times. He knew every turn. He knew the gas station on the corner, the church with the broken steeple, and the dip in the on-ramp that made your stomach float if the driver went fast enough. He watched it all go by and thought about the wink.
Then he noticed they were going the wrong way.
"Driver, what are you doing? We were supposed to turn right at that stop sign."
"I like to try something new," Pentus said, easy as anything. "That okay with you and Verona?"
Atticus perked up. "Verona, are we going to be late for school?"
"Don't even think about it," Verona said.
"Hey, Verona, what time does he need to be there?" Pentus asked.
"Eight o'clock. We pick him up at two forty-four."
"Okay, so we've got time. There's this bakery I found. Real Italian place, fifteen minutes from here, right on the way. You guys want to stop?"
"Can you find one near the school?"
"Already got it pulled up on my phone. Fifteen there, fifteen to school. We've got almost an hour. That work?"
Atticus sat up. He liked a drive. He liked seeing parts of the city he'd never seen from the back seat. "I'm in," he said. "I like trying new things."
"You would," Verona said, but he didn't mean anything by it.
They took the long way through Conshohocken and crossed the bridge over the river. The streets here were narrower and busier. Working streets. Shop gates still half down, a few early walkers with their collars up against the cold. Atticus watched a man scraping ice off a pickup's windshield and thought it looked cold enough to hurt. He turned to Verona.
"Why are we really going to a bakery?" he said. "We never do breakfast like this. There's always a reason when Verona does something different."
Verona didn't answer right away. He turned a little in his seat. "Because I want to tell you something about your family. Something your father asked me to share."
"Is it good news?"
"I would call it interesting news," Verona said, and faced the road again.
Atticus chewed on that. Before he could push, an ambulance came screaming through an intersection two blocks ahead, lights strobing red and white through the gray. A fire truck roared right behind it, air horn blaring, and both of them swung right and vanished around a corner. Atticus pressed his face to the window. Through a gap between two buildings he saw the smoke first, a thick dark column, and then the orange at the bottom of it, climbing. Three townhouses, maybe four, were on fire.
"Man, that's really going," Pentus said, leaning toward the windshield.
"I hope they're okay," Atticus said.
"Me too," both men said, almost together.
The car rolled past. Atticus kept his face turned toward the smoke as long as he could see it. "I wonder how it started," he said. "I bet it won't even make the news. It's like some stuff goes on the news and some stuff just doesn't, you know? Stuff in certain neighborhoods. Certain kinds of fires."
"Why do you say that?" Pentus asked.
Verona gave him a look in the mirror. Let it go.
"Hey, there's the bakery," Pentus said quickly, pointing. "And look at that, a spot right out front."
He slid into it in one smooth move, which on that street was close to a miracle. He got out, came around, and opened Atticus's door. Atticus stepped onto the curb and stopped.
Across the street, in the window of a dress shop, was his sister. She was standing at a long rack of white fabric, turning something over in her hands while a man at her elbow pointed out the details. She looked relaxed. She looked happy.
"Hey, that's my sister," Atticus said. "In that store. She's shopping with some guy."
"Knucklehead," Pentus said, "she's getting married. She's probably picking out her dress."
"Wait. What? When?" Atticus kept watching her through the glass. She reached out and touched the hem of something on the rack, and a strange feeling settled over him. He knew she was engaged. He'd known for weeks. But seeing her in a dress shop on a cold Monday made it real in a way it hadn't been before.
Pentus held the bakery door for Atticus and Verona.
The warmth hit them as soon as they stepped in. The place smelled of bread and coffee and something sweet still in the oven. A glass case ran the length of the counter, packed with pastries and loaves, and a chalkboard menu hung behind the register in somebody's careful handwriting. The walls were old tile. It looked like it had been here forty years and never once needed to change. Atticus liked it right away.
"We need to be at school in thirty-five minutes," Verona said. "If we are late, Atticus, I will be very unhappy."
"I know, I know. I won't stall." Atticus looked at the pastries. "But who wants to rush to a place where nobody cares about you anyway?"
Verona looked at him. "Why do you say that?"
"Just because. Can we order?"
"Fine."
They got in line. Two people ahead of them, then three. The smell was making Atticus actually hungry. He was reading the chalkboard when the door opened behind them and a man came in. He wore a long coat. His hand was near the inside of it.
Pentus had him before he'd taken two steps. He crossed the room in three long strides, hit the man low, and put him on the floor so fast and clean it was obvious he'd done it a hundred times. The whole bakery froze. A woman at a table half stood up. A cup rattled on its saucer. Atticus stared.
On the tile, the man put his mouth to Pentus's ear and said something. Pentus went still for half a second. Then he stood and pulled the man up with him.
"Easy, everyone. He's one of us. Carry on," Verona called to the room. He made it sound like nothing.
"Sorry, man," Pentus said, brushing off his jacket. "Did what I was trained to do."
"No, I get it. Totally." The man straightened his coat and gave Pentus a nod that was almost respect. "Good instincts."
The bakery breathed out. Conversations started up again. The woman sat back down with her coffee. Atticus watched the man take a spot near the back wall. He didn't order. He just stood there with one hand loose at his side.
"Who is he?" Atticus whispered to Verona.
"Someone doing his job. Come on, we're next."
At the counter, a woman in an apron smiled at them like she'd been running it since before Atticus was born. "Good morning. What can I get you?"
Verona ordered for everyone in one long, practiced breath: an egg sandwich with sausage and cheese and a scone for Atticus, a bagel with cream cheese, crab soup if they had it (they did), three egg bagels with sausage, and four coffees.
"Can I have a hot chocolate?" Atticus added.
Verona looked at him. "Fine."
"Forty-seven twenty-five," the cashier said. "You're number twenty-seven." She slid a little plastic marker across the counter. Verona took it and led them to a table in the front window, where the street played out behind the glass like a model town.
"Pentus. Go start the car and keep an eye out for his sister. She's across the street."
"Why?"
"I heard she wants to come over. Something about business."
Pentus made a face. "Boss's daughter showing up at breakfast. Great start to the morning," he muttered. But he went.
Verona and Atticus sat down. Atticus looked across at the dress shop. His sister wasn't in the window anymore. She had gone deeper into the store. He turned back to Verona.
"So what's the thing about my family you wanted to tell me?"
Verona opened his mouth. Then the door opened.
Inkeri walked in. She wore a long winter coat and a scarf, her dark hair loose on her shoulders. She came in scanning the room the way their father did, fast, finding the exits. Then she saw Atticus and her whole face lit up. He shot out of his chair.
She caught him with both arms and lifted him clean off the floor. He laughed. She set him down and held him at arm's length, looking him over the way she always did when she hadn't seen him in a while, like she was checking for damage.
"You look tired," she said.
"I'm fine."
Her bodyguard, a quiet man named Arlo, came in behind her. Verona stood as they reached the table.
"Inkeri. How is the wedding planning going with the Duke of Cambridge?"
"Fantastic. It's all coming together. About a week away now. February tenth." She sat down and looked at Atticus. "How is my brother treating the new driver, Verona?"
"So far, no complaints."
The waitress brought their food. Atticus wrapped both hands around his hot chocolate. It was warm all the way through the cup. He leaned back, happy, and looked out the window at the street in the early light.
Then he saw it.
Across the street, in the gap between two buildings, the same narrow alley he'd been half watching for the last few minutes, a man stumbled out of the shadow and went down. He didn't fall. He went down. Atticus couldn't have said what the difference was, but he knew it the second he saw it. A figure stood over the man for one second. Then it was gone.
Atticus didn't say a word. He just stared at the place where the man had been while his hot chocolate went cold in his hands.
Pentus pushed back into the bakery. His face was white. He came straight to the table and leaned in. "Code black," he said under his breath. "At least I think that's the code. I'm still new."
Verona was on his feet before Pentus finished. He looked at Inkeri. He looked at Pentus. He went to the counter and came back in ninety seconds with two paper to-go boxes, split the food between them without a wasted movement, and looked across the table at Inkeri.
Inkeri gave Arlo a nod. Arlo put a light hand on Atticus's shoulder.
"Verona," Atticus said. "Why do I have to leave? I saw something. I'm a witness. I should talk to the police."
"No," Verona said. "You are going to school. Right now. With Arlo."
"But..."
"No. It is not a discussion."
Atticus stared at him. His food was right there. His sister was right there. He could feel the argument building in his chest, but he could read Verona's face, and he'd already lost.
"Don't give him that face," Inkeri said gently. "He knows what's best. He speaks for Father when Father isn't here."
Atticus let out a long breath. "Okay. Fine." He grabbed his to-go bag, hopped off his chair, and followed Arlo to the door.
Outside, the cold bit after the warm bakery. Police cars were pulling in at both ends of the alley. Arlo moved fast and quiet, steering Atticus toward the car. He opened the back door, and the building across the street exploded.
The sound was huge. It hit Atticus in the chest before it reached his ears. Arlo's arm slammed across him and pinned him against the side of the car. Glass from the upper windows rained onto the sidewalk where they'd been standing a second earlier. The car rocked on its wheels and shoved sideways half a foot.
When the air cleared, Arlo looked down at him. "Get in," he said, like nothing had happened.
Atticus got in. He sat with the to-go bag in his lap and watched Arlo walk around and slide behind the wheel. The engine turned over smoothly.
"You can eat," Arlo said. "I know you wanted to stay with your sister."
"Yeah." Atticus opened the bag, looked at his food, and found out he was hungry after all.
He ate on the way to school and watched the city go by. After a few minutes he said, "Hey, Arlo. Why did I have to leave the crime scene? What's the real reason?"
"I've got fifteen minutes to get you to school."
"That's not an answer."
"I always follow directions when it comes to you," Arlo said. "You're the boss's son."
"Which boss?"
Arlo grinned at him in the mirror. "What do you mean?"
"I mean who's your boss? You work for my sister. So is she your boss, or my dad, or..."
"Your grandfather and your dad," Arlo said. "Both, sort of. It's hard to explain. Anyway. How's school?"
"It's school. I'm more curious what you do besides drive my sister around. She can't need driving every single day."
"I do a lot of things," Arlo said, and he said it slowly. Atticus knew that tone. Every adult he knew used it when they were telling the truth in the smallest piece they could get away with. "Mostly I keep her safe when she's in certain countries. She's going to be well known in a lot of places. Famous, really. Famous people need someone watching."
The car turned into the school lot. The front doors were already open, kids in winter coats streaming inside, a teacher on the steps with a thermos and a patient face.
"I thought we'd be early," Atticus said.
"Blame the bakery," Arlo said. "I might be picking you up today, by the way. Got a text from your dad."
"Wait, why?" Atticus said through a mouthful of egg sandwich.
"Don't know. He didn't say."
Atticus climbed out, threw his bag over his shoulder, and waved. He was halfway to the doors when he heard his name.
The Argeris triplets were waiting by the entrance: Clemens, Clement, and Clementine. The two classmates and the teacher they'd been talking to had already gone in by the time Atticus reached them.
"Morning, Homer," Clemens said, grinning. The nickname had started in third grade and showed no sign of dying.
"Good morning, Atticus," Clement and Clementine said together.
"Good morning, Argeris triplets," Atticus said. Homer had stopped bothering him years ago.
"Ready for the math test?" Clementine asked.
Atticus stopped walking. "There's a math test today?"
"You didn't know?" Clementine looked delighted.
"How's Inkeri's wedding planning going?" Clement asked, changing the subject before Atticus could panic.
"She's a week out," Atticus said. "I actually just saw her in a dress shop."
The four of them walked down the main hallway together. A secretary stepped out of the office as they passed.
"Atticus? You have a phone call."
He blinked. "A phone call? Here? At school?"
"He says he's calling from England."
"See you in class," Clemens said, already moving.
"Yeah, yeah. See you guys." Atticus followed the secretary toward the office, turning it over in his head. Nobody called him at school. His parents had staff for that. His friends, the few who mattered, were all in the building.
"Did he say his name?"
"Not exactly," the secretary said, reaching for the phone on the front desk. She was smiling a little. "But I think I recognized the voice. It's been on the news all week."
"Who is it?"
She handed him the phone. He looked at it for a second, then put it to his ear.
"Hello? Who is this?"
"Ahh, you don't recognize my voice," said the man on the other end. He was English, warm, a little amused. "I'm your future brother-in-law."
"Daley?"
"Got it in one. How are you holding up? I heard about this morning."
"I'm all right," Atticus said. Then, quieter, because the secretary was still close: "I saw a dead body. In an alley in Conshohocken. By the bakery."
There was a pause on the line. Daley didn't sound surprised. He sounded like he was thinking.
"Did you see anything else you can't explain? Anything strange? Anything that didn't make sense?"
Atticus looked out the office window at the empty hall and ran the morning back in his head. The man going down. The figure over him. The car at the house. The man with the scar. The wink.
"Why are you asking me that?"
"No reason. You saw something upsetting. I wanted to know you were all right."
"You said strange. That's a specific word."
"You're sharp," Daley said, and left it there.
"Daley, am I going to see my sister again? After the wedding, I mean?" The question was out before he'd decided to ask it. He heard how it sounded and his face went hot, but he didn't take it back.
"What do you mean?"
"I heard that when someone marries into royalty, you don't really see them anymore. She'll be part of your family. She'll have duties. She'll be somewhere else." A tear slid down his face, and he turned so the secretary wouldn't see. "I heard that's just how it works."
"Atticus," Daley said, very gently, "she is going to be at every important thing in your life. Every graduation. Every moment that matters. Who told you that?"
"I read it. In books. About royal families."
"Well, those books aren't always right. And listen, I want you to hear this. You are the most important part of the Picenum family. Understand? Don't let anyone tell you different."
"That's why my dad has bodyguards around my school," Atticus said. It was half a question.
"Probably, yes. And your father's a senator, so all of you have to be careful. Right. You need to get to class. You've been on this phone too long."
"Okay."
"Ciao," Daley said.
"Bye." Atticus hung up.
The secretary handed him a late slip without a word. He walked back out into the hall. It was empty now. Everyone was in class behind closed doors, and the sounds of school came to him muffled and far off, like it was happening to other people.
He was still thinking about the man in the alley. The way he'd gone down. The figure standing over him. He told himself it had been a shooting. Pentus had said code black, and that usually meant a gun. He told himself it was random, that random things happened in cities, and that being a witness was just bad luck.
He was halfway to math when the voice came.
It didn't come from down the hall, or behind a door, or from outside. It was closer than that. It was in the air around him.
"Atticus Tronti Ascoli Picenum," the voice said. "Your family is cursed. You are only thirteen, and you carry a secret you do not yet know."
Atticus stopped. The hall was empty both ways. The lights buzzed overhead. Nothing. No one.
"Who are you?" he whispered.
His knees hit the floor. He hadn't meant to kneel. His body just did it. He clamped his hands over his ears and squeezed his eyes shut, which did nothing, because the voice wasn't coming from outside. His hands were shaking.
"WHO ARE YOU?" he shouted, and his voice bounced off the lockers.
He was on the floor now, rolling, pressing his hands harder against his skull, his cheek on the cold linoleum. The voice didn't fade. It got louder.
"ERETRIA. Your family carries a cursed secret. And it is all about you. ETRRRRIIIAAAA..."
At the far end of the hall, a teacher on her way to the copy room looked up from the stack of papers in her arms. She stared for one second. Then she ran.
If anyone had looked out the window above him just then, they would have seen a figure standing on the pavement across the street. Still. Facing the building. Not coming closer and not leaving. Whoever it was had come to make sure of something, and now they were sure. By the time the teacher reached Atticus and dropped to her knees beside him, the pavement was empty.
The vice principal was at the office door before the teacher got it all the way open.
"We need 911 right now," the teacher said.
"Go wait outside for them," the vice principal said.
The principal picked up the intercom mic. "Good morning, everyone. We're adjusting the schedule today. First period will run an extra twenty-five to thirty minutes, and I'll let you know when it's time to switch classes. Thank you."
In the math room, the test had already started. Every desk was full except one, an empty seat in the front row where a boy named Atticus usually sat. At the back, the Argeris triplets sat in three seats in an L. Clemens looked sideways at his brother and sister.
"Where's Atticus?" he whispered.
Clementine shook her head. "I don't know."
"You think it happened?"
"Triplets, stop chatting. Finish your tests," Mr. Smith said from the front of the room.
"Sorry, Mr. Smith," Clement said. "We're just worried about our friend Atticus."
"I know," Mr. Smith said. From the way he said it, he really did know, or at least he had a guess. "Get back to work."
Clementine turned her head just far enough to see both her brothers. "Do not say a word about this to anyone," she breathed.
The boys looked at her, then down at their papers, and said nothing.
In the hallway, Atticus had stopped seizing by the time the paramedics got there. The teacher led them to him. He lay pale and still on the floor, breathing shallow.
"How long was he seizing?" the first EMT asked.
"Around fifteen minutes. He was screaming, and then he just went down, and then the seizing started."
"He needs the hospital."
The two paramedics rolled him gently onto his side to clear his airway. "He's stopped moving," one said, two fingers on his neck. "Get the stretcher."
They lifted him onto it and ran him out to the ambulance. One EMT climbed in the back with him. The boy's heart had stopped on the hallway floor and been started again, and it was working now, barely. The EMT pushed medication through the IV. Atticus's numbers crept up, slow and grudging. Ten minutes later they pulled up at the hospital.
Verona, Arlo, and Inkeri had beaten them there. They'd driven from the bakery the second the principal called, Inkeri still in her winter coat, Verona still holding the to-go bags under his arm like he'd forgotten they existed. They rushed the stretcher as it came through the doors.
"What happened?" Inkeri and Verona said at once.
"I thought the principal explained on the phone," the EMT said.
"Excuse me, he needs to get through," a nurse said, and steered the stretcher toward the ER fast enough to end the conversation.
An hour and a half went by. The Picenum family arrived in the waiting room one or two at a time: cousins, uncles, and finally his parents, Eldred and Maren, both coming straight from separate meetings. Every one of them came in with the same tight look around the eyes. A doctor pushed through the waiting room door and searched the faces.
"I'd like to speak with Atticus's parents privately, please."
Eldred and Maren followed him into a side corridor.
"He had a severe episode," the doctor said. "No sight, no hearing, the whole time. While he was seizing, he kept calling out his second middle name. Eretria. Over and over. That was unusual. He'll need to stay a couple of weeks for observation." He looked at them both. "You know what I mean by that."
"Is there anything else we should know?" Eldred said.
"We should contact the Holy See," the doctor said. "You understand me."
"Do you want to make that call, or should I?"
"It should be you," the doctor said. "I have rounds."
Eldred took his phone out of his jacket, walked to a corner by the window, and dialed from memory.
"Hello, Rufus Brolon. The Magnificent."
"My lord Eldred! What do you need from me?" The voice on the other end was warm, a bit theatrical, and a little out of breath.
"Atticus is having visions and hearing voices," Eldred said. "Other things too."
"You're on speakerphone," said Maren, who had come to stand beside him.
"Ahh, Maren. I'll be there in five minutes," Rufus said.
"Αντίο, σε βλέπω σε πέντε λεπτά," Eldred said. He always slipped into Greek when he was worried.
"Goodbye. See you in five," Maren said, in English.
"See you in five," said Rufus, and hung up.
Rufus Brolon, known to his friends as Rufus the Magnificent, was at that moment in the tiny Republic of San Marino, in a rented apartment with more books than furniture and a satchel that was a great deal bigger on the inside than the outside. He had been reading at the table when the phone rang. Now he stood, looked around the apartment, and raised one hand.
Everything he owned lifted off the floor. Sofa, dishes, towers of books and journals, a small brass telescope, three pairs of spectacles he kept losing. All of it floated up, shrank to whatever size it needed to be, and poured into the open satchel in a neat stream. The silverware went last and settled in with a soft clink. The satchel snapped shut. Rufus picked it up, muttered something under his breath, and vanished.
He reappeared in a janitor's closet on the third floor of the hospital. In his experience this happened far more often than it should. He shoved a mop aside, kicked over a bucket, banged his elbow on a shelf of cleaning supplies, and finally got the door open. Eldred and Maren were coming down the corridor.
"Why the broom closet," Rufus muttered, falling in beside them. "It is never the nice room. Not once in my entire life have I arrived in a nice room."
"Rufus," Maren said. "Where were you when we called?"
"San Marino. Lovely country. Very small. Have you ever been..."
He stopped dead. He was twenty feet from Atticus's door, and he felt it: a force coming from inside the room, low and steady, like a sound just past the edge of hearing. Something was pouring off the boy's body, and Rufus could hear it at a pitch only he and maybe one other person in the building could catch. He knew at once what it was.
He ran.
"What's the rush, Rufus?" Maren called after him.
"There's an aura around his body!" He reached the door, threw it open, crossed to the bed, set his satchel on the floor, and opened it. Without slowing down, he sat on the edge of the satchel and dropped in.
Maren and Eldred came through the door to find a glowing bag on the floor of an otherwise ordinary hospital room.
"Rufus? Where are you?" Maren said.
"In the satchel," came his voice from inside it. "Up in a moment. I need a book. Don't touch anything."
They could hear him moving around in there: footsteps, the dry scrape of a spine pulled off a shelf, and Rufus talking to himself the whole time. "No, not that one. Not that. Ah! There you are." Something heavy thumped. Then his boots appeared on the lip of the bag, and Rufus climbed out with a book the size of a paving stone under his arm.
He set it on the counter, opened it to page five hundred, and planted his hands on either side of it like a scholar claiming his desk. The book was two thousand pages long. The cover had no title. The pages were crammed with tiny writing in at least six languages.
"What is this?" Eldred said.
"The Dictionary of the Unknown, the Supernatural, and the History for Our Understanding," Rufus said, beaming. "There are only four copies. I wrote half of it."
He turned to chapter twenty-five and read aloud, translating as he went from the Daelic, an ancient language no one had spoken in conversation since before the Roman Empire:
"Our secret is our curse, but one boy will break it, or do more with it. In 205 BC, at the time of the First Macedonian War, the ancestors of this bloodline were still united. But one day a demon and an angel went to both sides and debated the truth. A demon from the depths wanted to go to war with both families. The family of Optimates Picenum drew the demon's wrath upon them for eternity, placing them into wars, generation after generation. The child of the third descent will destroy the demon and change the world. The child will be chosen, and will be controlled by a demon, but when the demon speaks its final name, either the demon will be gone, or the boy will die and transform into something else. My father wrote this, though he was not sure it was true. He did not write the secret in any book. But if you are reading this, one of you is cursed, and the cure requires..."
He turned the page.
"The ash of a phoenix. The horn of a minotaur. The wings of an angel. The mist of the death rose."
He looked up. "These will wake the cursed one at once. Without them, the sleep may last several weeks. Only God knows how long."
"Can you get those things?" Maren asked.
"I have the phoenix ash. Hold on." He hopped back into the satchel. Rummaging. He came back out with a small vial, uncorked it, and tipped a fine silver ash onto the open page. Where the ash touched the paper, the dry old fibers seemed to wake up. New writing rose up in the spaces between the lines, as if the ash had unlocked it.
Rufus leaned in and read in silence. His face changed.
"What does it say?" Eldred asked.
"'You have one of four. You are missing three. Without them, keep the person below zero.'"
He shut the book and set down the vial. "So. All of that, and what I've learned is: keep him cold." He looked at Eldred. "Daelic is truly awful to translate. Ancient languages have layers. But the instruction is clear. I'll tell the doctor to keep him below zero. Not his body, the room. More or less. And we watch."
"You are completely worthless," Eldred said. He said it quietly, which was worse. "I called you because you are supposed to know these things. This is your field."
"I know. I know. But the symbol..."
"What symbol?"
The doctor was back in the doorway, looking tired. "His heart stopped for a short time at the school, before the ambulance got there," he said. "I'm considering a medically induced coma. Rufus, if you know anything that isn't in the textbooks, now's the time."
"I have one suggestion," Rufus said. "Nobody is going to like it."
"Tell me."
"Do you have a freezer?"
The doctor stared at him. "You want to freeze your own godson."
"I don't want to. But I believe it's right, given what the book says." Rufus set the book aside. "First, one more thing. Can you help me turn Atticus onto his stomach?"
"Why?"
"Because there's something on his back I need to see."
The three of them rolled Atticus carefully onto his side, then onto his front. Rufus moved the hospital gown aside and bent close. For a long time he didn't say anything.
Then he went to the book and came back with it open to an illustrated section near the middle. He held the page up beside Atticus's back and compared them.
On the boy's skin, between his shoulder blades, was a mark that hadn't been there before. Or if it had, none of them had ever seen it. Three circles, seven triangles, and a third symbol that looked like a dragon or a serpent holding a sword. Inside the circles were characters in letters that matched no alphabet any of them knew.
"What does that mean?" Eldred said.
"Our order uses a triangle as its symbol. We gave it its meaning, we decided how it's used," Rufus said, tracing the edge of the drawing without touching the page. "But this? This isn't in the book. I have spent twenty years annotating this text. I know every symbol in it. This one is new. Or not new. Old, perhaps, but unknown. Unknown to me."
"And what does it mean that you don't know it?" Maren said.
Rufus looked at Atticus for a long moment. "It means this is more complicated than I was ready for," he said. "And we need to keep him below zero."
The doctor came back in. "Tell me what you need."
"An ice bath. Three hours. Then bed for the other twenty-one. Repeat until he wakes. And I need to make holy water."
The doctor blinked. "Holy water."
"I know how that sounds. But it works. It has worked in every century I know of. You need someone to pray over it. That's the whole process."
"Are you telling me the truth about the symbol?" Maren said, looking right at him. "Do you genuinely not know what it is?"
"I genuinely do not know what that symbol is," Rufus said. "I am certain of that. I'm also certain about the holy water." He turned back to the book.
"We are paying you," Maren said, her voice climbing, "to protect our son. Not to stand there reading and guessing."
"Maren. I am doing my best."
She stood there one more second, then turned and walked out. Eldred followed her into the hall.
"What is it?"
"I'm scared," Maren said. She leaned back against the wall and pressed her palms flat to it, like she needed to hold on to something solid. "I'm sitting in there watching my son in a hospital bed and there's nothing I can do. Nothing any of us can do except wait for a man who climbs out of broom closets to find the right page."
"Do you want to go home?" Eldred said gently.
"I can't do anything here. I can't help him by sitting in that room. Yes. Let's go home."
He held out his hand. She took it. They walked down the corridor to the elevator, out the front doors, and into the waiting limousine. They rode home in the thin afternoon light holding hands across the seat, hardly talking, looking out opposite windows at a city carrying on as if nothing had happened.
Three weeks later, Atticus woke up.
The doctor found Rufus in the hospital cafeteria, where he'd spent most of the past twenty-one days reading, scribbling notes, eating whatever the cafeteria served, and now and then vanishing into his satchel for hours to check books that didn't exist anywhere else on earth.
"He's awake," the doctor said.
Rufus dropped everything. Literally: his fork clattered onto the table and a notebook slid off the edge. He hurried after the doctor, who was already moving.
They came in to find Atticus sitting up in bed, blinking slowly at the ceiling like he was trying to remember a word on the tip of his tongue.
"Rufus," he said, his voice scratchy from three weeks of not using it. "What are you doing here?"
"My friend," the doctor said, coming to stand beside him, "you've been in a coma for three weeks. You woke up this morning."
Atticus didn't answer. Three weeks. He looked at his hands on the sheet like they might have changed. "I kept hearing my name," he said. "Eretria. Over and over, louder and louder, and then I was just... out."
"I know," Rufus said. "I know."
Nobody said anything else about it. The door opened and Eldred and Maren came in. Maren got to him first and wrapped herself around him like a mother who had spent three weeks not knowing. Eldred's hand landed on Atticus's shoulder and stayed there.
"Mom, Dad," Atticus said, muffled by the hug. "When's the wedding?"
Inkeri came in behind their parents with Daley beside her. They were both still in their coats, like they'd run straight there from wherever they'd been.
"There's my little brother," Daley said, stopping at the foot of the bed. "How are you feeling?"
"I'm good." Atticus looked at Inkeri. "Did I miss the wedding? Tell me I didn't miss the wedding."
"You missed the engagement dinner," Maren said softly, stroking his hair.
"But not the wedding?" Atticus pushed himself up straighter, suddenly panicked.
"Not the wedding," Inkeri said, and took his hand. "The wedding is in three weeks. We wouldn't have it without you."
He let out his breath and sank back into the pillow. "Okay. Good."
The whole family crowded around the bed, talking over each other the way families do when the person they've been scared for is finally awake and being annoying again in the most normal way. A nurse came in to check his vitals and eventually shooed most of them back. She helped Atticus swing his legs over the side of the bed and stand for the first time in three weeks. He was wobbly, but he stood. He went to the bathroom and changed into the clean clothes someone had remembered to bring. When he came out he looked like himself again, and everyone could breathe.
They walked out together, down the corridor, past the nurses' station, through the double doors to the lobby. The discharge papers were signed. Outside, the afternoon light was pale and cold, and Philadelphia went about its noise and business, big and uninterested. The family sorted itself into cars, and the little convoy of Picenums drove back up Ridge Pike toward home.