45

That night, Atticus handed Lil a basket as she readied to leave the mitato. He lifted the lid. Inside she saw a Turkish coffee pot, the tin of menthol salve and a small terry-cloth wrap that seemed to emit a heady herbal aroma.

“The fresh essences will sharpen your senses and calm your mind enough for you to sleep,” Atticus said, pulling the wrap from the interior of the basket. “The stones”—he lifted a cloth to reveal the two stones that Colleen had shown them—“are here as well. You must decide tonight.”

“Thank you,” Lil said, accepting the basket from Atticus’ hand.

“So you know everything?” she said, looking up at his tanned face.

He nodded. “My family have been healers for the Daughters of Ariadne for nearly as long as the history of the order itself.”

“But you’re not doctors?” Lil said.

“We’re better than doctors,” Atticus said.

Lil turned to see Aestos at the potbellied stove in the opposite corner. He poured a liquid into a small vial and placed it into a basket next to him. Then he brought it over to Charlie. “This will be good for the wound, numb away the pain when it gets bad. Rub it on gently.”

“Merci,” Charlie said, leaning on a pair of crutches that looked like they had been freshly whittled that morning.

Sydney lifted her basket from the bed, and Kat joined her.

“Oh, I retrieved all of your dormitory keys from the chaos,” Atticus said, pulling two of the large cast-iron keys from each pocket. He held them out.

“We’ll see you in the morning,” Aestos said. “At breakfast. It goes without saying—you must not mention a word of this to anyone.” He went over to the freestanding sink, lathered his hands with a bar of soap and ran them under the water.

“But what do we tell the other girls if they ask?” Kat said.

Atticus wiped his hands. “Do not fret. I have made up a story for each of you. Sydney, keep calm. Nerves are the worst you have to battle. Lil, you’re bruised up. You fell down the stairs on Tuesday night when you left your room without your candle.” He turned to Charlie, who held the crutches securely under her arms. “Wednesday, each group went on a field trip to Samaria Gorge. Charlie, if you can manage, say you fell on the first part of the trail. It’s the steepest and most dangerous. You had to ride the rest of the way on the back of a mule.”

“I would have liked a more adventurous story, but it will have to do, I suppose,” Charlie said.

“And, Kat, you attempted to catch her as she was falling, yanking your arm from its socket. You’ll keep it covered, but this will help explain away the sling. Understood?”

They all nodded.

“All right, follow me.” Atticus turned toward the door and opened it.

Lil looked outside to a moon-soaked garden, then jumped as the shrubbery next to them shifted. Sydney grasped her arm, but out into the moonlight shot a small goat, who fell into stride beside Atticus.

“It’s only Baskin,” Atticus said, reaching down to scratch the goat’s head. “Not to worry now.”

All together, they walked a stone path through the garden and back into the kitchen. Atticus lit four candles, handing them off one by one. Lil took hers and Charlie’s, so that Charlie wouldn’t have to manage the stairs with the basket, candle and crutches.

“I think you know the way from here,” Atticus said, sliding the kitchen door open to the stone stairwell to Hall D.

“Thank you,” they said as they made their way slowly up the stairs and into the quiet of the hallway. No one said a word. Lil helped Charlie with her door and candle.

“I’ll see you in the morning?” Lil said. “At breakfast?”

“Definitely,” Charlie said, leaning the crutch against the wall.

Lil set the candle down on the dresser and turned to the door. She stopped and looked back before leaving.

“Charlie, do you think you’ll stay?” Lil asked.

Charlie pulled two fountain pens from her pocket and laid them side by side on the dresser. They were both badly cracked, and ink stained her fingers. She wiped them off on her pants. “There’s a lot to consider, isn’t there?” she said.

“I suppose for some,” Lil said. But she’d chased after her mother, chased after answers, for what seemed like ages. She longed to wipe the sleepless nights out from beneath her eyes. From beneath her dad’s eyes. She longed for truth. She pictured her mom kissing her dad good-bye. Off on another mission. She had been coming here. Lil was sure of it. She could continue her work. She could follow in her footsteps. Catch up to them.

She stepped into the hallway, wondering if she could talk to the others before they closed themselves inside, but Sydney and Kat slipped into their rooms, doors closing softly behind them.

Lil went to her door and pressed her key into the lock. The stained-glass window had been repaired with an exact replica and cast a soft moonlit glow down on her arms as she turned the key. The door itself had been put back together, and when Lil opened the door, all stood as it had when she first arrived. She went over to the window seat, sat down and placed the basket in front of her. Lifting the lid, she pulled the wrap out and placed it on her collarbone. The ache around the break quickly subsided, the warmth of the wrap sucking it away. Then she pulled out the two rocks and placed them in front of her: the red one on the right and the black one on the left. She picked up the red one and clutched it in her hand as she extracted the picture of her mom and Bente from her pocket. It was so badly damaged it looked like it was under a cracked frame. The glossy front split. Colors in the right-hand corner ran. But her mother’s smile remained unchanged.

She could learn more about Mom. Lil’s fingers tightened, but more important, she thought, she could extract some answers. She would never take an amnesiac. Lil clutched the red rock and went to her door, sliding it open and peering into the dark hallway. She glanced quickly from one rush mat to another at the base of each door. No rocks were set out yet.

The door in front of her swung just slightly in the breeze, and she noticed that Sydney had left the top half open just a crack. Lil stepped across the hallway and pushed the door open gently. There was Sydney, holding up a frame with a picture in it. By the light of the candle, Lil could see two girls. One was definitely Sydney, and the other one was nearly identical to her. Younger, but had her features.

“Is that your sister?” she asked.

Sydney turned, placing the picture on the table. “So much for that scholarship.”

Lil rolled the clay rock in her hand and deposited it into her pocket.

“Still thinking about that, huh?” Lil said, wondering how she could possibly be considering that after all they had been through.

“It’s why I’m here,” she said, crossing to her bed where she had laid out the shirt and pants she had worn into the labyrinth. The shirt seemed to have taken on a new, darker color, and the pants were dirt-covered and torn.

“So you won’t be staying? Even after everything Athenia has told us?”

Lil looked her over as Sydney sat down on the bed and began to scrub a patch of dirt off her shirt. Sydney looked up and leveled her with a stare.

“Do you think they’re really trustworthy? Blueprints of immortality. It’s a bit far-fetched, don’t you think? Even our greatest scientists haven’t figured it out. How could some ancient man have the resources to understand it?”

“But there are people who seek it—” Lil started.

“The Zephylites?” Sydney stopped scrubbing, her eyes going wide. “You realize they are utterly psychotic, right?”

“So you’ve made up your mind, then?” Lil asked.

Sydney guffawed, as though it were all a joke. “I would say so.”

Lil felt the weight of the rock in her pocket.

She went back into the hallway. Stopped and turned. She wrapped her elbows over the bottom half of the stall-like door.

“Hey, Sydney?”

“Yeah?” she said, switching her shirt for her pants. She held them, surveying the damage. “Might as well just throw these away,” she muttered.

“You know we wouldn’t have been able to survive without you, right?”

“Nah.” Sydney shrugged, as if trying to throw off a hand on her shoulder. “You would have found another way. That’s all. I slowed you down.”

“You saved my life. You saved all of our lives,” Lil said. “You see how things work. How they’re put together. We would have died in trap after trap without you.”

“Okay,” Sydney said, dropping the pants into her lap. “Thank you for the awkward pep talk.”

“If you stayed, it would be a great asset to . . . to whoever else stays.”

Sydney looked toward her. Lil watched as she glanced at the picture of her sister and then back at her bag.

“Think of it,” Lil said. “If not for us . . .” She remembered the words Athenia had said. “Unlimited resources. Perhaps to help find a cure—”

“I’ll take it all into consideration,” Sydney snapped, turning back to her pants and shaking her head in dismay.

Lil turned toward her door, stood for a moment in front of her mat. She pulled the rock from her pocket and placed it in the corner. She stepped back into her room, glancing at her watch. The front of the watch was scraped and scarred, but she could see it said 11:00. She pulled her pajamas on, got into bed, set her sneakers securely at the foot of her night table, placed the picture of her mother on her nightstand and stared at it until her eyelids grew heavy.

Then she fell asleep until morning.