Cosimo paused in front of a wide wooden door. It was square, not arched, and the walls around it were a pale stone. A cartouche was carved above it.
Valentine stared at it. "Do you know what that says? My hieratic and Coptic were always stronger than hieroglyphs."
"It was Maria's idea of a joke to put up an ancient Egyptian curse to deter people from entering her space. It reads, 'May the One who Dances in Blood drink heavily of those who enter here uninvited.' She was quite dramatic, even for a magician," Cosimo replied.
"If it's a joke, how come I can feel that it's a real curse?" Valentine asked, still staring at the carving with a slight grin.
"Her humor was—is—darker than most. Considering she told us to follow her trail, we should be safe from Sekhmet coming after us."
At least, Cosimo hoped they were. You never knew with his sister. He readied himself for the emotional blow he was about to receive and opened the door.
2
Maria's rooms smelled of old parchment, clay tablets, and straw that she had used to pack artifacts. She didn't have a separate bedroom and study like Cosimo did. Her whole tower was her ever-evolving workspace.
Maps, translations, and photos of digs in Egypt, Greece, and Italy covered the walls with notes stuck up beside them in her own small, untidy handwriting.
"This is like stepping into a very chaotic museum backroom," Valentine commented, staring about with wide eyes. "You were right to bar us from this place. There are too many breakable things in here to trust Apollo and Reeve. Oh! Lead curse tablets!" Valentine immediately wandered to a nearby bookshelf and started touching things.
"Focus, Val. You can explore her collection later," Cosimo chided gently.
"Okay, so what are we looking for?" Valentine said, putting down the tablet he had been reading.
"Anything Etruscan. She was going through abigEtruscan phase when she disappeared, and I knew she was heading to Italy because she thought she had found something." Cosimowent to one of her desks, where a carved marble figure of Minerva was holding down a map.
"She said to watch out for witches, so she's definitely in Italy. Why was she secretive about where she was going?" Valentine asked, joining him at the desk. He picked up a piece of a clay bowl, and his magic pulsed.
"Careful what you touch," Cosimo warned as he went to study photos on the wall. "Maria didn't tell me where she was going because she said she wasn't sure she would find anything and wanted it to be a surprise if she did. Now, I think that she knew I would have stopped her. Our mother always told us not to mess with witches or their territory."
Cosimo shook his head and laughed softly. "But Maria tended to ignore rules and warnings. I once had to bail her out of a prison in Cairo because she had been caught in a museum's basement after hours, hunting a papyrus she was interested in. She only got away with it because she was underage."
"How old was she?" Valentine asked.
"Fourteen," Cosimo sighed. "She was already organizing a breakout of the women's prison by the time I got there."
Valentine coughed, poorly hiding his laughter. "She sounds like a Greatdrakes." He moved Minerva out of the way and lifted the map of modern Italy. "Look at this."
Cosimo walked back to the desk and spotted a copy of a much older map under the one Minerva had been weighing down.
"What do you think? Roman Empire borders?" Valentine guessed, studying the borders, the names printed in Latin, and the small icons that covered Italy.
"Definitely. I can't be sure which century it is because Maria has drawn this. What do you think all these symbols are?" Cosimo asked, staring at a small sketch of crossed torches.
"Iconography of gods and goddesses," Valentine said, not missing a beat.
"How did you guess that?" Cosimo asked.
Valentine showed him the back of the modern top map. "She wrote out a legend. Look, this moon is Diana. The torches are Hecate. Pomegranate for Proserpina/Persephone…"
There was a red circle around a snake toward the top of the map. "And this one?"
"Minerva," Valentine said and lowered the top map over it. "It sits kind of in the triangle between Florence, Ravenna, and San Marino."
Cosimo stared at the circle. "She told us to follow her trail, yes? The last location I knew she was at was Florence. We found that she had checked into a hotel there a week before her disappearance."
"And Minerva was holding down the maps," Valentine mused, picking up the statue. His eyes shimmered scarlet and went out of focus. "This is old. Not a replica. Maria touched it a lot. I can feel...something. Magic, but nothing I've felt before. It's a call..."
Cosimo snatched the statue out of Valentine's hand and put it back on the desk. "Val? Val? You in there?"
