But Ella wasn’t at all intimidated. On the contrary, she frowned and gave the man a look as if it were he, not we, who had trespassed. That frown is one of Ella’s secret weapons. It immediately makes you feel like you just said or did something incredibly stupid, even if you have absolutely no idea what that something might’ve been.

“Did you catch my gran’s dog?” she asked the guard, as if that was the only task that could possibly give some meaning to his otherwise pointless existence.

“No… no, we haven’t,” he answered, obviously quite impressed. “That’s one fast little dog, that is.”

“Well, then,” Ella said, slipping the toad back into the basket, “I think Jon and I had better take care of it. If you’ll excuse us.”

With that, she strode past him as if she were the queen of England herself.

The look with which the guard followed her was so puzzled, I wouldn’t have been surprised if he’d done a curtsy.

We found Zelda surrounded by very agitated Russians, Chinese, and Canadians, who were all terribly concerned for the poor old lady who’d nearly lost her dog in Stonehenge. Somebody had even rustled up a chair for her. Wellington was panting on her lap, his tongue nearly hanging down to his paws, clearly enjoying all the attention.

“And? Did the toad find anything?” Zelda asked as she hobbled with us back to the car.

“No, it was quite a disappointment,” Ella answered.

“Well, maybe there simply wasn’t anything for it to find!” Zelda retorted tartly. She gently put Wellington into the basket with the toad. “Viking treasure, indeed!” she muttered contemptuously. “What nonsense. Your teacher will have to explain himself to me.”

On the drive back to Salisbury, I was so quiet that Ella kept giving me concerned looks.

“Look, we can go back at night,” she finally whispered. “There won’t be any guards.”

“And?” I whispered back. “Even if we dig around for a hundred years, our chances of finding that heart are one in a million.”

Ella’s look said, Jon Whitcroft, pull yourself together. But all I could think about was that I’d let Longspee down!

“Maybe it’s by the stones in Aylesbury,” Ella whispered. Up front, Zelda was trying to persuade Wellington to stay in the basket.

“Forget it, okay?” I hissed at her. “I’ll find out myself. I was the one he asked to find his heart anyway.”

I regretted those words as soon as they crossed my lips. But Ella had already turned her back toward me (at least as much as that was possible while belted in the backseat of a car). I think I never again got so close to losing her friendship.

“Who asked you? Are you still talking about your teacher?” Zelda asked.

“Yes, yes, exactly,” I mumbled, staring out of the window.

Ella didn’t look at me again, even when Zelda dropped me off. And I couldn’t think of a single word that would’ve gotten me back into her good graces.

No heart. And now Ella was mad at me as well.

All I wanted to do was to bury myself in my bed. But Stu and Angus had returned from their weekends. They’d brought back new supplies for the illegal candy stash, and Stu wanted to hear about only one thing: why Ella Littlejohn and I had been caught by a priest in the cathedral on Saturday morning.

“Why do you think?” I asked tetchily, throwing myself onto my bed. “We had a rendezvous with a ghost!” After that Angus left me alone. He put a new fluffy dog next to his other stuffed animals. But Stu wouldn’t let go so easily.

“Oh, come on. Ella Littlejohn? I’m impressed!” he said. “How did you manage to get her to meet you? And then she even gets herself locked in with you?” Under any other circumstances, the admiration in Stu’s voice would have been flattering.

“Stu! Leave Jon alone!” Angus growled.

But Stu was on his favorite subject.

“Did you kiss her?” He had a new tattoo, a pierced heart, right on his neck. “Go on, tell me.”

“For God’s sake, leave me alone, Stu!” I barked at him. “Or I’ll ask Angus to give you one of his special Scottish Hugs!”

I was in a miserable mood. I didn’t have the faintest idea how I was going to find Longspee’s heart, and I would’ve loved to cut out my tongue for what I’d said to Ella. I could still see her hurt face in front of me.

Stu, of course, took my mood as proof of something else.

“I knew it!” he said with a grin so broad that it barely fit on his scrawny face. “Nobody kisses Ella Littlejohn. Not a chance. I tried it myself.”

“Me too,” said Angus. He was stuffing his fluffy raven with gummy bears. “Big-time humiliation.”

I admit that did improve my mood a bit. I pulled the blanket over my head to hide my silly-happy smile.

But Stu pulled the blanket off my face.

“Wait,” he said. “We still don’t know how you even got her to stay in the cathedral with you—at night!”

Yes, how, Jon?

“She… she wanted to find out whether there really are ghosts,” I muttered. “For her grandmother.” At least that was only a fifty percent lie.

“Yep, that sounds like Ella,” Stu said with more than a hint of envy in his voice. Then he fell into a very unusual silence. He was probably picturing how it would be to be locked in the cathedral with Ella Littlejohn.

“And?” Angus was putting one of his T-shirts on his new fluffy dog.

“And what?” I asked.

“Are there ghosts in the cathedral?”

He’d obviously been asking himself the same question. “Of course not,” I answered. “It’s complete bull.”