Vespers Rising (The 39 Clues #11)(17)

As Madeleine scrambled to look around the corner, she heard a shriek that rose to an unearthly pitch and then ended in a guttural rattle.

The apothecary and the stable collapsed in a heap of brick and flames, with Olivia Cahill inside.

Madeleine could do nothing but scream.

1. Keep the ring safe.

2. Never let anyone abuse the power of the 39 Clues.

3. Unite the Cahills when the time is right.

The promises were stamped in Madeleine’s brain. She hadn’t recited them as her mother requested, and now they would not let her go. She drew her cloak against the bitter morning wind. Hidden behind a thick copse, she brushed away tears and glanced down through tangled, thorny branches.

In the village cemetery, a priest intoned prayers over a freshly dug grave.

Local merchants, arm in arm, wept for one of their own. The neighbors, many who owed their lives to Olivia’s healing skills, sobbed openly. Madeleine’s friends clutched one another. So did her fellow apprentices, long recovered from the sleeping potion.

I am so, so sorry, Mother, she thought. But the unspoken words seemed hollow and pathetic.

She recalled Olivia’s final two requests: Stay alive. Do not look back. Already Madeleine had broken the second one. Perhaps if she hadn’t looked back, she wouldn’t have seen the explosion. And all this would not have hurt so much.

Is this to be my fate? she thought. To be a promise-breaker? A secret-revealer? A betrayer of the people I love most? A bringer of death?

Madeleine could not stand the hiding. The fakery and failure. The idea that she had trained all her life for … what? What did any of it mean, now that her mother was dead?

She rose on unsteady legs. She would run down the hill, fling herself on the grave. She would beg God to return her mother and take her instead.

But her body went cold at the sight of a man on the edge of the gathering. His eyes were not focused on the service but instead scanned the countryside. He wore vestments of deep velvet and stood before a richly appointed carriage with magnificent horses. His face was lined and sagged with age, but he sported a mane of jet-black hair, save for a serpentine silver streak down the right side. And his expression made it clear he cared nothing for the deceased.

Vesper.

Madeleine remembered something her mother had said: You will know Damien Vesper on sight, for he sucks the light from the sun. She turned away, sick to the stomach. He had caused the deaths of both her parents. And she felt a crushing truth: The fate of the Cahills, the fate of the world, was solely between Vesper and …

Maddy Babbitt, scared as a rabbit.

Preposterous. Unthinkable.

Remember your training, she told herself. The memorization, combat techniques, alchemy, survival exercises. The Endgame. Try as she might, Madeleine could not think of herself as a warrior. She was who she was — a sheltered Irish country lass. She stood no chance alone against the forces of Lord Vesper.

It was over — the battle for the 39 Clues and all it stood for. Father’s work had been destroyed. Even if Madeleine found her siblings, none knew the full secret of the formula. As for the ring — well, if Mother couldn’t decode its message after two decades, Vesper would never do it, either. Running away was a fool’s game. With his minions, Vesper would hunt her down like a wounded hare. Better to get it over quickly.

She stepped forward into the light.

Below her now, a bagpiper began playing the Cahill song, “Bhaile Anois.” Madeleine’s heart felt freshly bruised, as if Mother were rising before her. She could see Olivia’s face in the frigid sky, smiling curiously. Madeleine wanted badly to talk to her. Her soul could not feel bleaker than this. She took a step forward, silently asking her mother for advice, forgiveness, and comfort.

As if in answer, a hint of a spring breeze whispered over the moor. It seemed to caress her face, to reach into her mind and lift a blanket from her memory. Her mother’s words were as plain as if she were inches away. Your father’s mission was to heal. Vesper’s is to control. He seeks the formula and suspects the secret of the ring. With the first, he will create a race of superhumans in his service. If he discovers the latter … woe betide the world, which will then be his.

She fingered a bulge under her blouse. Overnight, while hiding in the academy, she had filched from storage a leather belt with a flat pouch. Into the pouch she had placed her sleeping potion vial and the contents of Mother’s box: Gideon’s mysterious gold ring. Olivia’s handwritten notes about the possible whereabouts of Luke, Katherine, Thomas, and Jane. A small knife, a set of fishhooks, and hollow darts for hunting. A copy of the music to “Bhaile Anois.” And a large sum of money.

No. Not the ring. Madeleine had taken it out last night. Just to examine, to try to make sense of the design. It was such a curious, odd-looking thing, with small ridges on the outer rim like cogs. She had placed it on her thumb and not yet taken it off! She turned from the funeral, pulling at the ring.

As the sun struggled through a gap in the clouds, the ring glinted. Madeleine quickly dropped it into her pouch. Stepping back behind the brush, she turned and ran.

Below her, Damien Vesper flinched at the sudden glare. And he looked up to see a figure disappearing into the heather.

“Nice, slimy baby,” Master Winthrop Cahill said softly to the red-spotted newt in his hand. “Nice little lizard, who gets very, very scared of dark places …”