In the doorway, Professor Brosch’s dark hair was the mess Malou remembered. As if the only time he ever brushed his hair was when he raked his fingers through it in frustration. His clothes faired no better, black slacks wrinkled and sweater vest faded to a navy blue. He’d come outside without a coat and his shoelaces untied.

Were there any attendants in that house?

His expression was tight for a moment when their eyes met, then a kind and graceful smile softened his bearded face. She returned it in kind, bowing in front of him. Under his scruff, she knew he had permanent smile lines.

“My dear Malou Lamaire,” he greeted her as she rose. He patted one of her cheeks, palm cold, then squeezed her shoulder. His brown eyes shined in the dim lanterns lining the stairs to his front door. “I wasn’t expecting you. What brings you out here? And don’t tell me you were in the neighborhood. Your father tried that once, and it didn’t work then, either.”

Zeynel must not have told him, either. He’d been expecting a message, but not from her. Even with the facts in front of him, he seemed unable to reconcile her appearance with his delivery. She shouldn’t have been surprised.

“Just a letter, Professor.” She slipped it from her coat for him to see.

His eyes widened. “Zeynel sent you?” he asked. “Of all people...” He took the envelope from her and tore it open with a hooked finger. He unfolded the paper, squinted as he read the message, then crumpled it into a ball. “That imbecile.”

Without another word, he scrubbed his scalp and marched to her driver, who was waiting patiently by the backdoor of the town car. He grumbled something Malou couldn’t hear. Without the cams enabled, Laure wouldn’t have been able to pick it up either. As he headed back to the door, the driver bowed and rounded the back of the car to the front.

The tense look on Professor Brosch’s face kept Malou from asking him what he was doing.

“Are you sure that’s his message?” he asked, putting a hand on her back and ushering her inside his dark wood entryway. He closed the door himself. The lock thunked into place, clearly programmed to do so without a voice command or the privileges coded into his silver.

“Yes,” Malou said. “What does it say?”

“Let’s talk in my office.”

He steered her down a wainscoted hall to the left, sparing more than one glance to the shuttered windows. They turned the corner to another hall, and, at the end, he opened the door to a two-story library that hinted at the age of the house. They cut through to a small adjoining office with a sitting area and a desk fitted with a large glass screen at the end.

“Took a bit of digging,” Laure said, “but it appears as though Anselm Brosch disabled the cams himself.”

Why would he do that?

Malou didn’t have time to question her secretary. He closed the door—again, locking by itself—and turned to her. He passed the crinkled letter to her. As he moved behind his desk, she smoothed out the paper. Zeynel’s scribbled message was short:

give it to the messenger

“And now Brosch is enabling a closed-circuit security system,” Laure said.

Professor Brosch moved to the fireplace with a cloud key in hand. That key gave him access to all the files stored on his cloud, access to probably years of research on the Teir. He squatted to start the false fire with a wave of his hand over the logs.

When he threw the key into the blue-tipped flames, a chill swept over Malou. She released a ragged breath. What was happening here?

“Do you know what he wants me to give you?” Brosch asked, but it didn’t sound like a question to her.

“That old man tells me less than he tells any of you,” she said.

He stood, reaching into the pocket of his pants as he moved in front of her. A tiny silver box flashed in his hand. She recognized the ornate details of the container that stored the Teir. What was he doing with it? It was supposed to be locked away at Tousieux, not in Professor Brosch’s office, certainly not in his pocket, and definitely not in Malou’s possession.

“Listen to me,” Professor Brosch said. He gripped her by the shoulders. “Take it. Put it in your pocket. Somewhere it won’t fall out even if you have to run.”

As he pressed the Teir into her palm and curled her fingers around the box’s edges, a spark of electricity ran through her. That hadn’t happened before. Even as Brosch explained how he’d instructed the driver to take a long break until Malou called again, almost all of Malou’s attention focused on the adrenaline rush of magic that pulsed through her in waves.

In her ear, Laure said, “The Teir is automatically synchronizing with me, though slowly. I do not have access, though.”

Synchronizing with Laure? Had her dad somehow programmed the secretary with that capability since that one time he’d let her touch the Teir? But he had no reason to do that.

She wanted to ask how slowly, why synchronizing would be a slow process at all for Laure, but Brosch was crushing her hands in his grip.

“You must listen to me,” he said, desperation clear in his voice now.

Malou clasped the Teir to her chatelaine and stuffed it into her pocket. “And what do you want me to do with it? I can’t go back to campus tonight. My grandfather died—his funeral’s tomorrow.”

“If you do what I tell you, you’ll—”

The glass screen mounted on his desk flashed red—his security system.

“Someone is breaking into the house,” Laure said, though Malou didn’t need the report.

Clearly, Brosch had been expecting another type of guest tonight. His demeanor made sense then. So did his disabled cams, the empty house, the comment about why Zeynel had sent her. Maybe even Zeynel had known. Maybe Zeynel’s message also told him it was happening today. Right now.

Yet he’d still sent her.

“Professor—”

Professor Brosch moved to the edge of the burgundy Merhemetti rug between the chaise longue and the matching armchairs in the middle of his office and peeled it from the floor.

“You don’t have to go back to campus tonight,” he said, retrieving his silver and moving it across the wood where the rug had been. A door snapped open from the floor. “No one knows you’re here—just Zeynel and myself. You will be fine. Hide in here. Quickly.”

The space under the floor was the size of a coffin fit for one. He helped Malou cramp into it. Even if they’d both tried to fit, it wouldn’t have worked. She shouldn’t be the one hiding, not when she could use magic to find a way to escape.

“What about you?” she asked.

He detached his silver and gave it to her as well. “You’ll need that to reopen the door. You’ll have air for about three hours if you’re careful. Don’t worry about me, my dear.”

His somber smile brought her back to the day her father had died, and once again, she felt as though she were a helpless, little girl. If she could use her magic to become invisible, then they could both be safe. But her father had told her to show no one, had explicitly told her Brosch didn’t have the same ability.

As he closed the door, Malou wanted to reach out and grab the hem of his pant leg, but instead, she stared at his untied, scuffed boots until the darkness folded over her. He moved the rug back, then his muffled footfalls moved to his desk.

She massaged her throat. Maybe the reason he had said not to worry was that he had another hiding spot in his office or a panic room in his master suite. “Laure,” she whispered. “The cams—”

“He just turned them back on. Where are you?”

“Hiding. Under the floor. Professor Brosch—”

“He’s watching the cameras. There are five of them—two male, three female. Wearing all black. No masks. Heavily armed. They’ll arrive at his office in one minute. Why isn’t he hiding?”

“I don’t know.”

Laure continued, “There are two panic rooms according to the blueprints, and I assume there are a handful of hidden passages based on the age of the home and a few missing particulars on the prints.”

“But he’s just sitting there?” The intruders had come prepared for a fight, prepared to steal the world’s most heavily guarded secret. If Brosch said he didn’t have it, would they leave? Her mind raced. “Did the security system alert the Gendarmerie?”

“No, the signal was redirected. One among this company of intruders came decently qualified for someone who overlooked the closed-circuit security system in the first place.” Laure clicked her tongue. “Even I would be noticed if I attempted to push an alert through their ice. They are, however, apparently unconcerned that someone else may be watching the cams. Are you safe? I don’t see this under-the-floor space in which you claim to be hiding.”

She closed her eyes. “Yes, I’m safe. Record the footage. Get a good capture of their faces if you can. I want to know who they are. I want to know whom they work for.”

“Recording now. They’re in the library.”

There were plenty of people who wanted to have the Teir for their own, but she knew very few who would have the resources to place the Teir with Brosch, locate the professor, and steal it from him even though he’d been prepared for their arrival. Only one group stood out in her mind: the Libertines, an international criminal activist organization that fancied itself a social movement network aiming to remove social and political inequity.

With a reputation for violence, the Libertines were well-known for a series of well-publicized terrorist attacks, cyber-attacks, and bank robberies. Lately, they’d even dabbled in assassination and kidnapping. If they had the Teir, there would be no government, no military, and no task force that could stop them. The Teir falling into their hands was probably as bad as it falling into the hands of the Crown.

“They’re here,” Laure said.

A crash at the door, and feet moved in. Malou held her breath for a moment and tried to pick up their low, muted conversation, but she couldn’t decipher a single word. “Tell me what they’re saying.”

“Good evening, Anselm Brosch,” Laure repeated their exchange to her, altering her voice to imitate a gravelly baritone. “You didn’t think you could hide in here by any chance, did you?”

“No,” Laure said, copying the professor’s clear tones, “of course not.”

“Good. Now, where’s the Teir?”

“I don’t have it, and I never did.”

Laure gave a lone, low chuckle. “Kill—”

A single gunshot cut her short, the sound louder than anything Malou had ever heard before. In the several seconds of silence that followed, she wanted to trick herself into believing it was merely a warning shot—that Professor Brosch hadn’t just been shot dead behind his oversized desk with her steps away, the Teir burning a hole in her pocket.

What if she could have used magic to save him? What if there had been a way to protect him even from this coffin?

She remembered when Professor Brosch used to laugh as though he hadn’t aged a day past twelve. She remembered watching him work with her father, kneading drowsiness from their eyes with a knuckle or scratching at the confusion pinching the back of their necks. They’d gambled against Professor Haddou together. Brosch had always lost.

That day her father had taken her along to visit Brosch, it had been Brosch’s idea to show her the Teir. Let her look, Lavrras. A little motivation. She can keep a secret. Malou, you can keep a secret, right? Thought so.

Laure continued relaying the words of these murderers. “Let’s put in a few more bullets,” she said, this time as an excited young man. Was he the trigger-happy asshole who killed Professor Brosch?

“No,” answered the rough voice, “supposed to look something like a suicide. Not a perfect job, but the coroner will be paid off anyway. Search the whole place. You two start here.”

“How sure are we that the Teir’s even here?” asked the voice of a hesitant woman.

“Like fifty-fifty. Just look.”

Their feet moved to the fireplace, to the wall of bookcases, to his desk. Every time they passed over her spot under the floor, it felt like her coffin got a little smaller like the floor was pressing against her chest. They hadn’t even known if Brosch had been lying, and they’d still killed him. The sound of the gunshot that had killed him filled her mind again. She'd never forget that sound.

Was this what had happened to the other eight professors who’d disappeared? Then Zeynel hadn’t answered her because he’d been attempting to keep the truth from her. Because the engineers who worked with the Teir were disappearing and he knew the first thing she’d wonder was if her father’s accident hadn’t been an accident at all. He could’ve been their first victim.

If that were the truth, then she had to find out who they were.

She forced herself to focus on Laure’s voice. Her secretary continued to detail the search and relay conversations. The longer the silence drew above, the easier it was for her to breathe.

They referred to each other as some of Revern’s greatest military commanders, obviously codenames. The one called Juhnke was clearly in charge. Two of them didn’t seem to care for his authority, while one seemed to mind his commands as though she were his direct subordinate.

They left empty-handed after two hours, and they seemed unconcerned. Their hacker deleted the security footage and disabled the cams on her way out. No matter, though, since Laure had captured the whole thing in real-time.

Malou waited as long as she could in Brosch’s hiding spot until the air was thin and hot and Laure had reassured her approximately five times that the house was empty. She asked Laure to call the driver back.

Her skin itched as she ran Brosch’s silver against the door. After a few moments, it clicked open to the heavy smell of gunpowder and death. She pushed against the rug until she could slip out.

The clock on Brosch’s desk read ten minutes to five—she’d been in there over two hours. The fire was still burning low. Brosch was still sitting behind his desk, blood splatter on his face and his sweater vest soaked such a deep shade of red that it seemed black in the dim light.

Brosch looked just the same as when she'd greeted him at the front door, except his blue-hued complexion looked unreal. Like a wax replica. Like he'd never been real at all. His eyes were open, glossy like marbles. Dead.

She wanted to apologize to him, but the only thing on her dry tongue was the imagined taste of death. They’d shot him in the heart, then left a handgun on the floor by his chair as though it’d simply fallen from his cold, dead fingers. He would’ve died instantly.

Professor Brosch had died to keep the Teir safe. He’d died to save her life. And as he’d done that, he’d given her the same slow smile as her father had. Her memory was fresh with it, so fresh that Brosch's vacant expression became alive again in front of her. Then it was her father in Brosch’s place—her father’s smile, her father’s sad blue eyes, her father’s chest bloodied, her father’s dead body. When he’d asked if she wanted him to stay, had he known that he’d die if he left?

She turned from Brosch’s body, headed to the back of the house. In the kitchen, she found a back door that led into a garden overgrown with weeds. Because walking dead men didn’t bother with gardeners or butlers.

Guilt was a hook caught in her chest; it’d slid into her as smooth as a sharpened knife. Every step further from the house eased away the numbing cold clinging to her limbs, but no matter how many times she blinked, she couldn’t erase the sight of Brosch’s dead body or her father’s imagined one in its place.

The town car was idling behind the delivery gates, which unlocked with a swipe of Brosch’s silver and closed behind Malou automatically. The driver opened the door for her, and she swept into the back and curled away from the windows. Once the engine started, Malou bit hard on a knuckle, the pain only distracting enough to keep down the bile in her stomach.

She wanted to call Zeynel, tell him what’d happened, tell him Brosch was dead, tell him she was sorry, but he must’ve known what would happen—what had happened. Zeynel always knew. So she dug her teeth down just a little more and pretended she could hear the rare gentleness in his gruff voice promise her everything would be alright. She’d believed it before her father had died, she’d believed it at her father’s funeral, and she believed it still even now.

The driver sped up as the town car hopped on the motorway again. Malou’s hands fell to her lap, and she stared at her gloves for several long seconds.

“I need their names, Laure. Compare their faces to the Gendarmerie’s national database. I don’t care how long it takes. Find me a match and don’t get caught.”

“I don’t have proper programming for that,” her secretary said, “but once you write it for me, I’m always more than happy to do your dirty work for you.”

“Right, I knew that.” Malou released a shaky sigh.

Sometimes she forgot that Laure shared, at her core, the same intelligent personal assistant software as any other secretary. She couldn’t simply just do anything Malou asked, not if Malou or her father hadn’t already programmed her to be able to do it in the first place.

The rest of the ride to the Valois manor, Malou lay across the backseat and took long, careful breaths. She was fine. Nothing could ever be worse than losing her father. All she had to do was stop seeing Brosch’s smiling face in her mind, stop hearing the sound of that fucking gunshot, stop thinking about what had happened, and stop trying to link it to her father’s death.

Instead, she just replayed the entire night over and over in her head. She wished she could turn herself off like she could turn off Laure. Her mother's casual reveal that her father had been poisoned. The senator from Drondaal and his predatory smile. Dorian coming up the stairs disheveled. Brosch's cold hand. The intruders.

"Laure, you said they wore no masks?"

"That's correct."

Brazen bastards, but all the better for her.

The driver deposited her outside of the attendants' gate of the Valois Manor. She waited for the taillights to disappear into the lavender dawn, then retrieved the Teir’s silver box from her pocket. She unhooked it from its chain on her chatelaine.

The box’s hinges snapped when she cracked it open. Two indents, like pressed thumbprints, dipped into the frosted glass inside. Her hopes and dreams rested in a sanitized solution, encoded onto the surface of near-invisible contact lenses.

Except inside, there was only one lens.