“Weird. Is it... all numbers... ?” Seb scanned the documentwhile blindly perching on the sofa next to Punkin. “Yeah, I think these are all numbers. Is this just doodling? Like, someone practicing Morse?”
“On the back of a precious document?”
We both knew that couldn’t be true.
Blue eyes flicked to mine. “Holy shit, Paige,” he whispered. “Did you know someone found a gold bar in a sewer downtown last month?”
“I heard.”
“The town went insane for a couple weeks, with people scouring downtown for more gold.”
“Maybe that’s who broke in here,” I said.
“Maybe. People said it might be Wyrd Jack’s gold. I thought they were all idiots, but now I’m wondering... Do you think this might be anactualclue to Wyrd Jack’s treasure?”
Waves of excitement rippled through me. I hadn’t thought too much about the Golden Venus in a long time. Not like I used to think about it when I was younger—obsessively. “Might just be nothing,” I said, trying to temper my own expectations.
“Usually is...”
“If Nana had a clue to the treasure, she wouldn’t keep it from us.” Would she? Maybe it didn’t matter. “Hold on,” I said, getting up to jog to the kitchen counter and quickly returning with a pen and an old bill envelope. “You sure you remember Morse code?”
“Like the back of my hand,” he said, a little proud. “You?”
“Never forgot it.” I sat on the living room rug, on the other side of the coffee table. “You read it off, I’ll write it down.”
He glanced up from the certificate to arch a brow at me. “Like old times.”
“Just read,” I said, a little frustrated with myself that I was sopumped about digging up an old treasure-hunting clue that it momentarily eclipsed my anger for Seb. Maybe he felt the same way because he began reading the code out to me in an excited voice.
“Three. Eighteen. Nine... ?”
“Nine?”
“Hold on, that’s just a smudge.Seven. Then twenty. Five. Thirteen...”
I scribbled down everything he read from the edges of the certificate, rotating the page when he finished with one edge. He was right: there was nothing in the code but a series of numbers. I sneaked glances at Seb while he studied the paper, looking at his black eye. The way his jaw cut...
Blue eyes looked up at me. “What?”
I was still blown away by how much he’d changed. “You look so different. It’s like, I don’t know... Owning a tiny yellow chick as a pet, then the chick being taken away and you don’t see it again until it’s a gigantic rooster.”
Seb snorted a little laugh. “Cock-a-doodle-doo.”
“Just translate the code,” I said, feeling my face grow warm.
“Fine. Twenty-eight. Five. Fourteen...”
It took him a couple minutes to call out all the dots and dashes that were penciled on the certificate. Once he’d finished, I’d filled up the back of my envelope with numbers. Seventy-two of them. “What are we looking at here, do you think?”
“Fuck if I know. Map coordinates?”
“Too many,” I said.
“Severalmap coordinates?”
I rolled my eyes. “Come on, think.”
“That’s your specialty, Mensa, not mine.”
