“Go down to Sankt Goar?” Louisa flattened her hands against the table. “In the dark? Are you high?”
“The moon is up and it’s bright tonight.” Rich folded the map and placed it in the chest. “You were just out there. You know. You hiked all the way to the cave and back, and that’s a tougher trail.”
“It would be pretty cool to see the old village,” Sam said. “The shops and stuff.”
“You just said it’s past midnight.” Raina hadn’t budged from her cot, not even to see the new blocks. “Nothing will be open.”
“I can’t guarantee the aventurine will show us the past,” Birdie reminded them. “There’s a chance we’d hike down there for nothing.”
“But if there’s a block there, and the glass wants us to save Marielle, it may cause the shimmer when we get close,” Kayla said. “That seems to happen a lot.”
“So that gives us six pieces, assuming it’s there. Where is the last block?” Friedrich asked.
“In the garden,” Rich said. “You found two blocks in the cave, so there must have been three buried in the garden. They unearthed two after the fortress was destroyed, so that leaves one still there, at least in Marielle’s time.”
“Or Peter could have hidden two in Sankt Goar,” Kayla said. “Marielle could have given him more than one to hide.”
“To be honest, I’d rather sneak into the village than take on those guards again,” Louisa said. “They’re definitely looking for us. They’re convinced the fortress is cursed with ghosts.”
“So how should we do this?” Kayla asked. “I really don’t want to wear a costume again.”
“Me either,” Birdie agreed, and Sophia nodded beside her.
“I don’t think we need to,” Louisa said. “Not to go into the village. It’s late. If we go to the bakery, there shouldn’t be anyone around except the night watchman and he’s watching for fires.”
“I’m confused. How would the night watchman get back there?” Ryan asked. “He didn’t touch the glass, did he?”
Louisa shook her head. “Not our night watchman at the fortress. He’s a security guard. In Marielle’s time, villages had real night watchmen to watch for fires. There was nothing deadlier than a nighttime fire back then. An entire village could be lost.”
Ryan nodded. “Same name, different guy. Got it.”
“Okay, so if we’re lucky we find the missing block, Friedrich blows his whistle, and we return to the fortress as fast as we can through the low tunnel,” Rich said. “We’ll leave the flashlights in there so we have them when we get back.”
“I’m not going.” Raina was still on the cot, facing away from them all.
“You’d rather stay up here in the ruined fortress all by yourself?” Rich asked.
“I’ll be fine.”
Louisa glanced at her cot. “I’m not sure how long we’ll be gone, Raina.”
“Whatever,” she said. “I’m probably just going to sleep, anyway.”
“Are you sure you’ll be okay?” Rich asked.
“Just go already.”
“Okay.” He turned back to the others. “Let’s do this.”
As lovely as modern Sankt Goar was during the day, it held a special sparkle late at night. In the alley behind the main street, the street lamps dimmed, leaving the moon as the primary source of light.
Except for an occasional cat, the town felt deserted.
“Okay, where to?” Sam asked when they reached the train station.
“According to my research, there’s been a bakery in the same building for hundreds of years,” Sophia said. “Seems like a good place to start.”
“I know where it is,” Louisa said, “but we’ll need to cross Heerstrasse to get to it.”
“The bars will still be open,” Friedrich warned.
She nodded. “I know. But let’s see if we can cross without being seen.”
Louisa led them down the hill toward Heerstrasse, which was not deserted at all. Street-side tables tumbled out of several establishments, and they were crammed with people drinking, smoking, and laughing.
“The statue of the boys with the beehives used to be there.” She pointed beyond the tables to the small town square.
“Wait. That’s my mom.” Birdie held up her arm to stop them all. “What is she doing?”
“Where?” Ryan asked.
Birdie pointed to a restaurant halfway down the block. “In the green shirt.” Her mom was sitting at one of several metal tables, and she had a large glass of white wine in front of her. She was with a man Birdie had never seen before. They were sitting with another couple who were much older.
“Is that your dad?”
Birdie flinched. She shook her head.
“Then it looks like she’s on a date,” Ryan said.
She shot him a dirty look.
“What?” He laughed. “If it’s not your dad, then—”
“Her dad is dead.” Kayla walked up beside Birdie. “So shut up.”
Ryan’s face fell, and he held up both of his hands. “Sorry. Birdie, I had no idea.”
Birdie opened her mouth to say something but the words wouldn’t come. There it was, out in the open.
Kayla.
Again.
Sam cleared his throat. “Where is the bakery?”
“There.” Sophia paused, considered Birdie, then shook off whatever she was thinking. She pointed across Heerstrasse to a slim stone building with wooden accents on the front and window boxes overflowing with flowers.
“Great,” Kayla said. “How will we get over there without Mrs. Blessing seeing us?”
“Who’s Mrs. Blessing?” Ryan asked.
“Birdie’s mom.”
“Your last name is Blessing? You should go by BB.”
“We don’t have time for this.” Friedrich shifted his gaze from Mrs. Blessing to Birdie. “Follow me. We’ll circle around and approach the bakery from behind.”
Ryan’s words echoed in Birdie’s brain. A date? Was her mom really on a date? Could she do that? Her dad and Jonah had just died. It had only been a year. Was that the real reason she’d shipped her off to camp, so she could go on a date?
“Birdie, are you okay?” She’d fallen behind and Sophia waited for her to catch up.
“Did it look like my mom was on a date to you?”
Sophia smiled softly. “I don’t know. You’ll have to ask her.”
“But I can’t. She’d know we were out.”
“Right.” Sophia sighed. “Well, there’s not much you can do about it then, is there? Let’s see if the others found anything interesting.”
They reached the far end of the village, where its few lanes converged and led out of town toward Bacharach. The moonlit river flowed just a few yards away, the water splashing against the bank in its rush upstream.
“Let’s look around,” Rich said. “I bet it isn’t much different than it was in Marielle’s time, except for the paving and streetlights. The street grid was the same.”
Sam scanned the rear of a three-story building. “Where would Peter hide the block? What makes the most sense? Upstairs in the living quarters?”
“He wouldn’t have hid it in a loaf of bread,” Ryan said. “Or in the ovens, where it would burn.”
“One problem. He didn’t live here.” Louisa shook her head. “He worked here. Nikolaus, the sentry with him the night of the attack? He lived here. It was his family’s bakery. It still is, or at least they still use the family name.” She pointed to a sign above the back door. It read Bäckerei Becker.
“So does anyone know where Peter lived?” Sam asked.
“The block is not at the bakery now, if it ever was there,” Friedrich said. “This is not the same building. The Rhine floods and the bakery would have been washed away and rebuilt many times since Peter worked here. A toy block made of wood would have been lost centuries ago.”
“Remind me again why we thought it was a good idea to come down here?” Kayla turned to Birdie. “What about the aventurine. Is it doing anything?”
She retrieved it from her pocket, careful to hold it close so no one would take it from her.
“Well?” Friedrich leaned in to look.
She closed her hand around the glass.
“Nothing new,” she said, but as she did, the glass grew warm. “Wait.”
She sidestepped Friedrich and opened her palm. The gold was swirling again, swirling, swirling, as if unsure what picture to form. As it grew almost too hot to hold, the speckles slammed together to form the image of a toy block.
“You’ve got to be kidding me.” She shook the glass as if it were an Etch A Sketch and she could erase the image. “We already know that—”
“Birdie, shush!” Sophia said.
She slipped the aventurine back into her pocket and felt its heat radiate against her leg.
As the world shifted, Rich’s prediction came true. Not much changed. The river rushed by, only darker now, the water a black mass moving fast. The backs of the buildings lined up in front of them, although their sizes and shapes were askew.
It was very dark, though, and clouds covered a sliver of silvery moon that floated overhead.
“Geister!” came a cry in German. “Geister!”
Birdie nearly jumped out of her skin as the frantic voice cut through the night. Sophia latched onto her arm, holding tight. “What is going on?”
“Nein!” Friedrich waved his arms back and forth like a traffic cop trying to block a road. “Nein!”
Louisa sprinted toward a young boy who stood frozen in the alley, continuing to shout. She reached him quickly, secured him, and placed a hand over his mouth. She whispered something in his ear and the boy went limp, fear rippling across his face.
From his white uniform, Birdie guessed the trembling figure was a young baker boy. “What was he saying?”
“He thinks we’re ghosts,” Friedrich said. “He must have heard the rumors from the fortress.”
“Ghosts?” Birdie rubbed her arm as Sophia released it.
“Sorry.” Sophia stayed close to her. “He scared the crap out of me.”
“Yes,” Friedrich continued. “Geister means ghosts.”
“What’s he doing out here in the middle of the night?” Ryan asked.
“He is on watch,” Friedrich explained. “He must have taken Peter’s place.”
“But he’s just a kid,” Ryan said.
The boy wrestled against Louisa’s grasp. She whispered in his ear again, and after a moment, he nodded. She peeled her hand away from his mouth and allowed him to stand.
His gaze darted across the campers and then back at Louisa, who towered above him.
Friedrich approached him, his voice calm but firm. The boy nodded in reply but seemed incapable of speaking, as if his mouth had gone dry.
The village slept, so quiet that Birdie wondered if anyone else even lived there, if the boy’s cries had been heard at all.
The boy reached into the side of his white jacket. He removed something, moving slowly, and held it up.
A toy block.
“No way,” Ryan said.
“That’s it!” Sophia clapped her hands, startling the boy. He threw the toy toward the river, hard, then took off running in the other direction.
“No!” Birdie cried as she pivoted to watch the small block fly through the air.
Ryan dove for it, jumping high. He caught it in midair, pulling it from the sky before it could fall into the river behind them.
“Nice catch!” Sam trotted over to meet Ryan beside the water.
“Thought I might have to go for a swim there.” He chuckled nervously.
Rich came over and stared at the toy block. He ruffled his brother’s shaggy hair. “I knew you’d come in handy someday.”
Ryan pushed Rich, and they started to wrestle.
“That is enough,” Louisa called, but she was smiling. “We must go. That kid will be back, and he will bring others.”
“I feel a little bad.” Kayla stared after him. “No one will believe he saw ghosts.”
“Are you kidding?” Sam said. “They’ll write another legend about it.”
“How did you know he had the block?” Sophia asked.
Friedrich shrugged. “He was young. It was a toy. The aventurine reacted in this place so I made a guess. I figured there was a chance Peter gave Nikolaus a block to hide.”
“That was Nikolaus?” Sophia asked. “But he was so little.”
“No,” Friedrich said. “That was Nikolaus’s small brother.”
“Poor kid.” Kayla shook her head.