The Serpent’s Curse. Tony Abbott

      New York

      The morning after the discovery of the ribbon in the dagger’s hilt, Darrell woke early from somber dreams about his mother to hear his stepfather and Terence Ackroyd working out an elaborate plan for that morning, a ruse intended to throw off any agents of the Teutonic Order who might be watching the hotel.

      “The first of many new plans,” Roald had told him.

      “I hope they work,” Darrell grumbled to himself.

      The plan involved three cars, the family of the Gramercy Park Hotel’s assistant manager, two retired New York City policemen, a traffic officer, and a crew of window cleaners—all creating multiple distractions while the kids zigzagged uptown with Julian, and Roald and Terence headed on foot to the West Side to meet the detective Paul Ferrere.

      A half hour later, Darrell and the others were streaming up Madison Avenue, shielded by crowds of commuters and early shoppers. Since he had no sense whatsoever of anyone watching them, Darrell accepted that their plan had actually succeeded.

      Despite the latest storm having dumped nine heavy inches of snow that was now aging into black and crusty walls, narrowing the streets and the sidewalks to half their width, their walk uptown was brisk but still not fast enough for him.

      As soon as Darrell pictured his mother tied to a chair or pounding on a door or lying bound up in a locked closet, his mind went red, and blood rushed like waves inside his head until he couldn’t see straight.

      But he had to hope, right? He had to put his mother’s situation in a pocket and get on with what he knew he had to get on with. We’re doing everything possible. We have detectives. We have Terence’s assistance. Sooner or later, Mom will be where the next relic is, because that’s where Galina will take her.

      So fine. Get your head in the game.

      He managed to refocus himself in time to hear Julian saying to Wade, who was five steps behind him, “I was born in Mandalay, actually. Myanmar. What they used to call Burma. It’s where my mom died. I was four. I never had much time with her.”

      So. That was why Terence had given his son that look last night. Julian had lost his mother, too. How do you even deal with not growing up with your mom, having so little time to be with her? And Myanmar? Myanmar was right next to Thailand, where Darrell’s father had grown up.

      They came to the southwest corner of the intersection of Madison Avenue and Thirty-Sixth Street and waited for the light. Lily nudged him and nodded at two low-roofed Renaissance-style mansions—one of brown stone blocks, the other white—with a modern glass-and-steel atrium joining them.

      “We are going to get so much help here,” she said. “I have a feeling.”

      Becca nodded. “Like Wade said in San Francisco, the more relics we find, the more leverage we have.”

      “I know,” Darrel said, mustering up a smile. “I get it.”

      The truth was that he wanted to go after the next relic. Not as much as he needed to find his mother, of course, but a real close second. This was important. The Copernicus Legacy was life-alteringly amazing. It was cosmic. Time travel blew his mind, and if Galina wanted to reassemble the astrolabe, that was enough to make him vow she never would. He needed to be a part of what they were doing, no matter how dangerous or scary.

       We have to stop Galina. At all costs.

      Lily was very impressed. And, seriously, not a lot of stuff impressed her. But exactly as Julian had promised the night before, even though the Morgan Library and Museum was still closed to the public, its doors whisked open for them and sealed solidly after they entered.

       Wow.

      “You’ll be rather astounded at their collection,” Julian told them when they filed into the tall, glass-walled atrium. “And their security.” He nodded at a pair of hefty guards by the doors who looked more than a match for the oak-headed thugs from last night.

      “I should also tell you that your new tablet contains a slew of one-of-a-kind documents from the Morgan’s private holdings,” he added. “Sixteenth-century biographies. Maps. Astronomical treatises. Code books. It’ll take you months to go through it all.”

      “I could do it in a few days,” Lily said, shrugging.

      “I’m sure you could,” he said with a smile.

      Lily had felt special last night when the Ackroyds, both father and son, had recognized that she was, in Julian’s words, “the tech master of the group. The intelligence officer.”

       I so like that! Intelligence officer. That’s exactly what I am.

      “Good morning.” A slender man in a dark blue suit with soft-heeled shoes, who Julian whispered was one of the two chief curators, met them in the atrium. The kids took turns explaining why they were there.

      “Scytales and the vault,” the curator said, tapping his fingers on his chin. “Got it. Vault first. Please follow me.” He spun around and led them through several still-darkened galleries to a bank of elevators. They took one down into the library’s underground level. “Perhaps Julian has told you, but the lowest level runs beneath the entire length of both the library and Pierpont Morgan’s original residence.”

      “This is where my dad is suggesting you keep … the object,” Julian said. “For the time being at least. We have extensive vault privileges here.”

      After leading them through several passages, the curator paused at a large steel door. “When Mr. Morgan had the house built, he constantly rotated his collection between what he displayed upstairs and what was stored in the vault. In the century since then, security has been updated countless times. The vault is now virtually invulnerable. Even in the case of nuclear attack, which, surprisingly, is a factor … no matter how slight.”

       For instance, what if the Order … never mind.

      He opened the door with a pass code and a fingerprint scan. Inside stood a narrow entry hall leading to a second door. “Built into the side walls is a kind of electronic gauntlet,” the curator said. “You have to pass through it to reach the vault.”

      “You’ll like this,” Julian said to them as they entered. “Gates trip and floor tiles sink if you take the wrong route to the inner chamber. Any intruder would be trapped between the walls long before any theft or damage could occur.”

      The curator nodded. “For example, several infrared sensors are scanning us as we’re passing through right now—”

       Beeep!

      The curator turned to Wade. “Er … you appear to have something on you …”

      Even in its unique protective holster, one that had fooled various airport security scanners, Wade’s antique dagger now set off the Morgan’s sensors. “It’s the first time that’s happened,” he said. “You have the best security I’ve seen.”

      “About the dagger,” Julian said. “Your dad wanted it in the vault, too, didn’t he?”

      Wade nodded reluctantly. “He told me this morning. He’s right, I guess.” He slipped off the holster with Copernicus’s dagger housed invisibly inside and handed it to the curator.

      Lily hated weapons of any kind, but Wade giving up the dagger? Wouldn’t they need it? He’d carried it since Berlin