Chapter 19 #2
“God, I hope that works,” Aida said, pocketing her phone again. She gave Yumi the lowdown on the conversation she had with
Mo. “Out of all the people I didn’t want to see on this trip, he was at the top of the list.” She swatted Yumi on the shoulder.
“And what were you thinking, telling him I thought he was handsome?”
“I’m so sorry! It was the first thing I thought of to say. I was so flustered. I’m not used to this god thing. And he is beautiful. Although rather condescending and a bit of a misogynist. My little sightseers? Really?”
Aida didn’t relate Mo’s other condescending words to her friend. “So those places he mentioned—Tower of London, British Library,
Tate Modern, the Churchill War Rooms, the Museum of London, and London Bridge—we’ll have to go to them now. Were they on your
list?”
Yumi sighed. “Of course not. All those places were ones I specifically crossed off because they’re heavily documented online
and it was easy enough to check the photos and satellite views. Nothing about them suggests there will be any meanders. Maybe
we can try the location spell Vulcan gave us. Let him think we’re at one of those locations when we’re not?”
“I worry Mo will randomly show up to one of them—he has a penchant for doing that, trying to catch me off guard.”
Yumi lifted her hand to hail a passing black cab. “Why would this adventure of ours be easy? Gah. Then we’ll see a lot of
London this week.”
The Tower of London, while jam-packed with history and millions of dollars’ worth of Crown Jewels, did not, as Yumi had predicted,
yield a single meander. But they didn’t dare hurry too much. Mo knew they were headed there, so Aida didn’t use Vulcan’s spell
to mask their location and only used the audio block sparingly. She needed MODA to think they truly were on vacation. But
she had to give Mo some silent thanks—they were the only ones viewing the Crown Jewels early. When they emerged from the castle
into the light of the courtyard, a line of several hundred people snaked in front of them, waiting for their turn.
Yumi was keen to see the Tower’s ravens, so they wandered in that direction. While Yumi took photos of the caged birds, Aida’s
phone buzzed. Luciano.
Leaving Yumi to her photos, she stepped away from the path and out of the way of passersby.
After activating Hephaestus’s privacy spell, she slid in her earbuds and answered the call, looking around to make sure she wasn’t being watched.
Her heart skipped a beat when his face appeared on her screen.
“It’s good to see you. Were you able to find anything out from the beekeeper?” she asked in a low voice.
“A little,” he said. “While Dolores was her main contact, she said all the contracts she signed were from a firm in London,
which she found odd.”
“If the firm is in London, that’s another sign that our database is too.” She didn’t want to say Pandora’s name aloud.
“The beekeeper also told me MODA paid an extravagant fee to close off the garden so I was free to conduct my research—a fee
that the garden couldn’t turn down.”
Aida sighed. “I hope they don’t kill the bees.”
“Me too. I wish I could be there with you in London. But I couldn’t fathom any way to go without raising suspicion. It figures,
just as you leave Rome, I get word that one of my uncles passed away.”
“Oh, I’m so sorry to hear that.”
“Don’t be. I barely knew him. But after my father died, I became his next of kin, and it turns out that means I’m the owner
of his apartment near the Spanish Steps.”
“Are you serious?” Aida could hardly contain her excitement at the thought. It seemed too good to be true. “I might see you
in Roma?”
“If whatever you do in London doesn’t leave you without a place in Rome to return to.”
Aida’s stomach plummeted at the thought.
“I’ll be heading there after the holidays to see exactly what he left to me. We weren’t close. He and my father had a falling
out before I was born. I don’t ever remember meeting him. I only knew he was some sort of city politician there.”
Yumi waved at Aida, ready to depart.
Aida held up a finger, indicating she wanted one more minute. “I wish you could be here to help. And god knows, or should
I say, the gods know what we’ll do once we have all the meanders. If they are in London, after all.”
“If you really need me—and don’t care about suspicion—let me know, and I’ll be on a plane right away.”
Aida agreed and reluctantly ended the call with Luciano, her heart conflicted. If they found Pandora and released happiness
back into the world, if that was even possible, what did it mean if she no longer had a home? Or a job? The thought left a
dark spot inside her.
“How’s your bel ragazzo?” Yumi asked as she neared.
“The handsome lad is just tickety-boo,” Aida said, throwing on a smile and her best British accent.
“Come on! We have a treasure hunt to continue.”
Yumi headed toward the exit, and Aida followed. The sightseeing adventure had been fun so far, but after they found all the
meanders and had the key, then what?
That afternoon, they had true confirmation that the database was in London. They found their first meander at the Victoria
and Albert Museum. After their cab had dropped them at the exhibition entrance, they had wandered through much of the museum,
eyeing every inch of the architecture, but it wasn’t until they stumbled across the Grand Entrance on the opposite end of
the building that they were rewarded.
“Look at this!” Aida exclaimed as they emerged from an upper corridor and the large circular space appeared below. She looked
up, stunned by the Rotunda’s beautiful glass-topped, dome-shaped ceiling. In the center of the dome hung a stunning blue-and-yellow-green
glass Chihuly sculpture above a circular information desk.
“No, Aida, you need to look at that.” Yumi pointed to the black-and-white floor.
Along its border was a simple meander, a repeating motif that added an additional layer of visual interest to the space, complementing the overall design aesthetic of the Grand Entrance. She held up the lens to her eye.
“Oh my god, it glows! Come on!” She pulled Aida toward the marble staircase that led down to the entrance.
When she began to kneel in the center of the front entrance, lens in hand, Aida stopped her. “Way to be conspicuous.”
“Oh, sorry.” Yumi stood and backed off to a corner, then lifted the lens to her eye. She handed the lens to Aida.
Aida peered through the glass. The meander was glowing a bright blue all the way around the edge of the room. She gasped.
“Now what do we do?” she asked, returning the lens to Yumi.
“I guess we take a bunch of photos. I’ll have to figure out how this fits in with the other meanders later.”
“When we find them all.”
“Right,” Yumi agreed, turning her phone camera toward the floor.