Chapter 49 Beck #2
“These books are real,” said Adi, his voice laced with awe as he pulled a leather-bound tome off one of the shelves.
“My god, I think they’re actually old, too.
Hold on, this one is by itself. Could be important?
” He reached for a book on an otherwise-empty shelf.
As soon as he grabbed it, a piece of paper slipped from the pages and fell to the floor.
He held it up to the light. “It has some numbers written in the top corner and tiny holes poked in random places. I think I need to overlay it on a page.”
“Or pages,” Carter suggested. “Try putting it over the pages in that book that correspond to those numbers. Maybe it’ll reveal a message.”
“Right. Yeah. Obviously. Sorry, my mind isn’t running on full power right now.”
While Adi flipped through the book, Beck lifted the final plate on the dining table. “Aha!” he said, scooping up a piece of yellowed parchment. “I found something!” He scanned the paper. “It looks like a guest list.”
Nikolai Drakon
A-
Morgana Dr?cule?ti
O+
Vali Voyvoda
AB+
Desdemona ?epe?
A+
Kristoph Draconem
B-
Constantin Dragulya
O-
Beneath the moonlight, we shall dine.
“Yum,” he muttered to himself. Then to the others, “Looks like we’re hosting a dinner party for the Dracula family, and they’re expecting a wide selection of blood types.”
“What are you all doing?” shouted Sierra. She had lowered the phone and put her hand over the speaker. “The police are on the way and I’m trying to tell the operator everything that’s happened, and you’re talking about having a dinner party and serving blood?”
“Not me,” said Beck defensively, gesturing at the paper. “It’s a clue.”
“Why are you wasting time with—” Sierra cut off suddenly, her eyes focusing on the heavy wooden door. Only then did Beck realize what she was hearing, or . . . not hearing.
Fitzy had gone silent.
“They’re trapped in there,” said Adi. “If they can’t force one of the doors open, then they’ll have to solve the holy water puzzle.”
“The map,” said Carter. “Do we—”
“I dropped it.” A shadow fell over Adi’s face. “Trying to get everyone out. They have everything they need to unlock the keypad.”
“How long before the police get here?” asked Beck, who could hear the muffled voice of the operator on the phone.
“Ten minutes,” said Sierra faintly, her gaze darting around the room as if seeing the elaborate set for the first time.
“Okay. Okay, we can do this. You’re right.
We have to stay ahead of them for ten minutes.
” She lifted the phone to her ear again, and her voice took on new conviction.
“We’re going to try to solve this room and get back to the studio.
Ranielle Russell will know where the entrances to the room are. ”
She didn’t wait to hear the operator’s response, just set the phone face up on the table. “What’s our status?”
Beck went down the list of what they’d found so far, and what they were looking for. A four-letter word for the curio cabinet, a way to open the box on the table, a key to raise the gate. The code in Adi’s book.
But then Adi groaned and straightened from what he was reading. “No good. It’s the last clue.” He read:
By the coffin I did find
A relic that was left behind.
If you recognize this tooth,
Then surely you will know the truth.
Seek justice for Alicia’s ghost
And condemn our once-beloved host.
“Familiar tooth?” asked Beck.
Adi held up a small white fang. “It was in the pouch with the holy water. Vera’s evidence. She must’ve seen him wearing it during the livestream, then found it that morning before everyone had come into the studio. It was her proof that Fitzy had been here to plant Alicia’s body.”
“Vera risked a lot to expose him,” Beck said. “Let’s make sure we get that evidence to the cops.”
Adi nodded grimly and pocketed the shark tooth.
“Oh!” Sierra bellowed. “I found an alcove behind this tapestry! There are a bunch of engraved metal plates with names on them. Desdemona, Nikolai . . .”
“Here!” Beck and Carter called at once. Sierra dumped the nameplates onto the table. Each one had a colorful gem embedded beside the name . . . but nothing about blood types.
“How do we know which nameplate goes where?” Beck said.
“Found a diary!” Adi shouted. He’d given up inspecting the crowded bookshelves and was pulling the diary out from beneath a log in the fireplace. The pages were burned around the edges. He turned to the first page and groaned. “There’s a lot of text here. This might take a minute.”
“Do your thing,” said Sierra. “What’s up with that?”
Beck followed her pointing finger. High in the vaulted ceiling, above the iron gate, one portion of the wall was draped with heavy black cloth. Beck hadn’t even noticed it. His thoughts went to the words at the bottom of the guest list. Beneath the moonlight, we shall dine.
“If there’s a window behind that, it would let in the moonlight,” he said. “Or the fake moonlight, anyway.”
“But it’s so high up,” said Carter. “How are we supposed to . . .”
Before she could finish, Beck rushed to the library ladder and wheeled it along the shelves.
He pushed it as far as it would go, then bounded to the top.
But even standing precariously on the uppermost rung, he knew he wouldn’t be able to reach.
“There’s a rope looped on this end,” he called down to the others.
“Do we have anything that can reach it? Like a broom handle or—”
“A sword?” said Sierra. “Like the one you tucked into your belt loop?”
“Oh yeah!”
Gripping the bookshelves with one hand, he leaned out toward the cloth, sword outstretched. The blade slipped into the loop of rope and he pulled.
The rope came loose. The swath of fabric fell, drifting dramatically to the floor and revealing a stunning stained-glass window.
Far below, Carter cried, “The table!”
Beck glanced down. From his vantage point near the rafters, he had a perfect view of the dining table and the beams of colorful light hitting each plate.
“The gems!” said Carter, unnecessarily, as Sierra had already started sorting the nameplates according to their colorful jewels and the beams of light. When she’d finished, they held their breaths, waiting for something to happen. But nothing did.
Nothing, except for a thump at the door that sent Beck’s heart into his throat. They waited, listening for the telltale sound of a keypad beeping.
But Fitzy and Symphony fell silent again.
Exhaling, Beck had started down the ladder when Adi called up to him, “Hold on! There’s a book mentioned in this diary. The writer says it’s hidden on the top shelf, behind ‘the dragon.’ It has to mean that!” He pointed.
Beck spied the dragon-shaped crystal bookend two shelves over. Normally he would have climbed down and pushed the ladder into place, but never had he felt so intensely the ticking of a clock. He gripped the edge of the bookshelves and sidestepped, Spider-Man–style, across them.
“Beck!” Carter cried. “What are you doing?”
“Not looking down,” he said, toeing some books out of the way. They fell to the floor, and he tried not to think about how their loud thuds would mimic the sound of his own body if he fell.
His palms were sweating. His arms shook.
But adrenaline was flooding his veins and he barely had time to think before he had reached the shelf and shoved the dragon bookend out of the way.
There, behind it—a book. “Here!” he cried, tossing it down to Carter.
She screamed and fumbled with it a few times—sending a loose sheaf of paper flying out from between the pages and across the stone floor.
Not bothering to return to the ladder, Beck scrambled down the shelves.
“Symbol cipher!” yelled Sierra, studying the paper. “Bats, crowns, crosses . . . Anyone know what this connects to?”
Carter pointed. “The tapestries!”
Beck hadn’t given the tapestries much thought yet. The first showed a stag lying amid a bed of flowers. The second—a dog hunt with a castle in the background. The third depicted two people stomping grapes in a barrel. The fourth, a band of musicians.
“Yes . . .” said Sierra, then more forcefully, “Yes! The dogs in that second one look like this symbol, the one for L. And the musician playing . . . What is that? A lute? That’s the letter D.”
“The stag antler, V,” said Adi, pointing. “And the third one . . .”
“A,” said Carter, who had run to the curio cabinet to input the four-letter code. “It has to be ‘Vlad.’”
Adi and Sierra looked from the tapestry to the cipher. “A bunch of grapes,” said Adi. “Of course.”
The lock clicked and Carter threw open the glass doors. She pulled out the first goblet. “This one is labeled ‘O-negative’!”
“On it,” said Beck, snatching up the guest list again while the others carried the goblets to the table, matching them to the bejeweled nameplates. As soon as the last goblet was set into place, the box in the center of the table popped open.
“The key!” they shouted in unison. Sierra grabbed it first and ran for the device holding the gate’s pulley. She twisted it into the keyhole and yanked off the padlock. Adi grabbed the crank and began to turn. The iron gate rose upward.
Sierra and Carter both ducked beneath the gate when it was barely more than a couple of feet off the ground.
Adi stopped cranking and dived after them.
Beck was right behind him, until he remembered Sierra’s phone still sitting on the table.
He turned to run back for it, grabbed the phone off the table—and heard a noise that made his blood run cold.
A keypad beeping.
He froze.
The door swung open. Fitzy stood there, his face twisted with frustration, still clutching the gun. Blood had soaked through his shirt over his shoulder.
Beside him, Symphony had her arms crossed, drumming her fingers against her forearms. “These puzzles,” she said, “are a pain in the ass.” She looked at Fitzy. “Don’t just stand there. Do something!”
He raised the gun.