CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT.

WE TRIED.

GRIFFIN SPIT RAN down my face like a warm shower.

I bolted upward with a scream.

"He waketh," came a voice above me. "O rapture unexampled."

The surrounding gray had darkened. I took in a gulp and nearly choked.

Humidity.

I could taste the salt in the air.

Above me loomed the face of Canavar, leering down at me as if I were some vaguely interesting ancient relic.

My father's joy was a lot less restrained. As he lifted me into a big hug, I closed my eyes. I couldn't believe I was here. Back with him. Back with them all. Cass and Aly were kneeling by my side, along with Dr. Bradley. Torquin was still at the entrance, pacing.

"Dude," Cass said, "I thought you were going to kick my hand off the wrist."

"Cass held on," Aly told me. "So did I. Together we were practically a whole Marco."

"Well, a fraction of a Marco," Cass added. "But enough to pull you through."

I was starting to understand. The hands I'd felt on my ankles had not been zombie claws after all. They'd been Cass and Aly, pulling me to safety.

Dad was grinning, his cheeks moist. "You went in. And then Cass and Aly bounced right back out. What happened?"

I glanced at my watch. The second hand was moving again, but the other hands were still on 3:17. To Dad and the others, no time had passed.

"No Loculus!" called Torquin from the Mausoleum entrance. "No professor. Go back."

Cass and Aly stared at me.

"Torquin . . . we tried," I said.

"Tried?" Torquin thundered. "What means tried?"

"He didn't make it," Aly said softly.

Torquin's body sagged. Even in the dark I could see the panic in his eyes and the deepening of his skin's natural redness. He took a step backward as if he'd been pushed, and his shoulders began to shake. Dr. Bradley rushed toward him, but Canavar got there first. He put his arms around Torquin's knees in the best comforting gesture he could manage.

A sound welled up from the ground below us, deep and disturbing, like the bowing of a cracked cello. Dr. Bradley and Canavar jumped in surprise. They reached toward Torquin and coaxed him down the steps.

The ground began to vibrate. The wall was glowing now, its solid stone shimmering and blurring. We scrambled backward across the rubble-strewn field.

The Mausoleum seemed to flare with light. Then, just as it had arrived, it began to fade from existence. The chariot went first and then the roof, until the wall gave way to the darkness beyond.

In a moment, all that was left was a moonlit pile of rocks. On top of them lay the matching number seven plates.

Dad knelt beside us, his face drawn and pale. "Your shoulder, Jack," he said. "I hadn't noticed . . ."

I looked down. My shirt was torn, and blood had started to well from the gashes where the griffin had clawed me. "It's only a flesh wound," I said.

"I'll have to treat that," Dr. Bradley called out. "I want to examine all of you."

As the doctor dabbed at my shoulder, Dad put a warm, comforting hand on mine. "Start from the beginning, Jack. Please."

Taking a deep breath, I told him everything I could. From the waters of Nostalgikos to the river of fire, from Artemisia's palace and Bhegad's death to the flight back on the griffin. Aly and Cass chimed in with details.

Dad listened, quietly nodding, wincing at the painful parts. I knew we'd come a long way from Mongolia. His questioning, skepticism, stubbornness-all of it had peeled back for a moment.

He believed me now. I could tell. He believed everything.

As I finished, Dad let out a deep sigh. "Bhegad followed through. He gave his life for you. And I never had the chance to forgive him. To let him know I didn't blame him any longer for what happened to Mom."

Dr. Bradley brushed a tear from her eye. "I think he knew how you felt."

"Yes," came the muffled rumble of Torquin's voice. "He knew."

He was sitting on the ground, his back to us. Looking straight ahead into the darkness.

Into the space where he had last seen Professor Bhegad.

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE.

THE GRAND CARBUNCULUS WIZENDUM.

I AWOKE FROM a dreamless sleep in an airless hotel. The heat had been jacked up and I was sweating through the sheets. Tinny music blared from a clock radio, and bodies were lying on every surface-Cass on another bed, Aly and Dr. Bradley sharing a fold-out sofa, and Dad on a cot. The closet door was open, and Canavar slept curled up on the floor. I could see Torquin's silhouette outside, pacing back and forth in the early-morning sunlight. We were all dressed in the same clothing as the day before.

"Rise and shine," I groaned. As I slipped out of bed and into the bathroom, I threw open a window. We were just off the highway, and a gust of gasoline-scented air blew in.

"This hotel has bad breath," Cass said.

"Sorry, it was the best we could find at four in the morning," Dad replied.

One by one we washed up. Dad was last. No one was saying much of anything. Cass busied himself with a pad of paper and a pencil he had taken from the hotel room desk. I watched as he wrote the heading GOING FORWARD? across the top.

He stared at it a moment, then quickly erased the question mark.

I sat on the sofa. My head ached and my shoulder felt swollen and sore. We had agreed on a planning meeting in the morning, to discuss the future in a post-Bhegad world.

A future that was looking very, very brief.

As Dad began pacing the room, the gnarled figure of Canavar emerged from the closet. He sat in a corner, picking something out of his hair and popping it quietly into his mouth.

"I didn't see that," Cass murmured.

"Artemisia," Dad said. "She told you the Loculus was stolen, yes? Did she give proof?"

"Never," Cass asserted.

"Maybe she was lying," Dad said.

I shook my head. "The whole time we were there-the forest, the control center, the palace-I never once felt the Song of the Heptakiklos."

"How big is Bo'gloo?" Dr. Bradley asked.

"We must have passed through maybe half of it, on foot or on the griffin," Cass said with a scared gulp. "Why? Are you going to suggest we go back?"

"I'm sure Artemisia wasn't lying," Aly declared. "She had no reason to hide it from us. She resented the Loculus."

Cass nodded. "Also, if the Loculus was in Bo'gloo, Nadine would have been all over it. Griffins are bred to protect Loculi."

"Okay, so who knew about the Loculus-and who'd have the motive to steal it?" Dad continued. "Seems to me there are only two possibilities."

"The Karai Institute didn't," Dr. Bradley said. "Professor Bhegad would have known about it."

"Which leaves the Massa," I said. "But we were at their headquarters. They were bragging on how great they were, on all the cool things they could do for us. One thing they didn't brag about was having a Loculus. If they did, don't you think they'd say something? Also, we found the safe where they were keeping Loculi-"

"And there were two of them," Cass said. "The ones they'd taken from us. No others."

We were back to square one. The room fell silent. Outside a car blew its horn at Torquin, who was wandering a little too close to the highway, muttering to himself.

"Would it be impertinent to speak up?" Canavar squeaked, raising a tentative hand.

We all stared at him, and he flinched.

"Erm, I take that as a yes," he continued. "Well, as I mentioned upon thy arrival, many of the Mausoleum's treasures were stolen long ago. Perhaps this Loculus of thine was among them."

"Impossible," I said. "Crossing into the Mausoleum requires the mark of the lambda."

"Indeed, yes." Canavar nodded. "Many tomb robbers were known to employ youths for their ability to enter small spaces. Is it inconceivable that among them may have been one marked with the lambda? Or have there never been such genetic prodigies in any of the generations before thee?"

His words hung in the stale hotel air.

Cass, Aly, and I shared a look. Of course there had been Selects through the years. Dad and Mom had been studying them. But the likelihood that one had lived in Turkey and managed to get into the Mausoleum?

"I guess it's possible," Aly said.

"Of course it is!" Canavar said. "I may be small of stature, but I bow to no one regarding powers of deduction-"

"Get to point!" Torquin was standing in the doorway now. His face was drawn, his eyes swollen.

"I am saying thou must . . . follow the money," Canavar replied, "as they say."

"Canavar, are there any records of the thefts in the museum?" I asked. "Have there been projects to recover the stolen loot?"

"No," the small man replied. "Not at the museum. But in a grand ancient chamber convenes a regular meeting of scholars, the Homunculi, dedicated to the return of such purloined treasures."

"The Homunculi?" Aly said in an undertone. "You mean there's a whole group of creepy little humanoids like Canavar?"

Canavar gave her a severe look and raised his voice slightly. "A group to which, I must add, I have been elected Grand Carbunculus Wizendum for twelve years straight."

"Grand what?" Cass asked.

"Roughly equivalent to treasurer," Canavar said. He slipped off the sofa and moved toward the door. "Our rituals are sacred, our methods arcane. Thou shall be the first of the noninitiates to enter the inner sanctum." He smiled. "It is fitting, I suppose, for those named Select."

CHAPTER FORTY.

THE FENCE.

OUR VAN PUTTERED to a stop in an empty, weed-choked lot. Torquin parked right up next to the entrance of a warehouse building with corrugated metal walls. A cardboard sign hung lopsided over the front door. On it, in thick marker, were three lines of words in Greek, Turkish, and English. The bottom line read GRAND AND SECRET ORDER OF THE HOMUNCULI MAUSOLIENSIS.

"Behold!" Canavar said, his face pinched with pride.

"I quiver with awe," Cass drawled.

"Very secret," I whispered to Aly. She smothered a laugh.

As we poured out of the van, Canavar skittered to the front door and fiddled with the rusty combination lock. After a few unsuccessful tries, he gave the door a swift kick and it swung open.

He reached in and flicked on a light switch. A chain of bare lightbulbs illuminated a vast, musty room. It was lined with metal bookshelves, file cabinets, piles of papers, tables containing unfinished jigsaw puzzles, and a spilled container of congealed orange liquid labeled SEA BUCKTHORN JUICE. Black streaks wriggled along the baseboards as unidentified small creatures ran for shelter.

"Love the scent," Cass said. "Mold, mildew, or mouse?"