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“I love this place,” Catarina said, as they slid into a booth. “They make an amazing grilled cheese.”

She’d taken off her coat and dumped it on the seat next to her, so Kit had no choice but to slide in next to Ty. Their shoulders bumped together. Kit clenched his hands and told himself he was just trying to warm up his fingers.

When the waiter came, Catarina ordered for all three of them before settling on her bench seat. “Okay,” she said. “You had questions?”

“Has there been any news about Dru? Or Clary?” Ty said.

At the same time, Kit said, “What about Jem and Tessa? And—Ragnor said other people were disappearing?”

Catarina leaned back as the waiter returned with drinks—milkshakes for Ty and Kit, and herbal tea for her. “The fact is that I really can’t tell you much.” She sounded genuinely regretful.

Ty ran a hand through his tangled hair. “Why not?”

“Because I don’t know much. Right now we’re not even sure who the enemy is or what they’re planning, so we’re being careful. No fire-messages, no Portal usage—we don’t want anything intercepted.”

Kit searched Catarina’s face, but it was no use. He didn’t know her well enough to tell whether she was hiding something. He said, “That’s what Ragnor said. But—you said that was just the first puzzle? Does that mean that this”—he took the artifact out of his pocket—“isn’t the only thing we’re looking for? Just the first?”

Catarina nodded. “Can I see it?”

Kit glanced at Ty, who nodded. Kit placed the artifact on the table. It gleamed faintly, its golden briars catching the candlelight.

“I guess we thought there would only be one object to retrieve,” he said.

“Do you know how many puzzles there actually are?” Ty asked, as Catarina examined the artifact. “Are they all in Amsterdam?”

Caterina hesitated for a long time. “No,” she said, finally. “They’re not all in Amsterdam. They’re scattered around in different cities in Europe. My guess would be there are around five,” she added. “But I can’t be sure.”

“No offense,” said Kit, “but for someone in the Order of the Briar, you don’t seem to know much.”

Catarina picked up the golden object and studied it. “Think of it as a spy organization,” she said. “Every Guardian is waiting for you in a different city with a puzzle that will allow you to access a piece of the artifact. Because yes, these are not all different artifacts—each one is part of a whole object that only the Heir can put together, and he must have all the pieces to do so. I do not know where you must go next, and I do not know who will be meeting you there or what the puzzle will be. This helps us preserve our secrecy and safety—if one Guardian is compromised, the others are not.”

“Compromised how?” Kit wondered.

“Remember, this entire scavenger hunt was created for Auraline, the First Heir,” said Catarina. “Auraline was being hunted by the Unseelie King, and he was ruthless. This series of tests was meant to create a way that Auraline, and only Auraline, could enter Faerie against the King’s wishes and without his knowledge. It was expected that if she ever tried to use the path, she might well be followed. My lack of knowledge is meant in part to protect you. Even under torture, there is little of importance that only one of us can give away.”

Ty frowned. “So, say we find all the pieces, and Kit assembles the whole artifact,” he said. “It will open a way into Faerie? One that will take us to Clary and Dru?”

Catarina passed a hand across her eyes. “Yes. Once you have the whole artifact, you will be able to come and go from Faerie at will. Think of it as a key, I suppose.” She laid the piece of the artifact she’d been holding down on the table, where it glittered incongruously among the ketchup and vinegar bottles. “But it is not only a key. All this secrecy is meant to protect you, but also to protect the artifact. It cannot fall into the wrong hands.”

“Why? What does it do?” protested Ty, who looked as if he wanted to ask more, but couldn’t—the waiter had returned, this time with three grilled cheese sandwiches. He set one down in front of Kit, who had to admit that it was the best-looking grilled cheese sandwich he’d ever seen. It was on thick, buttered pieces of bread, filled with yellow-orange cheese that was oozing out onto the plate.

Kit picked up half his sandwich and immediately felt guilty. Surely it was immoral to be distracted by cheese at a time like this.

“It’s kind of a scavenger hunt, but also kind of a mystery,” said Ty, who had decided to attack his cheese sandwich with a knife and fork. “Where we pick up clues. Try to piece things together. Literally and in the sense of detective work.”

“Here’s the thing,” Catarina said, shaking an inordinate amount of black pepper onto her bread. “I’m sure Ragnor didn’t tell you this, but—there’s a prophecy.”

Ty looked interested. “Is this the one Jace and Clary got from Max Trueblood? The one that predicted the splitting of the Clave and all that?”

“So you do know about it,” Catarina said, though Kit shook his head to say no, he didn’t. “Most prophecies are nonsense,” Catarina went on. “Some sixteenth-century monk drinks a barrel of beer, hallucinates, and four hundred years later we all have to decipher his scribblings. Ridiculous. But,” she added, taking a bite of her sandwich, “this one seems to be real. It predicted the fracture between the Clave and the Cohort. It warned of the ways into Faerie closing. And if what comes next isn’t stopped, the consequences will be catastrophic.”

Kit swallowed a bite of what was definitely the best grilled cheese sandwich in the world. “How catastrophic? Like on a scale of one to ten, where one is stubbing your toe and ten is Armageddon?”

“Let’s just say,” Catarina said, lifting her tea, “you don’t want to roll those dice.”

“What does the prophecy have to do with us? Or the Order of the Briar?” Ty asked—very reasonably, in Kit’s opinion.

Catarina poked at the artifact with an elegant blue finger. “The whole prophecy has not yet been deciphered,” she said. “But I can tell you what it says about the ways into Faerie being shut. It calls this time the End of Doorways and says that it is the task of the Heir to open a new way to Faerie, and that if he fails, a terrible darkness will fall.”