“I’ll bite,” Amy said. “Napkins and coffee stirs?”

“These old manuscripts damage easily.” Allen ran his hand lightly over the leather cover. “Watch and learn.”

Penny returned with the napkins and stirs, gave them to Allen.

“Okay.” Allen pointed to the chairs on the opposite side of the table. “Both of you sit over there.”

The girls looked at each other and frowned, but they took their seats without complaint.

Allen took the cracked and worn leather cover between thumb and forefinger, and opened the manuscript with utmost care. Edward Kelley’s erratic scrawl was faded but legible. Allen began to read, skimming, slowing down occasionally to determine if a particular passage was pertinent. He used the plastic coffee stirs like surgical instruments to carefully turn the pages, sneaking a stir under an edge, lifting it carefully, catching the page with the other stir and letting it down again delicately. When he came to some caked-on dust, he dabbed at it with one of the napkins.

“Are you going to read some of that to us?” Penny asked. “Or do we just sit here watching you turn those pages with plastic sticks?”

“It’s not all relevant, okay?” Allen gestured at the thick manuscript. “This thing looks like it covers months and months. Maybe more. Probably what we want is toward the end, but I don’t know. I don’t know anything. I have to go through all this, and I’m trying to do it fast, but I don’t know what I’m going to find or when.”

“Read us something,” Amy pleaded. “We can’t stand it.”

“Fine,” Allen said. “Here’s a sample.” He read the following passage out loud:

This serving maid is unquenchable. Last night she used her mouth on me in ways that surely are sins in the eyes of the Church. She begged me to return the favor. Unfortunately, I do not believe she had bathed in several days and-

“Never mind,” Penny said. “We’ll do it your way.” She nudged Amy. “You want some coffee?”

Amy grimaced. “No way. The last cup almost ate through my stomach. Some tea?”

“Be right back.” Penny left for the café counter.

Amy waited until Penny was out of earshot, then said, “You’re holding back something about the vampire.”

“No, I’m not.”

“I could tell. Back at breakfast.”

“No.”

“How did you know where to look for the diary?”

Allen hesitated. “Dr. Evergreen told me.”

“You said he was dead.”

“He… told me before he died.”

“You’re a terrible liar, Allen.”

“Okay, yes. It was Cassandra. She made me fetch the diary from the monastery.”

“She ‘made’ you?”

Allen sighed. “It’s sort of… complicated.”

“Allen, if she sent you for it, then she’ll want it. When night hits, she’ll come, and then we’ll have a vampire on our hands. The Society thought Evergreen had something bad planned for the philosopher’s stone, but it was Cassandra all along, wasn’t it? She needs it for something.”

“She didn’t tell me for what,” Allen said. “But I plan to find out. She may have sent me to find the diary, but I didn’t take it to her, did I? I’m going to get to the bottom of this, but I’ll need your help, okay? I just… I don’t want to say anything to Penny about Cassandra. It’s embarrassing.”

“Embarrassing? But why would-” Amy’s eyes went big, comprehension dawning in her expression. “Oh, my God. Did she do that vampire hypnotism thing on you? Did she seduce you?”

“Keep your voice down.” He felt himself turn red.

“She did, didn’t she?”

Allen saw Penny returning with tea and coffee. “Shush.”

“That’s hot,” Amy said.

Allen glared her into silence just as Penny sat down and passed a mug of tea to Amy.

“Did I miss anything?”

“Nope.” Allen kept his eyes fixed on the manuscript, deliberately not looking at either of the girls.

He focused on passages, trying to find something important. Kelley went on and on about life at the castle, lengthy tirades against somebody named Dee. He skipped ahead, feeling a little more urgency to get to the meat of the matter. Amy and Penny lapsed into a conversation about shoes, then poetry, then where Amy had attended college. Allen tuned them out, focusing on Kelley’s words.

At last he found something, but he reread it again to be sure.

Allen cleared his throat. “Ladies, I think you might want to hear this.”

Kelley entered the castle but turned away from the dungeon. He hadn’t been there in nearly two years, not since operations had moved entirely to the caverns beneath St. Vitus Cathedral. Instead he turned toward the castle infirmary, going in quietly so as not to disturb the few lingering patients-soldiers who’d injured each other during sword practice, stable hands kicked by horses, and other minor injuries.

He paused near an old nun who wrapped a bandage around a soldier’s shoulder. “How is he today?” Kelley asked.

She shrugged. “No better. No worse.”

“He’s still by the window?”

The nun nodded.

Kelley walked past the beds to the end of the long room and around a silk screen that had been erected to allow the man in the final bed some privacy. Sun streamed in the window, its warm rays illuminating the floating dust motes.

Roderick lay under a thin sheet, perfectly still, arms folded across his chest, his face like chalk. His chest did not noticeably rise and fall with breath; nothing animated any of his features. Kelley thought he might already be dead, but the old man’s eyelids lifted slowly.

“Hello, Kelley.” Roderick’s voice was a weak croak. “I said you didn’t have to visit me anymore. It must be terribly depressing.”

“I can make you some more of that tea if you like,” Kelley offered. “To calm your stomach. If I can find the right tree bark and some other ingredients.”

“No more of your alchemy. It doesn’t help anymore,” the astrologer said. “There is only dying left to do, and that will be that.”

During those early months, Roderick had seemed only slightly ill or, perhaps, malnourished, given his long hours trying to complete the project for the emperor. The astrologer was an old man, after all, and while Kelley’s first impression of him had been of a tireless force of manic energy, certainly a man of his age could only go for so long without an extended rest.

But Roderick’s health had grown steadily worse. He’d faded to skin and bone, hadn’t been able to keep food down. His teeth had rotted and fallen out. Finally, he hadn’t been able to walk anymore and had been confined to bed for the past two months, where he’d continued to wither.

Kelley sat in silence on the windowsill, looking at his shoes, not saying anything.

“I was arrogant,” Roderick said at last.

Kelley looked up. “What?”

“Arrogant and foolish,” Roderick said. “I’ve toyed with powers that have killed me. We have all damned ourselves. Why don’t you go home?”

“Rudolph won’t let me,” Kelley said. “With you about to… die… I’m the only one that knows what to do with the machine.”

“Yes, I suppose that’s true. I’m no longer needed, am I?”

“I know how to position the lenses and activate the machine, but I have no idea how or why it all works,” Kelley said. “If something breaks, I wouldn’t know where to start.”

“Just remember never to open the box,” Roderick said.

“Never. I transferred the stone to a lead box. Did I tell you that? It protects better.”

“You told me last time.”

“Did I? How long ago was that? Never mind. My mind is going, Kelley. It won’t be long now. You have to keep the lenses clean. There are maintenance spells to ward off casual dust and rot, but anything done by you the spells will interpret as an intentional alteration. The lenses must be spotless before use. If something warps the light flow, it might alter the effects.”