Chapter 14

“Is this one of the trials?” Margot asked, her mouth wicked dry.

“No, definitely not.” Van blanched next to her. “I swear to you, that isn’t even one of the guardians.”

Something told Margot this was the statue’s first time sentient, and she hoped it would be his last. The legionary tested his legs with hesitant steps, each anvil heavy. Every movement the legionary made carved fissures into the tiled floor. A few quick flicks of his wrist and he mastered his parry.

Margot gulped. If her Girl Scouts stint taught her anything, it was not to make any sudden movements in the vicinity of a predator. “But you do know how to stop him, don’t you?”

“Not yet.” Van stood preternaturally still. Except for his eyes. Margot knew he must have been appraising their options—exit routes and risk factors, the probability of imminent death and dismemberment. She wished she could see what he saw, think how he thought.

All she saw was a room brimming with breakable relics and irreplaceable artifacts. All she could think about was how much trouble she’d be in if she wrecked this museum and the tang of panic that clogged her throat.

“Van—”

“I’m thinking.”

Unfortunately, the soldier wasn’t the only statue that decided to gain sentience. The headless torso tumbled from its pedestal, and the lone head blinked, a scowl carving into his marble features.

“Think faster,” Margot said as the soldier marched forward. The tip of his blade tested the space between them, ready to strike.

The torso rolled itself to Van’s feet, and he kicked it between its stone ribs. “I’m trying.”

The left-handed woman waved her only hand, motioning for them to run.

Margot didn’t need to be told twice. She launched herself through the doorway. The soldier’s head whipped in her direction. She could feel its unnatural stare boring into her back. Van raced after her, and the legionary wasn’t far behind, steps they could feel as much as hear.

“Why is he alive?” Margot asked as the exhibits bled together. Friezes and clay amphorae, gold-framed paintings and patterned textiles. The museum wrapped around them, a maze of shelves housing fragments of history, each carefully preserved. “And why is he so mad at us?”

Van spared a look over his shoulder. “When you came into the temple, you woke me out of my statue. Maybe I wasn’t the only one.”

“So, this is my fault?” Margot barked.

“All I’m saying is I didn’t make it a habit of getting chased by statues that wanted to kill me before I met you.” Van skidded around the next corner, where the exhibits narrowed, glass cases on either side shrinking closer.

Naked incandescent bulbs hung from the ceiling. One of them dared to flicker. Like it was trying to skyrocket Margot’s pulse on purpose. She lost track of the turns they took—left, right, right again, left three times. So many zigs and zags, her head spun.

The statue tracked them like a hungry Tyrannosaurus rex. Booming steps rattled right through Margot, shaking every bone. Her head was still craned over her shoulder when she rammed into Van’s back. Every frustratingly muscly inch of it.

“Why aren’t we moving?” she asked.

“Dead end.”

Her heart threatened to stop altogether. “Please tell me you’ve suddenly developed a sense of humor. A terrible, unfunny sense of humor.”

She peered around his shoulder. Not joking. A little yellow sign hung in the center of a grated metal door. Margot was willing to bet it said something like Employees Only or No Margots Allowed.

A white woman with salt-and-pepper hair pulled into a frizzy braid down her spine closed the rattling gate behind her, the sound jarring in the silence. One arm was burdened with the weight of what looked like months of research—lopsided papers and journals all stacked on top of a tome as thick as Margot’s forearm—and she used the other to lock the gate with an iron key.

“Excuse me!” Margot called.

She took one look at Van and Margot and tsked. “Access to this department is reserved for curators and researchers only.”

“We’re researchers,” Margot offered, keeping her tone light.

The woman peered down her nose. “Is that so?”

“We’re researching the Vase of—”

Van unceremoniously knocked the stack of papers in the woman’s arms to the ground. They spilled, scattering against the floorboards. A shrill sound came out of the woman’s mouth, but Van used her distraction as an opportunity to snake the key out of her palm, wriggle it into the lock, and peel open the door.

“He’s sorry,” Margot said on Van’s behalf.

Van said flatly, “No, I’m not.”

He slammed the gate shut.

The archivist opened her mouth as if to call for security when the legionary barreled down the hallway. All that came out instead was a shriek.

In three massive strides, the statue closed the distance to the restricted section. The woman crawled out of his way, but he only had eyes for Margot and Van. It wasn’t a comforting thought, as the soldier wrenched the door straight off its hinges.

Margot backed into Van’s chest, her feet tangling in his. “We’ve got to go.”

Van grabbed her arm and dragged her with him. He was running now, and Margot’s legs did everything they could to keep up. This part of the museum housed looming pine shelves overflowing with patinated bronze and clothbound books. Records.

“Try not to tell strangers that we’re searching for one of the world’s most sought-after relics, could you?” Van snarked, still thinking about Margot’s unfinished sentence.

Still, his hand lingered on Margot’s arm, and her skin grew hot beneath his touch. It was purely for efficiency, that hand. He kept jerking her unexpectedly down different stretches of shelves, so there was nothing tender in the feel of his fingers against her forearm. Which made her even more glad he was too busy plunging down narrow corridors to notice the flushed pink on her face.

“What if there’s something in here?” she said suddenly, loosening the hold he had on her arm. “Something about the Vase. Like why it wasn’t at the House of Olea.”

Now was really not the time to be slowing down, and Van knew it. “And what do you expect to find? A treasure map?”

“Anything is better than the whopping nothing we have to work with now.” The floor shook with every step the statue grew nearer.

Margot grabbed Van by the sleeve and hauled him through the nearest door, locking it behind them. That would throw the legionary off their tracks. Hopefully.

Here, the bookshelves were denser, the texts thicker. In the narrow crevice between shelves, where shadows filled every space and the scent of yellowed pages was so strong Margot could taste it, Van’s shoulders curled in on themselves like the edge of a well-read paperback to avoid knocking books off their shelves.

“Think, Van.” Margot placed her hands on his arms, lifting onto her tiptoes. “There has to be something that could help us trace that shard down. There are about a million documents in this place. One of them could be a . . . a certificate or a ledger, or, I don’t know, a . . .”

Van huffed a breath through his nose. If he wasn’t so irritable, Margot almost would have thought it was a laugh. “Treasure hunters aren’t really big sticklers for paperwork. We aren’t going to find—Actually. Wait.”

Margot waited as the cogs in Van’s head whirred.

“Acquisition ledgers,” he whispered, each word barely a breath. “Earlier, you said maybe the shard ended up in a museum. If it had, it’d be documented somewhere.”

“Where would we find those?”

Van lifted his hands around them. Archived texts and artifacts filled every inch of this section. The shelves around them held books, sure, but practically none of them were labeled.

She raised an eyebrow. “My question still stands.”

“That way,” he said. “We’re looking for records, not relics.”

Navigating the corridors was a feat of bumping elbows, but Margot managed to twist around without knocking anything off the tightly packed shelves. Van, behind her, swiveled, too. Now, his breath was so close, she could feel the heat of it on the side of her neck.

Margot yanked down a random book wrapped in plastic. Someone had written indecipherable code on the packaging—or, maybe that was a call number. Distantly, she wished she’d taken that library cataloging elective last quarter when she’d had the chance.

Sliding out the book, it was more delicate than she’d even imagined. The binding frayed, and the spine split. Inside, plastic pages protected tattered parchment streaked with penned Latin phrases.

Craning over her shoulder, Van said, “Too old. We’re looking for something from the last century.”

They wove between the stacks, deeper and deeper into the archives. Something crashed behind them, the sound of a locked door splintering, and Margot pinched her eyes closed. The legionary. They didn’t have much time.

Van reached into the shelf below and wiggled out an armful of books with deckle edges and white linen covers. “Look for any trades out of Pompeii.”

Handing a few to Margot, they wasted no time flipping through the records—tidy, dark black lines of text that Margot had to squint to read. Each time she discarded a book, Van handed her another.

Thumbing through the pages, Margot caught glimpses of the past—a few handfuls of expeditions dating back to Van’s era, a couple of German archaeologists, someone British, a pair of Swedish names. Each one of them scraping at the earth, trying to reap what it had sown.

One cropped up a few times. Atlas Exploration Company.

“Atlas had his own company?” Margot asked.

Van made a noise caught halfway between a sigh and a snort. “And he never let anyone forget it.”

Margot skimmed her index finger down the page. There were too many trades to count. Atlas Exploration Company sent shipments to the Museo Storico Navale di Venezia, Galleria dell’Accademia di Firenze, and about a thousand other museums across Italy. Dread congealed in her stomach. They’d never have time to hunt through them.

“These stop the same year you disappeared,” she said, resting her painted nail on the last transaction.

Van nodded. “I guess it’s bad press to have a crew member die on your watch. His family probably pulled his funding and forced him to go home.”

But Margot tapped that last trade, something tugging at her thoughts like a loose thread. “You said Atlas had been the one to complete the trial of Aura, right? So, he would have known where to look for the shard after it reset.”

“He wouldn’t have traded it,” Van said. Quick, tense. “I know Atlas. He wouldn’t have wanted anyone else to find the Vase.”

“Maybe it was an act of protection.” Margot’s thoughts were spinning so quickly, she could hardly keep up. “Think about it. The only way to put together the Vase is to have all five shards. Alone, it looks like any other piece of pottery. He couldn’t get the rest of the shards, but as long as this one was missing, no one else could either.”

A few stacks over, an entire shelf of documents collapsed. Reverberations shuddered through Margot’s joints. The legionary stomped into view, striking against the cases with the hilt of his sword. Each pulverized bookshelf brought him closer.

Margot held her breath, didn’t dare to blink, in case any of those movements would give away their admittedly lackluster hiding spot. Suddenly she understood every deer in every headlight. Terror coursed down her spine, zinging through her central nervous system and inching toward a full-blown panic attack.

Van tore the page from the ledger and folded it into his pocket. The noise drew the attention of the legionary. “Time to run.”

Immediately, Van’s hand found Margot’s. This time, his fingers laced with hers, and he hauled her between the stacks. The soldier tore after them. One massive hand gripped the side of a mahogany shelf and tugged, toppling it as if it were weightless. Books spilled, hardcovers splaying and pages tearing, as it slammed into the next shelf. That one knocked into the next and the next, falling like dominoes.

The force of each downed bookcase jolted through Margot’s bones. Propelling her forward, she gripped tighter to Van’s hand. Books cascaded around them as shelves on each side staggered.

Margot and Van ran until they couldn’t, until the museum spat them out through a doorway and they landed in a heap on the floors of an exhibit hall, all glossy marble and pristine glass cases like there wasn’t a living, breathing statue trying to kill them.

Van hurtled upright, but Margot moved too slowly. The legionary’s path of destruction had gotten him too close too fast. Now, his stone hand wrapped around her throat and hoisted her into the air. She didn’t even have time to scream.

His hold tightened, and Margot pried at his grip. But she wasn’t strong enough to break marble with her bare hands, so all her thrashing did nothing to slow the steady squeeze of its knuckles around her windpipe. If anything, it made him clench harder. Like he was annoyed. Could statues be annoyed?

Her vision blurred. Through the fog, she watched Van analyzing the situation. His gaze fell on her backpack, and the shards he knew it held, and then on her, caught as she was, in an unwinnable scenario. She would have yelled in rage if she had the breath—Van, weighing his options, like maybe she was optional.

Then, as if prodded, he lurched into motion.

For a second, he vanished past her periphery. There was a shatter—a glass case, maybe—and then the blare of an alarm. Red lights flared through the room, and an automated Italian voice warbled over invisible speakers.

Not good. Incredibly not good. Bad times a thousand.

Amid the black spots crowding her vision, Van reappeared holding a medieval lance with a rusted blade. Raising it overhead, he lunged it into the statue’s bicep, piercing the stone. The legionary’s grip slackened. Margot slammed against the floor and gasped for air, eyes stinging and throat chafed.

While Margot sputtered, Van sparred the soldier. His swordsmanship needed polishing, but he managed to disarm the statue, the marble sword clanging down to the tiles. It did little to dissuade him. The legionary landed jabs against the planes of Van—his ribs, his shoulders. He stumbled back, gasping as each blow fell.

Margot lifted onto her hands and knees, wobbly. She didn’t want to see Van beaten to a pulp any more than she wanted to be arrested for destruction of property. Even if that property had a serious bone to pick with her.

In the corners of her vision, a legion of uniformed guards—flesh and blood ones, thankfully, but only by a small margin—aimed down the hallway. Oh no. Maybe it was the lack of oxygen going to her brain, but they seemed to be multiplying.

“Hurry!” she yelled at Van despite the way her throat scratched against every syllable. “I’ll hold off security!”

Margot scooped up her backpack and scrambled across the floor, her lungs groaning in protest, and peeled up the statue’s sword. She carried it with two hands, the tip scraping along the tiles. It must have weighed half as much as her.

Down the hall, the guards yelled something, but it didn’t matter what they said to Margot. There was no way she was letting them in here right now.

The arched double doors had been wedged wide open with a doorstop, and Margot kicked it out from underneath the left side. She did the same on the right, and when both doors closed, she jammed the sword between their handles. That ought to hold them for a little bit.

She spun on her heels just in time to see Van’s lance slice through the statue’s neck. Halfway. It got sort of lodged there in the middle. He shifted his weight, and the blade finished the job. The soldier’s head separated from its shoulders. It almost crashed against the tile, but Van slid, catching it in his arms like a basketball.

“Oh, my god,” Margot said. Elated and jittery from adrenaline. Horrified at the consequences of their actions. The headless statue stared back, once again just unmoving stone. “Oh, my god. Who sculpted this?”

Van peeked at the gold plaque marking the statue. “Uh, Michelangelo.”

“We’re doomed. Doomed. What do we do?”

Security pounded, fists against the locked doors. The hinges rattled like hissing snakes.

“Here,” Van said and pushed himself upright. “Help me get this back where it belongs.”

Margot’s arms quaked, steadying the statue’s head on its broad neck while Van bolstered its torso. It looked totally believable. As long as no one looked too closely. Or wondered why a half-naked legionary statue was in the middle of a medieval weapons gallery.

The guards burst through the door, shouting a stream of frenzied Italian. Margot flashed a nervous grin, too big, and with the motion her hand slipped. The statue’s head lolled to the floor.