London

A week and a half went by.

The whole family was buzzing, the way people get when something they've waited months for is finally close enough to touch. Inkeri and Daley's wedding was Saturday. On the Thursday before, the house on Ridge Pike was a mess of travel: suitcases in the halls, people shouting from room to room, somebody always looking for something. The whole place smelled like ironing.

In his room, Atticus was packing. Five days of clothes plus the suit for Saturday, laid out in the order his mother had suggested, which he was mostly following. He put the suit in last, smoothed it flat with his palm, and zipped the case. He dragged it into the hallway and made it about eight feet before a wheel caught the edge of the rug and the whole thing tipped over.

"Pancakes are ready!" Maren called from downstairs.

"Coming!" He stood the suitcase up and rolled it to the stairs. It banged down every step, loud and lazy. At the bottom, Arlo came around the corner, took it from him without a word, and carried it out to the car.

Atticus went into the kitchen.

It was loud and full. Maren was at the stove running through a list in her head. Eldred stood beside her with a coffee, watching her and wisely saying nothing about how long any of this was taking. Verona was at the table working steadily through a stack of pancakes. Inkeri and Daley were sitting closer together than the chairs required, holding hands under the table where nobody was supposed to notice, which everybody had. Down at the far end, Destiney, Holger, and Zephyr had chocolate chip pancakes and a syrup problem that somebody was going to have to deal with eventually.

Maren handed Atticus his plate and kissed his cheek. He sat down beside Daley, who was trying very hard not to look like a man getting married in two days. He was failing, and it was nice to watch.

The doorbell rang.

"Your driver," Arlo called. "All set. Sorry about the bell."

"Is everyone ready?" Eldred asked. "Does everyone have what they need?"

"We're ready," Inkeri said, already standing, Daley right behind her.

Everybody moved at once. Plates in the sink, out of the kitchen, down the steps, into the cars. Three were waiting at the bottom of the drive, one piled with luggage and two for the family. Atticus climbed into the second with Daley, his parents, and Destiney, buckled up, and watched the drive go by, then the neighborhood, then the city opening up on the way to Philadelphia International.

Two private planes were waiting side by side on the runway.

"Look, your grandfather and your great-uncles are over there," Verona said from the front seat.

"Okay," Atticus said.

He could see them through the window: Angel, Esmend, and two others, standing by the stairs of the far plane. Angel was the head of the family, and you could tell. He wasn't in the middle of the conversation. The conversation was arranged around him. Esmend stood a little apart, watching something Atticus couldn't see from the car. The men talked like they were picking up a conversation they'd started somewhere else. Angel saw the car and raised a hand. Atticus didn't wave back. He thought about that afterward. He'd meant to.

The cars parked. Airport staff took the bags. The family climbed the stairs in little groups and found their seats. Atticus took a window and watched the luggage disappear into the hold. The other plane taxied first, and for a moment the two were lined up window to window, and he could see Angel reading in his seat across the strip of tarmac. Then his own plane moved.

Fifteen minutes later the doors were sealed and they were in the air.

"Atticus. How's school?"

Esmend had come back from the front of the cabin, sharp as ever: clean-shaven, perfect suit. He'd looked exactly like this for forty years and would probably look like it for forty more. He gave Atticus the warm, interested look he gave most things.

"Good," Atticus said. "School's good."

"I heard you were in a coma for three weeks earlier this year." Esmend glanced toward Inkeri and Daley at the front of the cabin. "Rufus helped, I'm told."

"I don't really want to talk about it."

"I understand." And he did. He didn't push, and he didn't brush it off. He just let it be. "Try to sleep. Otherwise you'll be grumpy when we land."

"I'll try."

Atticus closed his eyes. The plane leveled off.

Sleep came, and it brought the pictures he'd been trying not to think about. The alley in Philadelphia. The body. He kept playing it back, hunting for the one detail that would make it make sense, and every time he got a different version instead. A gunshot. A firefighter in smoke. A man with a knife. And then, stranger than any of them, a figure that was half man and half horse, the body going down under it, the sound, the wet pavement, the smell of burning.

He woke up in the darkened cabin.

Everybody else was asleep. Esmend had gone back to the front. Atticus slipped off to the bathroom, came back, found his laptop, and put his earphones in. He watched movies until the clouds outside changed color and the light told him they were coming down. He was about to put his earphones back in when he saw Esmend across the aisle answer his phone. Esmend looked at Eldred. Eldred gave one small shake of the head. It was a message, and Esmend got it.

"Are we all clear?" Esmend said into the phone, and snapped it shut.

"What was that about?" Atticus asked.

"I'll tell you when it's time for you to know our history, my young novice."

Atticus looked at him. Then at his father, who was looking out the window and trying to keep his face blank and not quite managing it. All week the adults had worn that same face. The face of people who knew something.

He put his earphones back in.

London Stansted. The planes rolled to a stop, the stairs came down, and outside there was a red carpet, a row of officials, photographers along the fence, and a crowd of people who had somehow known this flight was coming. Everyone came down the stairs. They were almost to the cars when a firework cracked open overhead out of nowhere and everyone flinched. Then they were moving again, into the convoy and out onto the motorway.

London built up outside the windows the way London does. It didn't arrive all at once. It got thicker and taller and busier, and then all of a sudden you were in it.

Thirty minutes later, the palace came into view.

Atticus had seen Buckingham Palace in a thousand photos. In real life it was familiar and impossible at the same time. Familiar, because he knew every detail. Impossible, because it was that big, and it was right there. The gates. The courtyard. The cars stopping at the front steps. Then quiet.

Two people stood waiting to greet them. One was the Pope, in a plain white cassock without any of the ceremonial layers, dressed like a friend of the family and not a head of state. The other was the Queen, who had greeted guests at this door for a very long time. She was truly warm, and she decided exactly how much of that warmth anyone got.

Handshakes. Bows. These were people who had known each other for decades and were honestly glad to see each other. Then everyone went inside to the dining room, where a feast was laid out. It wasn't the formal reception that would come on Saturday. It was the night before, for family and close friends, the kind of dinner that's supposed to feel relaxed and mostly does.

The grandparents and great-uncles slipped away with the Pope and the Queen toward a private room at the back. Atticus watched them go. They walked like people with a long history together, like they'd started talking before anyone said a word.

He went upstairs to find his room.

It was a good room, bigger than any hotel room he'd ever stayed in, and every so often it reminded him he was in a palace. High ceiling. Long curtains. A view of the east courtyard. His suitcase was already there, so he started unpacking: clothes into drawers in the order he'd packed them, suit into the wardrobe. Arlo and Verona came in while he was at it.

"Why aren't you dressed?" Arlo said. "You're not going to sleep already?"

"I'm tired," Atticus said. "Do I have to go down?"

"You should explore a bit," Verona said. "This is Buckingham Palace. When will you have this chance again? And are you not hungry?"

"Not really." Atticus pulled on his pajamas.

"Your loss," Arlo said, and left.

Verona looked at him. That look was back, the one that had kept showing up on his face since the hospital, since whatever had happened in Philadelphia that nobody would explain.

"Are you all right?"

"I've got a weird feeling about something." Atticus was looking at a painting on the wall across from the bed. A landscape. Nothing special, the kind of painting that ends up in a palace bedroom because the wall needed something. But something about the light in it bugged him.

"What kind of feeling?"

"I don't know what kind. Just... something." He kept looking at the painting, trying to find it. The shadow in the bottom corner. The angle of it. "I can't say what it is."

"Sleep well," Verona said. "Good night, young Atticus."

Verona left. Atticus could hear the party downstairs coming up through the floor and walls, muffled the way sound is in a big building when you're lying down. He pulled the covers up and shut his eyes.

Sleep came fast. And it brought something worse than the alley.

Something with teeth was dragging him down into dark water, a pond with no bottom. He was screaming, but it was dream screaming, where your mouth opens and the sound never really comes out. He fought and he couldn't get free, and the thing had him, and there was no surface above.

Downstairs it was almost one in the morning. The last guests were saying goodnight and heading for their cars. Rufus was walking back to his room when he heard it: muffled, steady sounds of panic behind Atticus's door. Not ordinary night noise. He moved fast.

He pushed the door open and crossed to the bed. Atticus was face down, buried in twisted sheets. Rufus shook him. Nothing. The boy was too deep, past regular sleep, somewhere the world couldn't reach.

Atticus shot up gasping. He stared at the wall, then at Rufus, wide-eyed, like he didn't know where he was yet.

"Rufus." He was still shaking a little. "I saw something. Something impossible."

"Want to spar?" Rufus said. "We can talk about it while we work."

Atticus looked around. "There aren't any swords here. And you don't have your bag."

"I always have my bag."

Rufus reached into his pocket and pulled out a satchel that could not possibly have fit in it. Folded up, it was the size of a handkerchief. He shook it out with a flick, it grew to full size, and he reached in and pulled out two rapiers and laid them on the bed.

Atticus stared at the swords. Then at Rufus. Then at the room, which was definitely in Buckingham Palace and now had two rapiers lying on a royal bed at one in the morning.

"Really," he said.

"It'll help," Rufus said, picking up his blade. "And I'd bet money you can't get back to sleep." He swung at Atticus without warning.

Atticus grabbed the other sword and blocked on reflex. Months of training with Rufus had built that reflex. It wasn't fast enough yet, but it was real. He shoved back. Rufus pushed harder, calm and controlled, driving him toward the door and out into the corridor.

"Why now?" Atticus said.

"Tell me your dream." Rufus let his blade swing loose in his hand like he'd been doing this for a hundred years. "Come on, then."

"Fine. A wolf and a horse trying to kill me."

They went at it, blades ringing down the corridor of Buckingham Palace and echoing off the high ceiling.

"You can do better," Rufus said. He had one hand behind his back.

They fenced for almost two hours, up and down the hall. Atticus's form was better than it had been in the summer but still rough. Rufus was patient and steady and never once showed him everything he could do. In between, Atticus talked, and as he described the dream it broke apart and came back together a little clearer each time. The thing with teeth. The water, black and heavy. Something up above it that wasn't getting farther away but wasn't getting closer, either.

Then Atticus just stopped.

Nothing had hit him. He wasn't tired. He was in the middle of a lunge, and then he wasn't, and his body wouldn't answer, and the floor was coming up at him. Rufus caught him one-handed before he hit it, like he'd done it before, and held him.

He wasn't breathing. Just for a second. Then he was.

Rufus carried him back to his room and laid him on the bed. He sat beside him for a minute, watching his chest go up and down. Then he stood, reached into the satchel, and took out a thin, plain-looking book, and put a spell on it. Whatever Atticus dreamed from now on would write itself into those pages. Then Rufus went back to his own room.

By nine thirty the palace was waking up. The smell of breakfast drifted up through the floors.

Atticus woke up with a scrape on his knee and no memory of getting it. He found it in the hallway mirror while he was getting dressed: a real scrape, a stripe of dried blood from the middle of his kneecap halfway down his shin. He stood there looking at it. It had clearly happened. He just didn't know how. A maid found him, took him by the hand without any fuss, and walked him to the palace infirmary.

"Good morning, Atticus," the doctor said.

"Morning."

"And what brings you in this morning, my young neophyte?"

"He was fencing last night," the maid said. "With Rufus. He doesn't know how he got the knee."

The doctor looked at the scrape like he saw this kind of thing every day and went for bandages and ointment.

"How's your fencing coming along?" he asked, cleaning the cut quickly. He clearly patched up a lot of people who weren't sure what had happened to them.

"Sort of bad," Atticus said. "But I'm working on it."

"Mind if I draw some blood while you're here? Just curiosity. I've been asked to keep notes."

"You'd have to tell my guardians first."

"Why's that?"

"I only trust my inner circle," Atticus said.

The doctor gave him a look like he'd heard that line before. "You sound like your godfather and your grandfather."

"You know my godfather?"

"I know of him. I know your grandfather well." He was reaching for his supplies when Rufus walked in.

"What happened to your knee?" Rufus said, looking at it.

"I don't know. It just happened."

"I'll consent to the blood draw," Rufus told the doctor.

"You're the godfather? Not the great-uncle?"

"Correct. Why?"

"Just checking," the doctor said. He found a vein, filled a tube, and handed it to Rufus, who looked at it for a moment and put it in his pocket.

"Don't look at it or you'll faint," the doctor told Atticus.

Atticus looked at the ceiling. Then they left.

Breakfast at Buckingham Palace felt like a state occasion pretending to be breakfast. Every chair was taken: family, extended family, and people whose names Atticus didn't know but who were connected to his family somehow. He could feel it, like walls in a dark room. His parents and his oldest sister were each deep in conversation with someone different, and none of the conversations included him. The noise and the faces ran together.

The Queen sat at the head of the table. She spotted Rufus, then Atticus, and made a small gesture. Bring him here.

Rufus walked him to the seat beside her. Atticus sat down, aware all over again that he was the only person in the room who wasn't sure he belonged in it. Everyone was nice to him. It just didn't reach all the way in.

"Atticus," the Queen said, like she knew him. Apparently she did. "Do you know about your twins?"

"No, I don't think so, Your Majesty."

"How is school going?"

"Good. I feel like I'm in slower classes than I should be."

"That's probably true," she said. "Are you going to eat, or are you deciding?"

"I'm deciding between oatmeal and eggs with bacon and fruit."

"Oatmeal. You can put almost anything in it."

He ordered the oatmeal and put blueberries and chocolate chips in it, because she'd said he could.

"What do you do for the government?" he asked.

"These days I'm mostly a figurehead, in several countries," she said. "Not much real power anymore." She didn't sound like she minded. She sounded like someone who knew exactly what she was and had made her peace with it.

"What did you mean about the twins?"

A butler appeared at her shoulder. "The Prince of Italy and Greece would like a word, Your Majesty."

She turned back to Atticus. "Someone will tell you about the twins one day, Atticus. It just can't be me."

She stood, and the whole table stood with her, all at once, without thinking, like a wave. Atticus stood too and watched her cross the room. Then he sat back down and finished his oatmeal.

He pushed back his chair. A maid appeared and took his bowl.

He was almost to the door.

Then the seizure hit.

It wasn't the first one. There had been the hospital, and the thing before the hospital that nobody had explained. But this was different. This was a dining room in Buckingham Palace, full of people who looked like they'd been dreading exactly this. Dishes rattled. People jumped out of their seats. Someone shouted for an ambulance.

"No," Rufus said. "We can't. Outside doctors don't know what this is."

"What do you mean?" Inkeri said.

"Something is doing this to him," Eldred said, very quietly. "A demon, or something close to one." He turned to Inkeri. "Go get our doctor from the infirmary." He looked at Rufus. "And you..."

"Let the seizure run its course," Rufus said. He stepped into the middle of the room and watched. He wasn't panicking. He was studying it, like a man who'd seen this once before and meant to learn more this time.

"Why?" Inkeri demanded.

"Because stopping it the wrong way will make it worse. And I don't know the trigger yet."

The Queen was still in the room. "Do something," she said.

"I am watching," Rufus said.

The seizure stopped. For a few seconds Atticus drifted, in and out, barely awake. Then he rose off the floor.

Wind moved through the room. Every window was shut. There was nowhere for it to come from. Everyone stepped back except the Queen, who stayed exactly where she was.

Atticus's eyes turned yellow. His arms spread wide and his toes pointed down, and he hung there at chest height in the dining room air. The wind was warm. It came from no direction at all.

The voice that came out of him wasn't his.

"Two and six and eight, and then sixty-four will die tomorrow by lead. And this body will be cursed for all eternity if he does not know the truth before the red moon, or he will be shamed by our secret."

"Why do all the bad things happen to this family," Inkeri said.

"Kolvonuth and Vezzannoth," Rufus whispered. He turned and walked fast toward the door. Eldred caught his arm.

"Where are you going?"

"Back to my room. I recognized the trance."

Atticus dropped. He hit the floor, sat up, and looked around at the ring of terrified faces like he'd just come back from somewhere and had no idea where.

"What happened to me?"

"Rufus. Explain," Eldred said, steering him away from the table and away from Atticus.

"Every trance is different," Rufus said, low and fast. "I've been studying this since he was in the hospital. Some demons leave a signature you can recognize. This one belongs to twin demons. Princes of the underworld, sons of Lucifer and Hades. Kolvonuth and Vezzannoth."

Eldred stared at him.

"I've heard of the kings," he said. "Not the princes."

"They're real. And they're here, or watching from somewhere close. That voice was them." Rufus glanced at Atticus, who was being helped up off the floor by a staff member who'd appeared out of nowhere. Making strange things look normal was clearly part of her job. "The sixty-four is a warning about tomorrow. I need to go to my room and work it out."

"Go," Eldred said. "And nothing disrupts the ceremony tomorrow. Whatever you find, we handle it after."

"Understood. One more thing." Rufus looked at him. "When do I tell him the family secret?"

"Not yet."

"Eldred..."

"He is thirteen years old. His whole life changes the moment he knows. He's already haunted by whatever he saw in Philadelphia. Don't add to it."

"I think he needs to know because of what he's already seeing."

"Don't tell him. Not the secret, not the story, not the name. Nothing." Eldred's voice was low, and it was the end of the discussion. "He is too young."

Rufus looked at him for a long time. Then he nodded and went back down the corridor.

The room emptied slowly. The Queen went to her office, her people falling in around her. The rest of the guests drifted out in ones and twos, picking up their conversations somewhere else, each of them already shrinking what they'd seen into something they could live with. Soon only Inkeri and Atticus were left in the dining room.

Inkeri pulled her brother into a hug and held on without saying anything. Then she let go and looked him in the eye.

"You're all right," she said.

Then she turned to the door, and her voice changed. She had been patient. She was done being patient.

"Dad." Eldred was back in the doorway. "Please tell me there is going to be an army at my wedding and at the reception. What is happening to my brother? What is going on?"

"I'm going to talk to the Pope and the Queen about security," Eldred said. "I will do everything I can."

"Because if you don't," Inkeri said, "you owe me sixteen million."

"I know, my princess." Eldred crossed the room to Atticus, who had sunk back to the floor, weak and slow. He picked him up and carried him out and down the corridor, past portraits and tapestries on both sides, past painted faces that had been calmly watching things happen in this hallway for a very long time.

Halfway down, Eldred stopped in front of a cloth hanging on the wall. On it was a symbol: a triangle inside a circle, with an eagle above them both. He stood there a moment with his son in his arms, looking at it. Atticus wasn't awake to see his father's face. It wouldn't have made him feel any better.

Then Eldred carried him on to his room and laid him on the bed.

A maid was already there. She looked at Eldred calmly. She had handled this before.

"They are here for you. They can take care of your boy, my lord," she said, in Latin.

"Thank you for that," Eldred answered, in Latin too.

He left. Atticus woke right after the door closed. Groggy, lost, waiting for the ceiling above him to turn back into a ceiling in Buckingham Palace.

"Where did my dad go?"

"My little prince, why are you awake?" The maid came to the side of the bed.

"Who are you?"

"I work with Verona. In the background."

"Something feels wrong," he said.

"Like what?"

"I don't know." He looked up at the ceiling. "Something. Why is everyone always around me? Why do they keep looking at me?"

"I don't know, Atticus."

"Then who does?"

"Sleep," she said, and it wasn't a suggestion.

He closed his eyes. She sat with him until his breathing slowed down and evened out.

Then she got up, went out, and shut the door softly behind her. Farther down the corridor, behind a closed door, two voices she didn't know were arguing. She couldn't make out the words, but she could hear how urgent they were. She hurried past. At the corner she caught a scrap of it: half a sentence about something planned for tomorrow, a position, and a number. Then a door shut and it was gone.

She went to her room.

Down the hall, Rufus sat at his desk with three books open and a sheet of paper in front of him. He was writing slowly, the way you write something you haven't finished working out. The words came, and stopped, and came again. The tube of blood from the infirmary sat on the desk beside him. He hadn't opened it. Opening it would prove something, and he wanted to finish thinking first.

He looked at it for a long time.

Then he looked at the door.

Then he went back to writing.