Take the Key and Lock Her Up (Embassy Row #3)(10)

Newspaper articles are pasted over magazine pictures that cover maps and photocopies of what must be ancient books.

There are more Post-its and calendars. The dates go back hundreds of years.

Ms. Chancellor told me that my mom was responsible for antiquities, lost artifacts that were relevant to Adria and the Society. But one glance at this wall, and I know it was so much more than that. She wasn’t looking for something. She was looking for someone. And now she’s dead because, in a way, she found her.

“Gracie, what is all that?”

“It’s the inside of Mom’s head,” I say without even having to think about the answer. Really, the most amazing thing is that I haven’t already made a dozen walls just like it.

“What?” Jamie calls.

“Amelia.” I turn and glance up at my brother. “It’s how she figured out what became of Amelia.”

Jamie doesn’t believe the story. Not really, I can tell. And I can’t blame him. I spent my summer sneaking through the tunnels beneath Valancia—I’ve seen the inside of the Society and heard their tales, witnessed their power. And even I can’t really believe what is, by all accounts, unbelievable.

But you don’t send assassins after things that are make-believe.

Two hundred years ago, there was a palace coup and, in the chaos, a baby was smuggled free. The Society hid her among their own. She was raised in secret. Protected. Safe. And, eventually, she grew up, and her bloodline survived.

Until someone started trying to kill us.

I ease even closer, shine the light up and down, sweeping across my mother’s old obsession.

Maps. Articles. Notes. And in the center of it all, a picture.

My mother looks so young. Her hair is long and her skin is tanned, and she’s smiling as if the future would hold nothing but more good days. Two dark-haired girls flank her on either side. One is famous now, the mother of Adria’s future king. And one is a stranger.

“Who is it?” Jamie asks.

“It’s mom and Princess Ann and … is that Alexei’s mother?” I ask. Carefully, I pull the picture off the wall. Then I climb back onto the desk, reach up, and hand the photo to my brother.

“Yeah, that’s her,” he says. “I remember her. Barely. She and Mom used to get together and tell me and Alexei to go play.”

I’ve always known that Alexei had a mother, of course, but for years she was never mentioned, never seen.

“What was she like?” I ask, as if that is the great mystery here.

“I don’t know,” Jamie says, pondering. “She was—”

“Gone,” a hard voice says from behind him. Soon, Alexei is down on the dusty desk beside me. “She was gone,” he says, as if that’s all that matters. And I guess, to him, it is.

I’m not surprised when Dominic appears over Jamie’s shoulder.

The sun must be rising, because a gentle golden glow has begun to fill the room. It’s easy to see the hurt on the Scarred Man’s face.

“I never knew this was down here,” he says. “I came and … She didn’t tell me. I never knew.”

I turn and let the light sweep into the corners, and that’s when I see a box sitting on a high shelf. About the size of a shoe box, it’s covered with dust and cobwebs, but I can tell the wood is gorgeous. There seem to be a bunch of different kinds all melded together in an intricate pattern. When I reach for it, I hear my mother’s voice.

“See this, Gracie? It was Grandma’s. And before her, it was Great-Grandma’s, and so on and so on for a very long time. And someday, sweetheart, it’s going to be yours.”

My finger traces through the dust and through the years.

“How do you open it?”

My mother laughs. Smiles. “You’ll open it when you’re ready.”

“Are you ready?” Alexei’s voice cuts through the fog and pulls me from the dream.

“What?” I ask.

“Are you ready?” he asks again.

“Alexei, if our moms were working together … if your mom was part of this, then maybe—”

“Maybe Karina’s dead? Or maybe she just left me? Which one of those is supposed to make me feel better?”

There are some questions that even I know better than to try to answer.

The light that fills the shop overhead is brighter, and I can hear Dominic return to himself as he says, “We can’t stay here. It’s someplace they might expect to find you. We can’t stay.”

“But—”

“Take it down,” Dominic orders. “Take it all down. We’ll bring it with us. We cannot let it be found.”

Obsession.

That’s the word Ms. Chancellor and Prime Minister Petrovic used when Alexei and I overheard them in the tunnels. I never really understood what they meant until now, as I stand surrounded by my mother’s work.

Her obsession.

Three years have passed, but this room is like a wound, and Alexei and I peel away the layers of it piece by piece, shoving them into boxes and bags, preparing to carry my mother’s obsession away.

When the last wall is empty, Dominic reaches down and Alexei boosts me up. The last thing he gives me is the ornate box. I don’t care about the dust and the cobwebs—I hold it close to my chest and I walk, almost crying, to the car.