and bring it back to the squad. Bastian and Alma sit with Adrien and Cadence, trying to consolidate their notes from the history book with the words from the translated scroll.
“In the book downstairs, it says the dihuner had a heart of blood.” Alma bites the tip of her pencil. “Does the scroll mention it?”
“I didn’t see anything about that in the text, but there’s still pieces Cadence and I haven’t been able to translate.”
“I mean, there’s the Bloodstone.” Cadence gestures to my hand, which is presently pulling the lids off containers of charcuterie and cheese. “Could the stone have been on the clock?”
Adrien joggles his head.
I filch two cubes of Emmental cheese. “Have you figured out how the creepy-ass drawings factor into the text?”
“They correlate to the text outside the quatrefoil shape,” Adrien says.
Apparently, they made progress while I was being a good delivery boy.
“They’re examples of curses,” he says, as I examine an unannotated copy.
Between the ink smudges and words that look scrawled by an epileptic in the middle of a seizure, I’m surprised they managed to decipher a thing.
Alma flips over the drawing of a splayed corpse. “Can’t eat with that in my face.”
Bastian studies a fanged insect, or is it a body part? I’ve taken part in some twisted treasure hunts, but this one takes the cake for most insanity-inducing.
He leans over and grabs one of Cadence’s papers, and then they’re exchanging notes. She claps excitedly, which makes Bastian grin and jot something down. Apparently, some people are enjoying the task.
Freaks.
My freaks.
When I hear Adrien mumbling to himself, I glance his way.
I’m glad to see him reading over his notes, because I was momentarily worried he’d lost his mind, and since he’s already lost all of his hair . . .
“Anything, Prof?” I roll my neck from side to side.
“I think I got something. I’m not sure exactly what it means, but—”
“Lay it on us.”
“Like I said, the passage outside the quatrefoil is a list of plagues and curses. Insects, the undead, something about stone and dust. I’m guessing it’s an explanation of the dark magic that went on before the Quatrefoil was broken apart. I’d need more time to figure it out.”
“And the passage inside?” Cadence coils her ponytail into some sort of knot at the nape of her neck.
Adrien sighs. “Well, there’s this big ink spot that covers part of the text.”
“I noticed that earlier.” Cadence frowns. “It’s odd. I would swear it wasn’t always there.”
I eye the print-out of the scroll. “Ink’s a different color. Closer to black, while the rest is dark brown, so it probably wasn’t.”
Everyone gapes at me.
“What? I’m not fucking colorblind.”
Bastian’s eyebrows lift. “The difference is really subtle, but Slate’s right. It doesn’t look like an original spill.”
Cadence turns to Adrien. “You think we can scrape it off, or use a light to see through it?”
“Maybe, but we’d have to remove it from the frame, which could damage it.”
The quiet patter of snow falling against the stained-glass cupola becomes the only sound apart from the constant ticking in the temple of knowledge.
I approach Cadence’s chair and lean my head over her shoulder, grazing her cheek with my jaw. To anyone watching, I’m feigning interest in the scribbled text. But quickly, my interest is unfeigned. “What do you guys make of this: The new moon will abscond with the leaves unless cradled in Brume’s beating heart at eventide?”
“Unfortunately, it’s nothing groundbreaking or new.” Adrien sighs. “If the Quatrefoil isn’t assembled, the leaves disappear with the new moon.”
Alma nibbles on her pinkie nail. “What’s eventide again?”
“An older word for twilight,” Adrien explains.
Bastian’s eyes spark. “But twilight’s broken up into three phases, so I’m guessing, since the clock is astronomical, it would mean astronomical twilight: when it feels dark, but you can’t observe stars with the naked eye.”
“Not sure how that helps, considering the fog.” Alma points to the cupola. “Not much star-gazing happening in Brume during winter.”
“You don’t actually need to see the sky. All you have to do is calculate the solar depression angle . . .” Bastian lets his sentence slide away when he notices our collective bafflement. “I’ll just calculate it and get you the number.”
Alma grins. “What did they feed you when you were a kid? Wikipedia bytes?”
“You’d have to ask Slate. He was the provider.”
“I made sure he got all the good stuff. I needed one of us to be smart enough to get us off the streets.”
Cadence tips her head to the side to look