Vani reached across the table, gripping his hands. “You are the connection, Travis Wilder. Don’t you see? The gate has come to light becauseMorindu has been found. It wants to take you there.”

He snatched his hands back. “What it if I don’t want to go?”

“You will go, because it is Fate.”

“I don’t have a fate,” Travis snapped, and Beltan cast him a worried look.

Vani seemed undisturbed. “Perhaps not. But my people do, and that fate is bound up with you. You will go to Morindu. We must go to this gate at once. Your blood will awaken it.”

“Blood,” Deirdre murmured, her mind humming. She glanced at the sofa and Nim’s sleeping form. “It’s what you and Nim have in common, Travis. That’s what connects you. Blood of power.”

Beltan cast a startled look at Nim. “A jewel, a spider, a key. Those things she said—all those words could be used to describe a scarab.”

“And the scarabs contain Orú’s blood.” Deirdre felt hot, a sheen of sweat breaking out on her skin. “That’s why the Scirathi want both of you. Either one of you could be used to open a gate.”

“Or perhaps open something else,” Vani said, her coppery face turning ashen. “Why did I not see it before?”

Anders refilled her empty coffee cup. “Sometimes it’s hard to see the truth when you’re too close to it.”

Deirdre had to agree with that. And there was one truth the others couldn’t see yet. “The gate on Crete won’t do you any good. You won’t be able to open it.”

Vani scowled at her. “Why is that?”

“Because the arch isn’t complete. The archaeologists won’t find the center keystone with it.”

“This is madness,” Vani said, clenching her hands into fists. “You only say this to keep Travis here. How can you know the keystone will not be found?”

“Because it’s in the vaults of the Philosophers.”

Deirdre couldn’t help feeling a little satisfied as they all stared at her. It was good to be the one with the astonishing revelation for a change.

“You remember the Philosopher who was helping me?”

Anders cocked his head. “He hasn’t contacted you again, has he, partner?”

Deirdre thought of the message on her computer screen, just before Travis had called. “Actually, I think maybe he has. But he first helped me to learn about the keystone over three years ago.”

It had been almost that long since she had gone over her notes on the case, but it didn’t matter; she remembered every detail of the mystery as if she had just uncovered it. Anders knew all of this already—she had vowed not to keep any secrets from him, and she had kept that promise—but to the others it would all be new.

She began by explaining how her shadowy helper—the one who she was convinced was a Philosopher—had first contacted her, just after she had stumbled upon a computer file with her new Echelon 7 clearance. A file that was deleted from the system the moment she found it.

Deirdre had never learned what was in that file, but soon after she made another breakthrough with the help of the unknown Philosopher. She explained how she had stumbled across a reference to the keystone in the archives of the Seekers while researching an old case, one concerning a Seeker named Thomas Atwater. In the early seventeenth century, Atwater was forbidden to return to a tavern where he had worked prior to joining the Seekers. The tavern had stood on the same spot where the Seekers would later discover the keystone, and which, three centuries after that, would house the nightclub Surrender Dorothy.

Talking about Glinda was still difficult, even after this long. Deirdre gripped the silver ring Glinda had given her as she described the nightclub and its half-fairy denizens. Duratek had been using them, hoping to learn from the experiments they performed on the folk of the nightclub, then had destroyed the tavern once they gained access to a true fairy.

“Are you all right, Deirdre?” Anders asked, his voice husky. As always, he pronounced her name DEER-dree, but she no longer found it quite so annoying as she used to.

She did her best to smile. “I’ll be fine. Really.”

“You said there was writing on the keystone,” Travis said, his gray eyes curious. “Were you ever able to read it?”

Deirdre nodded. “My mysterious helper gave me a photograph of a clay tablet that bore the inscription on the keystone, as well as the same passage written in Linear A. Back then, I wondered at the connection, but now it’s fairly obvious.”

“To you, maybe,” Beltan said with a grunt.

She grinned at the blond man. “Linear A is the writing system used by the Minoan civilization on ancient Crete.”

Vani’s expression was guarded. “So what does the inscription on the keystone say?”

“It says, ‘Forget not the Sleeping Ones. In their blood lies the key.”

“The key,” Travis murmured, looking at Nim. However, whatever he was thinking, he kept it to himself.

There was one last thing she had to tell them. Deirdre took off the silver ring Glinda had given her and showed them how the same inscription as on the keystone was written inside it. However, there was one thing she did not tell them, and it was the one secret she had allowed herself to keep even from Anders: how, in the moment they had kissed, Deirdre had loved Glinda with all her being.

“ ‘The Sleeping Ones,’ ” Beltan said, scratching the tuft of blond hair on his chin. “That doesn’t really sound familiar. What does it mean?”

No one, not even Vani, offered an answer.

Deirdre slipped the ring back on her finger. “The inscription talks about blood, and traces of blood were found on the keystone—blood with DNA similar to Glinda’s. Whoever they were, these Sleeping Ones were important to the folk at Surrender Dorothy for some reason.” Though why that was, they would never know, thanks to Duratek.

“This all seems a small complication,” Vani said, standing and stalking around the table. “True, the gate will not be complete without this keystone. However, it could be in a vault in this very building. Cannot this Philosopher ally of yours deliver the keystone to us?”

Deirdre opened her mouth, not certain how she was going to answer that. Would the unknown Philosopher really respond to a direct request for help? Before she could speak, there was a knock at the door, and the butler entered. On the silver tray he carried was not another pot of coffee but a manila envelope.

“A message just arrived for you, Miss Falling Hawk,” he said, holding the tray toward Deirdre.

She stared at the envelope. “Who’s it from?”

“I have no idea, miss.” The butler looked slightly ruffled, as if she were accusing him of snooping.

She took the envelope off the tray. “Thank you, Lewis.”

The butler retreated from the parlor; the door shut.

“It’s from him, isn’t it?” Travis said. “Your Philosopher friend.”

Anders thumped the table. “Well, that was right on cue. He’s an eerie fellow, but you can’t fault his timing, now can you?”

Deirdre was beyond words. She forced her trembling fingers to open the envelope. Inside was a folded up sheet of newsprint. Trying not to tear it, she unfolded the sheet and spread it on the table. It was a page taken from the Times—the coming day’s edition, according to the date. It must have come right off the presses.

They all leaned over the page. At the top was a large article about Variance X, the growing stellar anomaly that astronomers had observed beyond the boundaries of the solar system. However, the article didn’t hold Deirdre’s attention. Nor did the headlines about devastating typhoons in India, or the jittery United States stock markets. Instead, her eyes were drawn to the small headline at the bottom of the page: DARING ARCHAEOLOGICAL THEFT ON CRETE.

Numb, she scanned the article. It described how a stone archway was stolen mere hours after it had been revealed live on the program Archaeology Now!There was no clue as to the perpetrators, but one worker at the site reported seeing men dressed in black and wearing masks.