That night, everyone else had gone from the hospital room where they had been sitting vigil for three days. Astrid had been sick for weeks with a mysterious illness the doctors could not identify. Suddenly, she had taken a turn for the worse. She’d collapsed at her office and had been rushed to the hospital. She hadn’t regained consciousness.
Jake took their exhausted father to get coffee downstairs. Her devoted assistant, Dave, had finally listened when Mark told him to go home to bed. There was only Atticus in the room. He was hungry and tired, too, but they all knew that they couldn’t bear to leave her alone. As though if they did, she would die.
She died anyway.
At first, he thought he was overhearing her dreams.
“V-One. He’s V-One! Vespers …”
Then she’d come fully awake. He was holding her hand when he felt his being squeezed.
“Mom!” Tears spurted into his eyes when he saw her smile.
“Atticus.” She wet her lips. “So thirsty.”
He gave her a sip of water. “I’ll get Dad.”
“No! You must listen. Last chance.”
“You’re going to get better.” Atticus choked back tears.
She squeezed his hand. “Listen. Very carefully. Remember the bedtime story? The one I used to tell you?”
Atticus nodded. He didn’t remember the story very well, not really, but he wanted her to calm down.
“The ring. The ring. Do you remember? They can help you. But they don’t know who we are! I am passing along guardianship to you.”
Guardianship? Of who? Jake? Jake was seven years older than he was. Of course, Atticus always told Jake he was way smarter, but he was joking. Half joking.
“You are a guardian. You must continue. Tradition. So much at stake. Follow the sparrow to the Mad King’s castle.”
It was strange how calm and focused she seemed, even though her words were crazy. “Sure, Mom,” Atticus said soothingly. His gaze darted toward the door. He wished his father would get back. “The Mad King’s castle. Got it.”
“Darling boy …” Suddenly, her gaze unfocused and she tightened her grip as the pain came.
“Nurse!” Atticus shouted.
“Promise me,” she whispered.
“I promise, Mom.”
“My papers. Look in my papers. Promise.”
“I promise.”
“Grace,” she whispered. “I need grace.”
His mother had never been religious. “Do you want me to get the chaplain?”
She shook her head, frustration and pain on her face. “Vespers,” she whispered through cracked lips. “The oldest of enemies. Guardian, promise me.”
“I promise,” he said, for the last time.
One last, gasped sentence. “Stay friends with Dan Cahill.”
She closed her eyes, and her hand went limp. She died two hours later.
Now the agony of that night swept over him again, and he wanted to crash to his knees and sob. He wasn’t over his mother’s death.
But he had to be strong. He had to figure this out. Deathbed promises, made in a swirl of words he didn’t understand. The pain in her eyes. The way she gasped for breath.
What if those things she was trying to tell him … were real?
Stay friends with Dan Cahill. He’d thought she was just reassuring herself that her son would continue his only friendship after her death. But now, in his head, he heard her voice. He heard the urgency of it.
He glanced desperately at his brother. How could he find the words to tell him? Jake would never believe him about Astrid. He’d say she was delusional, that she was full of painkillers… .
Jake was already dialing.
“Please, Jake!”
The desperate emotion in his voice made Jake stop.
Atticus thought fast. He had to give Jake a reason to go find Amy and Dan. His brain was suddenly firing with connections, and he had a feeling that only Dan and Amy could answer his questions.
“Interpol won’t listen,” he said. “Maybe you’re right – what if Dan and Amy are after something else? And they’re using Dad’s name. What if they implicate him in the crime?”
“All the more reason to call the authorities,” Jake said.
“No,” Atticus said. “All the more reason to go to Prague.”
Kutna Hora was a picturesque city that had once sat on top of Europe’s most prosperous silver mine. Back in medieval times, it was second only to Prague in importance. St. Barbara’s Cathedral was renowned for its Gothic magnificence, and the town was popular with tourists. Amy and Dan milled with them as they exited the train station. Most headed for the cathedral or the mining museum in a fifteenth-century castle.
“Do you know what the Czechs used to do with people they didn’t like back in ye olde medieval days?” Dan asked Amy. “Throw them out the window. Really, I read it on the train. It’s called defenestration. It happened in the fourteen hundreds. And there was this event called the Great Defenestration in the sixteen hundreds, where this one group of guys threw this other group of guys they didn’t like out the window of Prague Castle. They actually lived, because they landed in a dung heap. Now, there’s a soft landing. But it started a trend. There’s actually an index entry for defenestrations in the guidebook. Isn’t that crazy?”
“Since when are you interested in history?”
“I’m not. I’m interested in wild acts of defenestration. Do you think we could arrange to meet Casper Wyoming in Prague Castle?”
“Sure. Keep thinking, Dan. Come on, let’s find the bus.”
Amy bought bus tickets at a tabac and asked directions to the bus for Sedlec. It was an easy walk to Masarykova Street.
The ride to Sedlec wasn’t long, and soon they were pulling up in a small suburb. They jumped off the bus with several other passengers. A tourist with a camera and a backpack approached them. “Is this the way to the bone church?” he asked Amy.
“You mean All Saints?” Amy asked. “I think it must be that church up ahead.”