“How about some water?” Simone asked.
“Yes, yes. That’s a good idea.” Dame Elisabeth went around her desk and picked up the phone. “Massimo, bring some water to my office. Quickly.”
“No offense,” Asher said, standing behind me, “but how do you know Cassie is actually your granddaughter? Just because she reminds you of your daughter, and she has the box, that isn’t really proof.”
“No, of course that wouldn’t be sufficient,” she said.
A knock on the door stopped any further discussion. Massimo entered the room holding a silver tray with a pitcher of water and a few glasses.
“Thank you, Massimo,” Dame Elisabeth said, serving me a glass. “That’ll be all.”
“As you wish,” he said, eyeing me curiously before leaving the room and closing the door again.
I took a sip of the water and calmed myself down. Asher was right. This was probably wishful thinking on Dame Elisabeth’s part. I couldn’t be her granddaughter … could I?
“Feeling better?” Dame Elisabeth asked.
“Yes.” I nodded. “But why are you so sure you’re my grandmother?”
“Besides the fact that you have the mark, you’re the right age, and the uncanny resemblance to your mother … I have this.” She reached behind her neck, unfastened the gold necklace she was wearing, and opened the locket that hung from the chain.
“Does she look familiar?” she asked, handing it to me.
I looked down at the two photos. The one on the left was the same shot of my mother holding me as a baby that I remembered seeing when I was younger, and the picture on the right was of a much younger Dame Elisabeth with a girl who did bear a striking resemblance to me.
“Your mother sent it to me right after you were born,” Dame Elisabeth said. “No return address, just the locket and a note saying you had the mark. It was the last thing she sent me before she passed away.”
Could it be true? Was she really my grandmother?
“But you never tried to find me,” I said, “or contact me … ?”
“It was the only way to protect you. It was why your mother left. To make sure no one came looking for you. I couldn’t risk destroying everything she’d sacrificed just to see you.” Dame Elisabeth stared out into the night. “I’d warned her about becoming involved with the Hastati, but she wouldn’t listen. The night she showed up here and told me she was pregnant … we both knew that having her disappear would be the only way to protect you.”
“How was she involved with them?” Asher asked.
Dame Elisabeth faced us again. “Perhaps that’s a conversation Cassandra and I should have later … in private.”
The cell phone on her desk rang.
“My friends can hear anything you have to tell me,” I said, glancing at both Simone and Asher. “They can be trusted.”
“I’m sure, but these are personal matters for me as well.” She looked over to see who was calling and grimaced. “I’m sorry. I have to take this call.” She picked up the phone and stepped out of the room for privacy.
“What do you think?” Simone whispered to me. “You believe her?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “It’s not the craziest thing I’ve heard this week. And the photos in the locket are my mother.”
“Still, we have to be careful.” Asher was riffling through some papers on the desk. “Remember that we’re here to find the spear and get it back to my uncle.”
Simone had her ear pressed against the door. “She’s coming back!” she said in a low voice and darted away as Asher came over to where I was sitting.
When Dame Elisabeth entered the room, we were all in the same places where she’d left us. “I apologize for that interruption, but it seems I have no choice but to leave for a little bit.” She seemed a bit more frazzled than when she’d left. “In the meantime, you can stay here, and I’ll have Massimo bring you some dinner.” She pulled out a small key from her pocket and opened a locked drawer in her desk.
This was good news. We were going to be left alone, which meant we’d have a chance to search for the spear. I didn’t want to even look at Simone or Asher to see if they were thinking the same thing I was. “That’s fine,” I said. “But is there a restroom we could use?”
“Oh, of course.” She pulled out a file and closed the drawer again while her cell phone buzzed. She checked it and scowled. “I’ll have Massimo show you.” She opened the door of her office. “Massimo!” Dame Elisabeth called out. “Massimo!”
Her cell phone was buzzing again.
“I don’t know where he is right now,” she said, speaking very quickly. “But here, I’ll just tell you where to go. Come.”
We followed her out into the hallway.
“See those stairs?” she said, pointing to a marble staircase. “Go up to the second floor and make a left. The restrooms are on the right-hand side of the hallway. Afterward, just return to my office. I shouldn’t be too long.” She turned on her heel to leave, then swiveled around to face me, putting her hands on my shoulders. “I really am very glad to finally meet you, Cassandra. We’ll fill each other in as soon as I get back, okay?”
“Sure, no problem,” I said, anxious to start searching the compound for the spear. This may have been my grandmother, but I was here to save my dad.
Dame Elisabeth smiled and tucked a lock of hair behind my ear. “So much like your mother,” she muttered.
“Cassie, are you coming?” Simone asked. I looked to see Simone waiting for me by the stairs and Asher heading up.
“Yeah.” I turned to catch up with them.
“Don’t leave the Priorato, Cassandra,” Dame Elisabeth shouted. “It’s not safe out there for you.”
“You have no idea,” I said under my breath.
But, no matter the danger, I knew I’d leave the moment I found that spear.
“Never trust the Knights,” Asher said once we regrouped at the top of the stairs. “My uncle always told me this and he was right. We have to stick together.”
“I agree.” Simone nodded emphatically. “Plus, what do we really know about this Dame Elisabeth?”
We didn’t have time to discuss this. “We’ll never be able to cover the whole compound if we don’t split up,” I argued.
“It’s not safe,” Asher insisted. “Someone could still attack you here.”
Simone bit her nail. “What if Cassie and I stay inside the building while you go out? That way we aren’t completely exposed.”
It was a good compromise. “C’mon, Asher,” I said. “We’re already wasting time.”
Asher hesitated, but then relented. “Fine.”
“Plus”—Simone smiled—“if someone gets caught it’ll only be you.”
Asher glared at her. “I won’t get caught.” He grabbed the banister and pointed at me. “Twenty minutes,” he said, and then leapt down to the next landing before disappearing around the corner.
“Simone, do you want to check this floor while I go downstairs and look around?”
“Works for me. If your grandmother comes back, just say I’m in the bathroom.”
I nodded and headed down the stairs.
If everything Dame Elisabeth said was true, my mother used to roam these halls … and she made the box with the riddle. It seemed like she was even the one who hid the spear … but where?
Every room downstairs seemed to be an office, and none had statues or spears. I walked back into Dame Elisabeth’s office and looked out the window. Asher was out there somewhere, but all I could see was the entrance to what had been my mom’s favorite garden.
Garden. The first line of the poem talked about the garden of her heart.
My mother was talking about her favorite garden.
That must be where she hid the spear!
I had to get Simone and go search outside. Racing out of the room, I overheard some voices arguing from down the hall. One of them was Dame Elisabeth, and she sounded upset.
I tiptoed
over to the closed door.
“I should’ve been informed earlier.” Dame Elisabeth’s tone had a hard edge to it. “The moment he took a turn for the worse.”
“It was unconfirmed rumors,” an unfamiliar, gruff voice responded. “But now the girl is in more danger. Do you want to tell her about her father’s condition?” he asked.
My ears perked up and my heart started beating harder. It took extra effort just to hear them over the pounding in my chest.
“Eventually,” Dame Elisabeth answered. “Right now, she seems a bit overwhelmed.”
“He may have less than an hour.” The man’s voice was very matter-of-fact. “We need to start preparing.”
My knees buckled, but I braced myself against the wall.
No, no, NO! My father couldn’t die. This couldn’t be happening. There had to be a way to save him. I had to do something.
“Maybe,” I muttered to myself. “Maybe I can save him.”
An idea took root. The spear. If I had it … if I could somehow activate it … I could use it to change destiny. To change my father’s fate. I just needed to find it—fast.
I charged toward the front door, pulled it open, and ran outside.
The path to the garden was lit by small lamps, but otherwise the area was shrouded in darkness, with tall cypress trees providing cover from any prying eyes. The area had neatly trimmed hedges and a concrete bench at the far end that overlooked the city of Rome down below. I thought about the poem.
In the garden of my heart
A dagger found its mark
Slicing through the cross’s core
Casting me to the dark
The dagger in the second line of the poem was probably code for the spear, but what did it mean to be slicing the cross’s core?
“What cross?” I whispered, spinning around and not seeing any crosses in the garden. I gazed out past the rooftops of Rome. Even at night, the city lights showed several churches that had domes or bell towers with crosses perched on top. Could the poem be sending me to one of them?
My heart fell. There was no way I’d find the spear in time to change my father’s fate if I had to go to all those churches.
No. There had to be another answer.
I stood on top of the bench to see farther out. I had to find another clue. A sign pointing me in the right direction.
But there was nothing.
Maybe if Asher and Simone helped. As I was about to jump off the bench, I noticed the pattern of the hedges in the garden. When looking at it from above, the shrubs formed a perfect Maltese Cross, and in the center, where the four wedges met, was a stepping-stone much darker than all the others.
The cross’s core cast in the dark. That was it. The spear had to be buried there!
I jumped off the bench and cut through the hedge to get to the center. Dropping to the ground, I grasped the edges of the flat stone and pushed it to the side.
I dug down into the moist soil. About four inches down, a piece of blue velvet poked out from the ground.
It was here! I’d really found it!
Clawing at the ground faster, I uncovered a small bundle of velvet that had been lying only inches beneath where people walked every day. Lifting it out of the ground, I unwrapped the cloth to reveal a somewhat tarnished, ordinary-looking spearhead.
I remembered Asher’s warning about touching the spear. I’d promised not to do it, but this was an emergency. The last thing I wanted to do was become bound to it for life, but if this was the only way to save my dad, I’d do it.
My hands trembled.
No one had to know that I’d used the spear. If it worked, I promised myself, I’d never use it again.
“Get it together, Cassie,” I whispered. “You were born to do this.”
There were no instructions on how to make it work or how to choose a different destiny; I just had to go with my gut and hope for the best.
I took a deep breath and wrapped my dirty fingers tightly around the spear. Its metal was cool to the touch. Please, I prayed, let this work.
I waited, but nothing happened. Maybe there was too much dirt for it to work. I ran to a nearby fountain and rinsed my hands and the spear, then wiped it dry with my shirt.
I tried again, rubbing it as if it were Aladdin’s lamp, wishing for my dad to be healthy.
Still, nothing happened.
A sinking feeling formed in the middle of my chest. Brother Gregorio had said that only one person could be bound at any given time—and they’d been using Tobias to trap the power. Maybe he still had it. Or maybe I wasn’t who everyone thought I was. Either way, it meant that I wasn’t going to save my dad.
It was over. I had failed.
I slumped to the ground … defeated. I’d tried so hard to be brave, but now I could feel tears starting to run down my face.
Opening my messenger bag, I shoved the spear inside. Just as I was about to drop it in, I felt a slight tingle, like a small current, hit my fingertips. At first I thought it was my cell phone, but I didn’t have one with me. My heart raced. I clasped the spear harder, afraid to let go.
There was a blinding light, like if I had stared into the sun. I wanted to cover my eyes, but I couldn’t move. It was as if I had been removed from my body, so I was no longer sitting next to the fountain or in the compound or anywhere in Rome. I was somewhere else, in neither darkness nor light, but surrounding me there was a vast stretch of nothingness. It was the strangest sensation. It felt like there were limitless possibilities, only I couldn’t see any of them.
Then, like a vacuum sucking me down into existence, I was back inside my body. My eyes were closed, and my breathing had slowed down. The blood coursing through my veins made an incredibly loud whooshing noise in my ears.
Faces and images flew all around me.
Focus, I told myself. You need to find your father.
Suddenly, it all stopped. A group of doctors and nurses surrounding a hospital bed were frantically working on a patient. I wasn’t sure how I knew it was my father, but I could feel our connection, the fact that his blood flowed through my veins.
And there was a sound. A long monotone beep.
One of the doctors stepped back, shook his head, and whipped off his medical gloves. I was too late.
My father was dead.
“NO!” I yelled, opening my eyes and looking at the spear still in my grasp. There had to be another choice. What good was the power to change destiny if I couldn’t change my father’s fate?
There was no way I was going to give up. I closed my eyes and concentrated harder. I fell back into the void, but this time I sensed that I was drifting forward, almost like a surfer on a gentle wave. On the horizon, I could see what looked to be a cemetery. If I did nothing, I’d continue travelling with the current toward the tombstone, but that wasn’t where I wanted to go. There had to be another choice. I calmed my breathing. I was clueless on how to change what I’d seen, but I wasn’t going to stop trying.
“He can’t die. He has to wake up and be fine,” I whispered to myself and to whatever power I was accessing. “Make it happen.”
A narrow channel unfolded in my mind’s eye. It was like an undercurrent, going in a different direction than the wave I was surfing. I focused on that undercurrent, trying to follow the connection with my father. I wanted to see where this path would take me. A scene appeared in the distance, like looking at one of those old flickering movies. A doctor was yelling at the nurses to stand back. I willed myself forward, gliding toward that image. The long monotone beep I’d heard earlier suddenly started to beep in a rhythm. My father’s heart was pumping again.
I’d done it. I’d saved him!
But I didn’t know where he was.
“I need to know where he is,” I muttered, figuring that the last time I said something the spear helped me save my dad. “Show me when I’ll be with him.”
Images spun again like a fast-moving merry-go-round and finally settled on an unfamiliar man
looking out toward a brilliant blue sea.
This was not what I wanted. Maybe I hadn’t been clear on who I wanted to be with. “No, no, my father, Felipe Arroyo. I need to be with him. Show me when that will happen.”
I felt myself being pulled at blinding speed somewhere else. Then I stopped, and there was an image of my father in a hospital room. Outside, there was a flash of lightning and the sound of thunder. Through a blurry window I could see a white car driving away. I tried to get a clue of where we were, but the image was fading. I heard my father say “m’ija,” and I noticed a digital clock on the wall that showed the date and time. It was tomorrow morning at 11:58.
Suddenly, I was being hurtled through space again. Now the images were coming at me faster. All I could see was a hand holding a gun, and I heard muffled voices arguing until a shot was fired. That vision was quickly replaced with one of several people in hazmat suits walking down a city street, which instantly blended into bodies … dead, rotting bodies, scattered along the same street, with a fire burning in a nearby park. The images kept picking up speed. Thousands of them seemed to be flying by me so fast that I couldn’t make sense of any of them. I felt myself propelled forward … faster and faster. Everything around me was turning into a blur. I was out of control. I needed to get to the present, but I didn’t know how. In this place I had no voice, no body, but I could feel my heart speeding up. I couldn’t breathe. I was gasping for air.
It felt like I was going to die.
“Cassie?” I could hear Asher, but he sounded far away. “Cassie!”
There was a touch on my shoulder. It felt like an electric current shocking me back into reality. My eyes popped open in time to see Asher stumble.
“What was that?” he asked. He was flicking his hand wildly.
“I don’t know,” I said, dropping the spear into my bag. I couldn’t tell him about what I’d just done.
“You okay?” He crouched down next to me.
I nodded and pushed the hair away from my face.
He reached over, his fingertips lightly touching my cheek. “Were you crying?”
I felt the tracks left behind by my tears.
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