Chapter Thirty
ENZO
Desperation ties my stomach in knots as the hours tick closer to the end of round one.
I was so sure I’d be able to figure out Nocturne’s clues easily—I am, after all, devious, as they say.
However, it’s closing in on five o’clock in the morning—the time when I’m supposed to meet up with the Tentacles—and I haven’t found a single thing.
I thought I was onto something at first. I noticed a pile of books at the return desk covered in a small dusting of ash.
Thinking it might be significant, I spent three hours rearranging the books, then the words in the titles, then the letters themselves, trying to see if they were some kind of code.
When that didn’t reveal anything, I searched out where each one was supposed to be shelved to check for anything.
It was only after two hours of this that I realized I should have done a sniff test. It was cigarette ash.
Probably some librarian tapped her cigarette on the pile and forgot to clean it up.
Mentally kicking myself, I returned to scouring every inch of the library, but it seems Nocturne is as expertly skilled at obfuscation as her magic suggests.
Finally, I come around the final corner of the fourth floor and pause, frowning.
I’ve been here dozens of times over the years to steal various texts and items, and I’m fairly familiar with the layout of the whole building.
But there appears to be something new in this wing.
A freshly erected wall closing off part of the hall with a newly painted door featuring the label CITY HISTORY.
I enter and flip on the lights. Dozens of cabinets stand ahead of me in careful lines. I open the drawer of the nearest one and find rows of newspaper clippings going back forty years.
Is this room a clue? Some kind of trick Nocturne has placed? A red herring?
Or could it just be a new wing dedicated by the university to preserving documents important to Aethera’s history?
Curiosity bubbling through me, I scour through several cabinets. Perhaps there’s something in one of these drawers about the moon-shard that cursed me—or . . . what if there’s something about Lenora? What if the proof of Nocturne’s identity is here?
What if Nocturne’s identity is the clue to get out of the first enclosure?
I tear out the drawers, riffle through boxes of telegraphs, and shuffle among magazine articles.
And then I come to a cabinet labeled ZENITHIC TEMPLE—AETHERA RECORDS.
“Yes,” I whisper as I slide out the drawer. Copies of birth records and citizenship documents on every priest and priestess who has ever worked at the temple unfurl before me.
I flip through and pause when I find her name.
Lenora “Nell” Lightsworn, the top of the document reads over a photograph of the very priestess who visited my home so many times when I was young.
My ears ring. My hands quake, fingers crinkling the paper as they clench. My whole body goes numb as I stumble back into a chair.
“Lenora the priestess . . . ,” I say out loud, staring in disbelief at the page in my hands. “. . . is Nell Lightsworn.”
The woman who crafted the moonshard that cursed my brother and me. Whose lab notes I’ve been poring over for months. Who disappeared without a trace . . . might be Nocturne herself.
“Well, shit,” I say.
Something ripples in my peripheral vision, and I whirl, catching sight of Lola.
“Everything all right?” she asks. “It felt like we were about to have a cardiac episode there for a moment.”
“Yes, totally fine,” I reply, stuffing the documents back into their place and shutting the drawer before she can see what I’m looking at.
The last thing I need her to do is learn more about Nell Lightsworn.
If she finds out she has the potential for the same kind of magic Nocturne has and I didn’t tell her?
I swallow the sudden dryness in my throat. “Have you found anything?”
“Not yet.” She sighs. “You?”
“No, but it’s about time to meet downstairs. Maybe one of the others will have something for us.”
She nods, linking arms with me. I try to ignore the way my stomach twists at the contact. I should have told her long ago about Nell Lightsworn being a conduit, about Lola likely being one, too. I should have come clean about my plan to forge a new moonshard and get Nocturne’s help to do it.
But when we shift through the wall and head toward the lobby, I can’t help but notice Lola matching my gait instinctually. Can’t help but realize I don’t remember what my childhood house smelled like, but the orange blossom aroma in her hair has become the scent of home.
What will she do once she no longer has to stay? Will she return to her father? Escape to join a dance company? Train to be a circus performer?
Where will home be without her?
I shake away the unsettling trajectory of those thoughts.
I’ll tell her everything. Sometime. But she doesn’t need to know now.
We come down the stairs and catch sight of Soren, Jade, Isla, and Arden waiting for us near the statue at the center of the lobby. The clock on the wall reads five fifteen. We have less than three hours left until the first round closes at sunrise.
“Please tell me you had better luck than I did,” I say.
Soren grimaces, Jade shakes her head, and Arden says, “That Nocturne’s a cunning one.”
“Let’s go through the books on the main floor,” Lola suggests. “Be more specific about checking through the spines and topics to see if anything is out of place.”
The others turn to me, Soren with his mouth in a deepening grimace, and I nod. “It’s as good an idea as any. Let’s go.”
The remaining hours of the first round speed by as we comb through the books. Panic churns deep in my gut as fatigue eats at the corners of my eyes. A headache pounds through my skull. My limbs feel like lead.
“Enzo!” Lola says, catching up to me as I trail a man who looks like he might have figured out something.
“Shhh!” I say, glancing to make sure no one heard her say my name. “What?”
“I think I found something.”
I signal to the other Tentacles, and the six of us spill into a section of the library we already searched.
She pulls me to an aisle that seems relatively nondescript. Until she points out the spines of a few of the books protruding slightly from the others. “I was looking through this section because I noticed some of the books were poking out. Maybe it’s a clue.”
Arden retrieves one of the books and reads its title. “Soullight: Fire of the Inner World. Sounds like my kind of book.”
Soren pulls out another one. “Voratium Forged in Faith and Friction,” he reads aloud.
“Starlit Flame.” I frown, examining a tome that looks more like a novel than a textbook. “No way this one is supposed to be in this section.”
“There’s got to be a dozen of them,” Lola says, pushing onto her tiptoes to reach another one.
“They all seem to have something to do with fire . . . ,” Jade puts in. “Words like forged and flame and incendiary and”—she squints at one—“smolder?”
Anticipation overtakes the dread that was simmering in my stomach just moments ago. “This has to be it.”
“Is there a kitchen in this building?” Isla suggests. “Maybe it’s directing us toward a stove of some kind. A burner.”
I ponder. “Possibly.”
“I thought you’ve stolen from this place a hundred times,” Lola says.
“I have, but I came looking for books and artifacts, not cheese.”
She raises a brow. “Cheese?”
“Cheese is delicious.” I shrug. “I like it.”
“Since when is cheese kept on a stove?”
“When you want to drizzle it on things, obviously.”
“Okay, so if not a stove, maybe a broiler?” Arden puts in.
“Let’s check for one downstairs.” Lola shoves the books back onto the shelf and leads the way through the dark, occasionally passing other players. “I saw something weird over here earlier. Might be worth checking out.”
I glimpse a fireplace as soon as we come around the corner, stopping short. “That’s new.”
“What?” Soren looks around. “The fireplace?”
“Yes.” I scurry over to it, running my hands along the ebony mantel-piece as adrenaline sings like electricity through me.
“The rest of the architecture in here is granite,” Jade points out. “This almost looks like . . .”
“Like darkness made solid,” Lola supplies as I push on a few of the stones before finally ducking my head inside the fireplace. A small orb made of what looks to be glass protrudes from the shadows.
“There’s a doorknob in here,” I say.
“Open it!” Lola squeaks.
I grasp it and twist, and a whoosh of cool air billows across my face. I crouch through the doorway and end up outside in the golden dawn. A few other players mill nearby, chatting excitedly among themselves.
“Where’s the clue for the next enclosure’s location?” I ask as the others join me, my fatigue replaced entirely by panicked excitement as I bounce on the balls of my feet.
Arden points toward an odd shadow on the ground in the middle of the sidewalk ahead. “What do you think that is?”
I follow the gesture. “There shouldn’t be a shadow there, not with the light so low still.” I grab Lola’s hand and pull her toward it, excitement thrumming in our pulse.
As soon as we step into the shade, crackling smoke like the ribbons that twined around Nocturne’s body earlier tonight twists out of the concrete. My breath catches as it knots into letters spelling out the words of our next clue:
Stories on display.
Disguises in decay.
Velvet giving way.
Ballet or cabaret?
“Maybe it’s a bookstore,” I suggest as soon as it dissipates, thoughts whirring. “There’s that one downtown . . . You remember it, right? Where the workers dress up like literary characters. That could match the ‘stories on display, disguises in decay’ part.”
Isla stifles a yawn as we trudge across campus. It’ll be quite the walk to the Brig, especially now that the sun has officially climbed its way over the horizon and the streets are teeming with motorcars shuttling people to work.
“But those costumes aren’t decaying . . . ,” Jade says. “And what about the velvet thing?”
“There’s a velvet chair in there!” I point out. “I’ve almost stolen it at least four times. It would go perfectly with the decor in the Brig.”
“Is it old?” Lola asks as Arden hails a cab.
“Maybe?”
“The clue said ‘velvet giving way,’” she says.
“That could be a metaphor.”
“Ballet and cabaret?” Soren says.
I throw up my hands. “There are probably books that have to do with those subjects . . .”
“Seems a bit of a stretch, Enz,” Isla says.
The excitement in my chest deflates. “Fine. Do you have any better ideas?”
“What about the cabarets over there?” She points toward Waterside, where lights still flash even though the sky is beginning to streak silver with sunrise.
“I mean, sure, but I doubt any of them have ever done ballet . . .”
We toss ideas back and forth until it finally strikes me. I grasp Lola’s arm, yanking her to a stop. “You know what it could be? The old theater out near Warthington. It’s still in Aethera, but right on the boundary line. My brother and I used to go see plays there all the time.”
“You know . . . ,” Arden says, waving the taxicab to the curb. “That kind of fits. Stories on display, disguises in decay . . . It’s old, right?”
“They haven’t done a show in probably ten years. I bet the costumes are all moth-eaten by now.”
“Velvet curtains,” Jade repeats. “Did they have ballets?”
“Oh, it did all kinds of shows. Ballet, drama, cabaret, comedy . . .” My cheeks flush with excitement. “That has to be it.”
“You’re a genius,” Lola says as we all squish into the back seat of the cab. “I say we head straight there after supper.”
“Rest up, you fools,” I say, wiggling my eyebrows. “We’ve got another round to win tonight.”