The Serpent's Curse by Lisa Maxwell (read an ebook week .TXT) 📕

with guns waiting—and no indication that any would come. There was only a polished grandeur that made the elevator look nearly shabby in comparison.

Viola had been inside Khafre Hall. She had seen the Mysterium for herself, but this one hallway surpassed anything she’d seen in that older building by far. Granite as deeply green as the trees in Central Park lined the walls. Golden sconces hung at even intervals along the walls, glowing with a warm, ethereal light. Inlaid gold glinted everywhere.

“Where is everyone?” Werner whispered as they eased their way down the hall.

“It’s nearly sunset,” Logan told them. “If our information was right, the members of the Order should be in their ceremonial chamber starting the consecration. They’ll stay there, under the Golden Hour’s protection, until the sun sets. We have to get moving. We won’t have much time to take the ring once the sun is down and the power of the Golden Hour ends. This way.”

Still on alert, they started down the hall, in the direction of the front of the building, where it pointed toward Madison Square Park. The Mysterium would be there somewhere, and with any luck, it would already hold the ring. It didn’t matter that these other boys wanted the artifact. They had pledged themselves to Nibsy Lorcan, and Viola would not allow them to have it. She would wait until the time was right, and then she would take what she needed and be gone.

They were only halfway down the hall, though, when an alarm sounded.

“They know we’re here,” Werner said, licking his lips.

“We knew they would,” Logan reminded him. “Let’s go.”

They’d taken a few steps more when the glowing lanterns suddenly went out. The windowless hallway went completely dark except for the square of daylight that shone through an open doorway at the end of the hall.

“Go!” Logan shouted, but no one needed to be told.

They tumbled through the entrance of the room as a steel door began to slide closed to cover the opening. Viola heard Mooch yelp and turned to find him caught by the door. With a flick of her blade, his jacket fell away. After the heavy door sealed them in, they could no longer hear the screams of the sirens.

The chamber they found themselves in was silent as a church. It was a large room lined with empty shelves. Its walls seemed to glimmer in the fading daylight, and Viola realized it was because there were veins of gold and precious stones set into the sandstone panels. The boys were studying the steel doors that had barricaded them in, but Viola was drawn to the center of the room, where a familiar table-like altar waited.

“I’ve seen this before,” she said, her pulse racing.

This same table had been in the Mysterium, she was sure of it. When she and Darrigan had completed the puzzle of a lock in the vault far below the main levels of Khafre Hall, this very table had risen from the floor to expose the cabinet that had held the Ars Arcana. It had held a single bowl filled with a strange liquid. Now the bowl was gone. In its place was a box carved from some brilliant blue stone that had been polished to gleaming.

Viola reached carefully for the box, not really sure if she should touch the small chest, but when she ran her fingers across it, she sensed the cold of false magic… but nothing else.

“What’s this?” Mooch asked, eyeing the box.

“I’m not sure.” She used the tip of Libitina to flip open the golden latch and then the lid of the box itself. Nothing happened.

Werner had come up next to them as well. “Looks like junk,” he said, clearly disappointed with the tarnished circlets of metal they found inside.

The two boys turned away, clearly unimpressed, but Viola paused at the sight of them. She remembered now—this very table had been sitting atop these same silver discs in the Mysterium those many weeks ago. But it wasn’t only the objects that were familiar. They had been carved with a design that Viola had seen before—first on the book depicted in the painting of Newton that was hanging in Dolph Saunders’ old rooms, and then later, with the unreadable notes in Dolph’s journal.

Certainly, the marks inscribed into the surface of the metal discs were the same emblem, the sigil, as Theo had called it. She lifted the first disc and saw that there were more of the same beneath—four, in fact. There had been four in the Mysterium as well. It was too much a coincidence that she should find this symbol here, in the possession of the Order, when Dolph Saunders had thought to protect what he’d known about it.

Logan had already stepped beyond the altar and was looking up to where a golden staircase spiraled up to the ceiling. He scrambled up the steps and reached his hand toward the carving on the medallion in the ceiling where the staircase ended, tracing his finger along the lines inscribed there.

“It’s up there,” he told them. “The ring. I can feel it beyond this door.” He pounded on the ceiling, but nothing happened.

Viola hesitated, but then she took one of the discs and examined it more closely. It was about the size of her palm and far heavier than she had expected from the nearly paper-thin bit of metal, but the cold energy felt like ice in her hands. It reminded her too much of the power of the Brink, but she tucked the four discs into her skirts. She imagined that Theo would be interested to examine them; perhaps he would have some idea of what the objects were. More than that, the etchings on these pieces reminded her of the drawings in Dolph’s notebook. If Dolph had thought to conceal his notes about what they were, Viola had the sense that they must be important, even if she could not see why or how.

Werner had already lost interest and