My father and mother stood shoulder to shoulder, both looking as if they’d fought several wars, their clothing as tattered and scorched as mine. Papá’s mustache was barely holding on, hanging crookedly. He had lost his spectacles, his padded belly.
But unfortunately, not his pistol.
He aimed it at me, and Whit instinctively moved, blocking Papá’s view.
I had only seconds to act before my father stole him from me. I curved my fingers around Whit’s leather belt, and I brought my hand to the level of the golden ring, perched where it was on the raised circle platform. With all my might, I yanked on Whit’s belt, pulling him backward until we walked through the arched entryway. I snatched the ring in the same breath, and I felt the magic close around us.
Papá fired his gun, and the bullet streaked toward us. Whit lifted his arms to throw around me, but a loud crackling sound stopped his motion. The magic guarding the way inside had eviscerated the bullet.
I let out a triumphant yell—
Papá swung his pistol to my mother’s temple. “I’ll kill her if you don’t give me the scroll, Inez.”
My mother locked eyes with me. She didn’t plead for her life, as if she knew that she’d be wasting her breath. She couldn’t imagine that I’d want to save her. But she was wrong.
Without her, my uncle and Abdullah would never go free.
“I’ll get it,” I said.
Mother’s lips parted, her eyebrows rising to her hairline.
The floors shook again as I turned, and Whit clenched his hands into tight fists. “We don’t have time for this. There’s only one way out of this room and—”
“Not true. There’s an exit at the other end,” I whispered. “Can you go and see if it’s still passable?”
“I’m not leaving you alone—”
“Whit,please.”
“A quick look and then I’ll be back,” he said waspishly.
He hurried forward as I dropped to my knees. Many of the cubbies were destroyed, but there were several still intact, the names of ancient engineers, philosophers, and Spellcasters carved into the wood. I found the name I was looking for: Cleopatra.
“I’m so sorry about this,” I said under my breath.
The scroll was different than the others. It was thinner, and when I touched it, magic sparked, and the flavor of roses burst on my tongue. It was as if the magic spoke to me, whispering urgently in my ear.
This one.
The hair on my arms stood on end. Ihatedto hand over something that had been dear to Cleopatra. But my uncle and Abdullah needed me to come through.
“Inez, I’m losing my patience,” Papá called out.
I rose to my feet, clutching the Chrysopoeia tightly in one hand, the golden ring in the other. The walk back to them seemed like it took hours, when it was only a matter of seconds. But no amount of time would be enough to prepare me for the sight of my ruinous parents, Papá with his gun and my mother glowering back at him. Her journal was filled with pages about Tío Ricardo and how she feared for her safety, worried about his criminal associations. She really had been writing about my father the whole time. Worried about her fate in his conniving hands.
To defeat him, she became like him.
And as they stared at each other in hatred, I knew, without a doubt, thatIwas nothing like them and never would be.
“I give the ring to you,” I said to Papá, “and the Chrysopoeia, and Mamá leaves with me and Whit. Are we agreed?”
“Agreed. Is that it?” Papá’s whole being now focused on the roll of parchment in my left hand.
Carefully, I unrolled it and showed him the sheet. It was exactly as Whit had said it would look like: the Ouroboros surrounded by Greek letters—detailed instructions on how to turn lead into gold.
“At last,” Papá said. His face had lost all color except for the area drenched in blood from where he had been struck. He looked deathly ill, but a feverish excitement gleamed in his eyes.
“You need a doctor,” I said over the noise of rubble crashing against stone. I flicked my gaze upward, gasping at the sight of a fissure growing in size. “The roof over our heads can’t hold on much longer.”
