Chapter Fifteen
Zoe and I both stared at the page, our gazes focused on the dollar amount.
“Two million dollars.” Zoe shook her head. “I can’t believe that artifact is worth two million dollars. If I’d known that, I would have been tempted to steal it myself.”
“Well, I can believe it. Facing down a Typhon chimera was bad enough, but that Serket basilisk was even worse. And being able to summon a basilisk whenever you wanted? Lots of people would be willing to pay two million dollars for that.”
She nodded. “Okay, say you’re right. Where is the artifact? And when and where and who is Gretchen planning to sell it to?”
“I don’t know—”
My phone buzzed, cutting me off. I pulled it out of my pocket and checked the message, which was from Ian.
Gretchen is leaving the library. Get out of there.
“We gotta go,” I told Zoe.
“But we haven’t found the artifact yet,” she protested.
“I don’t think it’s in here. If Gretchen really is planning to sell the pen, then she’s got it with her. Which means she can use it to summon basilisks if she finds us in her room. We need to leave. Now.”
I used my phone to snap a photo of the page that talked about Serket’s Pen, then tossed the book over to Zoe so she could put it back in the closet. I glanced around, making sure that we had left everything exactly the way we had found it. Zoe stepped out of the closet, and we turned off the lights, left Gretchen’s room, and locked the door behind us.
We hurried downstairs to the first floor, but everyone was still in the den, watching TV, and no one looked up as we rushed past them. Zoe and I slipped out the front door, stepped outside into the chilly night air, and walked down the steps.
Zoe let out a tense breath. “I’m glad that’s over with.”
“Yeah, me too—”
A phone rang, cutting me off again. At first, I thought Ian was calling me, but then I realized the noise was coming from someone else’s phone. Up ahead, a girl with blond hair and black glasses stepped into the glow of one of the streetlights that lined the cobblestone path. My breath caught in my throat.
Gretchen was heading straight toward us.
I froze. My eyes bulged, and my mouth gaped open, although thankfully no sound came out. Ian had told me that Gretchen was on her way here, but I hadn’t thought we would run into her right as we were sneaking out of her dorm.
I didn’t live here, and neither did Zoe, so if Gretchen spotted us, she would realize that something was wrong. And since she most likely had Serket’s Pen with her, then that would mean big, big trouble for us in the form of a big, big basilisk.
Zoe was as surprised as I was, but she recovered much more quickly. She grabbed the back of my jacket and dragged me away from the steps. “Quick!” she hissed. “Hide! Over here!”
She darted over, ducked around the corner of the dorm, and crouched down in the shadows. I followed her and dropped into a crouch as well. Zoe yanked her electrodagger out of her purse, while I clutched Babs’s hilt. Then, together, the two of us peered around the corner.
Gretchen was staring in our direction.
The Valkyrie was standing in the middle of the path and holding her phone, although it had stopped ringing. Her eyes were narrowed, as if she were trying to peer into the shadows. She must have seen us dart around the side of the building. Zoe and I both gripped our weapons a little tighter—
Gretchen’s phone started ringing again. She kept staring in our direction, and Zoe and I held our positions, neither one of us daring to move. Finally, after what seemed like forever, Gretchen turned away and answered the call.
“Yeah?”
I let out a tense breath. So did Zoe.
I thought Gretchen would walk up the steps and head into the dorm, but instead, she started pacing back and forth in front of the building, talking on her phone.
“Uh-huh… Uh-huh…”
Zoe whispered in my ear. “Who do you think she’s talking to?”
I shrugged. I had no idea, but we couldn’t leave until Gretchen went inside. I just hoped she wouldn’t stand out here and talk all night long.
“Of course I got it,” she said, a sharp edge to her voice. “I told you I would. Now it’s your turn to pay up.”
My breath caught in my throat again. She had to be talking about Serket’s Pen, which meant the person on the other end of the line was her mysterious buyer. Suddenly, I was very interested in her call.
“Tomorrow night. Eight o’clock. Club D.” Gretchen paused. “I have something else I think you’ll be interested in too, so don’t be late.”
Something else? Had Gretchen stolen another artifact from the Idun Estate? Or maybe from the Library of Antiquities?
She ended the call and slid her phone into her jeans pocket. She glanced around, as if checking to make sure no one had overhead her, then jogged up the steps and disappeared inside the dorm.
Zoe started to move, but I grabbed her arm, stopping her.
“Wait,” I whispered. “In case she doubles back.”
So we crouched there and waited, but Gretchen didn’t reappear. After about three minutes, Zoe and I both got to our feet.
“You were right,” she said. “Gretchen is going to sell the artifact.”
“Come on,” I replied. “We need to tell the others.”
* * *
Fifteen minutes later, Zoe and I were in the Bunker and sitting at the briefing table with Takeda, Aunt Rachel, Ian, and Mateo.
“I’m glad that’s over,” Mateo said in a relieved voice. “I thought for sure that Gretchen was going to whip out the artifact and summon a basilisk to rip me to pieces.”
My plan had worked. Gretchen had started to leave the library, but Mateo had gone over and talked to her about their class project, stalling her long enough for Ian to text Zoe and me and for us to get out of her room.
Mateo finished filling us in on his encounter with Gretchen, and then Zoe and I told the others about finding the artifact book in her room and overhearing her phone call.
I passed my own phone over to Mateo, who connected it to his laptop and started typing. A few seconds later, the picture I’d taken of the page Gretchen had marked up appeared on the center wall monitor.
“According to the records, Gretchen checked that Antiques & Artifacts book out of the library around this time last year. Looks like she told the librarians she lost it and paid to replace it.” Mateo glanced at me. “Do you think that’s how long she’s been planning to steal the pen?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know, but Professor Dalaja always takes her classes to the Idun Estate during the fall semester. Maybe Gretchen started wondering what the artifacts were worth when we went there last year.”
“And now she’s going to sell Serket’s Pen tomorrow night, along with whatever else she’s stolen,” Aunt Rachel said.
Mateo hit some more buttons on his laptop. “According to the Protectorate, no other artifacts are missing from either the Idun Estate or the Library of Antiquities. So if Gretchen has stolen another artifact, it’s come from somewhere else.”
“The other artifact doesn’t really matter,” Ian said. “I doubt it could be more dangerous than Serket’s Pen. But do we have any idea who Gretchen’s buyer is?”
“Unfortunately not,” Takeda said. “She’s not a Reaper, so I doubt she would sell it to them. Of course, we can’t rule that out, but Reapers usually take weapons and artifacts by force, instead of paying for them. Maybe Gretchen found a private collector. There is a big black market for mythological artifacts, just like there is for famous art.”
Ian nodded. “So why did Gretchen decide to meet her buyer at Club Dionysus?”
I thought of the purple shirt in her room. “I think she works there. Mateo, can you find out?”
He started typing again. “You’re right, Rory. According to her social-media accounts, Gretchen is a waitress there.”
More photos
appeared on the monitors showing Gretchen holding trays of food inside the club. She was smiling in the pictures, especially the ones with Kylie and the rest of her friends, but the longer I stared at the images, the more it seemed to me like Gretchen was baring her teeth, and that she was merely posing for the camera, instead of being genuinely happy.
Takeda looked around the table at all of us. “We know where Gretchen, the artifact, and the buyer are going to be tomorrow night, so we need to focus on how we can recover the artifact and capture them. Agreed?”
We all nodded back at him.
“Rory, what can you tell us about the club?” Takeda asked.
“Not much. I’ve never been, but lots of Mythos students like to party there, along with the regular mortal kids who live in the area. From what I’ve heard, the club is always crowded.”
“Which means there will be a lot of people there tomorrow night,” Takeda said. “Gretchen must be planning to use the crowd to hide the fact that she’s selling an artifact.”
Mateo’s fingers flew over his keyboard, and he pulled up the Club Dionysus website on the monitors. He clicked through the pages, which showed people smiling, laughing, dancing, and partying inside the club. We looked through the website, as well as dozens of photos that had been posted on social media, but we didn’t find anything unusual. A bar, a dance floor, tables and chairs, a kitchen in the back, a parking lot out front. Club Dionysus looked like your typical nightclub.
Takeda called the Protectorate guards and looped them in, and we spent the next hour prepping for the mission. Since Club D would be full of people, Takeda decided to send Ian, Zoe, and me into the club, while he and Mateo monitored us from the van.
“Your mission will be recon only,” Takeda said. “You’ll blend in with the other kids and keep an eye out for Gretchen and the buyer. The Protectorate guards will be waiting outside. We’ll let Gretchen meet with the buyer and swap the artifact for the money, then wait for both of them to leave. Once they’re outside, the guards can move in, isolate, and capture them and recover the artifact without endangering anyone inside the club.”
We all nodded again. It was a solid plan and the best option to keep everyone safe.
“What about before then?” Aunt Rachel asked. “Are you going to let Gretchen go to her classes tomorrow?”
Takeda shrugged. “We don’t have a choice. If Gretchen gets spooked or feels threatened, she might use the artifact to summon basilisks here on campus. That would be disastrous. So we have to pretend everything is normal and we don’t know that she stole the artifact. That includes letting her go about her regular routine tomorrow. But don’t worry. I’ll have Protectorate guards discreetly monitoring her in person and through the security cameras. If it looks like she’s going to use the artifact, we’ll move in and surround her.”
We worked out some more details, then everyone started packing up their things to head home. While the others were busy, I went over to the artifact shelves in the back. I didn’t have time to patrol the aisles, so I went straight to the shelf where the black jewelry box was sitting. We had already lost one artifact today, and I wanted to make sure the box was secure.
But everything was fine, and the box was in its usual spot. I doubted that anyone had even been near the artifact since I’d been here last night, but I examined it again anyway. A polished jet box with silver vines and thorns that bloomed into ruby heart-shaped flowers.
The box was the same as always, but the longer I stared at it, the more familiar it seemed, especially the way the silver vines ran across the black stone and curled around the ruby flowers. I had seen those shapes somewhere before. I knew I had, although I couldn’t remember when or where. I wasn’t going to figure it out tonight, but maybe someone could help me with it tomorrow. So I drew my phone out of my pocket and snapped some photos of the box.
I put my phone away and stared at the artifact again. The box might not summon basilisks like Serket’s Pen did, but I had a bad feeling that whatever was inside it was far, far more dangerous.
I shivered, dropped my gaze from the box, and headed back to the front of the room to grab my things and leave with everyone else.
Chapter Sixteen
For once, I woke up early the next morning. I took a shower, got dressed, and grabbed a couple of leftover cranberry-almond granola bars for breakfast. I said good-bye to Aunt Rachel, who was staring into her coffee cup and slowly waking up, and left the cottage.
I ate my breakfast and walked up to the quad. Only a few kids were moving back and forth across the area, and I hurried over to the English-history building, climbed up the steps, and went inside.
A minute later, I stepped into one of the classrooms. It was empty, but a door in the back was standing open, and I could hear the faint sounds of someone typing, so I headed in that direction.
The door opened up into a large office. Floor-to-ceiling bookcases took up two of the walls, but they contained far more than just books. Silver swords, jeweled daggers, stone statues, glass orbs, crystal paperweights. All that and more gleamed on the shelves, and everywhere I looked, there was something new to see. It was almost like being in a one-room version of the Idun Estate.
Professor Dalaja was typing on her laptop at the antique wooden desk in the back of the room. Well, I thought there was a desk buried under there somewhere. The space around the laptop was clear, but messy stacks of papers, mounds of paper clips, and wads of rubber bands covered the rest of the desk. Colored ink pens were scattered over the stacks, standing out like black, blue, and red brushstrokes against the white papers. The air even smelled faintly of paper, but I didn’t mind the musty odor. It reminded me of the Library of Antiquities.
I knocked on the open door. “Professor? Can I talk to you?”
“Rory! Of course. Come in.”
She gestured at one of the chairs in front of the desk, and I sat down in it.
Professor Dalaja finished her typing, then closed her laptop and looked at me. “What can I do for you?”
“I was wondering if I could do an extra-credit report on artifacts.”
She frowned. “But you don’t need any extra credit. Your grade is quite excellent.”
“I know, but I still want to do it.”
I was lying, of course. Who wanted to do extra homework? Nobody. But Team Midgard hadn’t learned anything about the black jewelry box, and we needed to figure out why it was so important to Covington. And if there was anyone at the academy who might know something about the box, it was Dalaja. Zoe had said that the professor was like an encyclopedia of artifacts, and I was going to put that theory to the test.
More than once, I had thought about asking the campus librarians to help me research the jewelry box, but I’d decided not to. Covington had been the head librarian for years, and I couldn’t trust that the other librarians weren’t Reapers too. Professor Dalaja seemed the safer and less obvious choice. Plus, she had always been kind to me. She still might be a Reaper, but it was a risk that I’d have to take.
“Did you have something specific in mind?” she asked.
“Yes.” I pulled my phone out of my pocket and called up one of the photos of the black jewelry box that I’d taken in the Bunker last night. “I saw this in a book and thought it looked cool. I was wondering if I could do my report on it.”
I turned my phone around and showed the photo to her. The professor’s black eyes widened behind her silver glasses, as if she were surprised, but then she nodded.
“Interesting,” she murmured. “Although this looks more like a photo you took yourself, rather than something out of a book.”
“Um…it was a very…lifelike photo…in the book.” I stumbled over my words, trying to cover up the fact that it was a real photo of the actual box, just like she’d said. I hadn’t expected her to notice that.
“Interesting,” she repeated, although this time, I got the impression that she was talking about seeing through my flimsy excuses. “But if you sa
w the box in a book, then don’t you already know all about it?”
Drat. I hadn’t thought of that either. “I, uh, can’t remember which book I saw it in. Hence the extra-credit report. I was also wondering if you might know anything about the box. To help me get started.”
Professor Dalaja raised her eyebrows, clearly not believing me. Yeah, I wouldn’t have believed me either. She stared at me for several seconds, as if trying to figure out what I was really up to.
Finally, she shook her head and leaned back in her chair. “I’m sorry, Miss Forseti, but I’ve never seen that box before.”
Disappointment filled me. “Are you sure?”
“Yes. And as I said, you don’t need to do an extra-credit report. Although, if I were you, I would be studying other artifacts.”
“What other artifacts?”
“The ones we saw during our field trip.” She tilted her head to the side. “Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten about the quiz today?”
Double drat. With everything that had been going on with Gretchen, I had totally forgotten about the quiz. “Oh, yeah. That.”
“Yes. That. You still have a few minutes to study before class starts, although I’m sure you’ll do fine on the quiz,” she said. “Now, if that is all, I need to get back to work.”
“Yeah. Sure. Thanks.”
I put my phone away and got to my feet. I nodded at the professor, then turned and left the office. She was right. I did need to study, so I took my usual seat in the classroom, got out my notes, and scanned through them. After a few minutes, I glanced to my left and looked into the office, since the door was still open.
Professor Dalaja was staring at me.
Even though her laptop was open again, she was peering over the top of it at me. Her lips were puckered in thought, and a worried look filled her face. She realized that I was watching her watch me, and she forced herself to smile at me and turn her attention back to her screen.
A bit of cold unease trickled down my spine. I had taken a risk showing the professor the photo of the jewelry box, but her reaction was still strange. If she had been a Reaper, I would have expected her to attack me and demand to know where the Protectorate was keeping the box. She hadn’t done that, she hadn’t threatened me at all, but I still felt she knew a lot more about the artifact than she was letting on.
Spartan Promise Page 15
