TWENTY-FOUR

Present Day

Sterling, Massachusetts

    Last year Madame Flora injected Archie and Anne with sodium thiopental to fake their deaths. She also injected Bob to learn what Feret was up to. At the time, she casually mentioned that she had used it on some clients. Who would have thought she had been relying on truth serum for over sixty years?

    Who would have thought she and Archie may have had something going on for over sixty years?

    “Archie doesn’t know, does he?” I asked her.

    She shook her head. “And there’s no way he ever should.”

    We’d see about that.

    It was almost noon, and we had been up all night. Val and I headed back to our room and collapsed on the bed. We woke three hours later and got dressed.

    “What are you going to tell Mr. Morgan?” Val asked.

    “Until we get the rest of the story out of Madame Flora, I’m keeping quiet.”

    She pursed her lips.

    “If we tell him now, Madame Flora won’t help us sort out the rest of the story,” I said.

    “So we have to act just like her?”

    I thought about that. “You mean we’re doing the wrong things for the right reasons.”

    She nodded.

    That did seem to be the theme of the story so far: Flora helped Archie to get her grandmother medicine. Her grandmother read Goering’s eyes so Archie would bring her and Flora to America. Archie helped Goering so he could climb Soul Identity’s hierarchy.

    And here I was suggesting that we hide what we know so we could hear the rest of the story. Val was right to call me on it.

    “You think we should go to Archie now?” I asked.

    She shook her head. “Flora is right-it will cause irreparable damage.”

    “But we’ll have to tell him what we learned, sooner or later.”

    She made a face. “That’s going to be tough.”

    I wasn’t looking forward to that, either. “Maybe after we find out what happened to the gold.”

    The translating was getting easier. I took the next few pages and marked the words we already had solved. That saved us half the work. While I forged through the new words, Val manned the online dictionaries. It took us three hours to complete the remaining pages and head back to Madame Flora.

Flora’s Journal

8 October 1946

With one behind you can’t sit on two horses.

    The princess sought out the wolf’s guard. Besotted with her beauty, he helped her pass messages between the captain and the evil wolf.

    She spent many hours pondering all that had happened. She began to look favorably upon the captain, and to admire the strength he showed as he performed his quest.

    But she still sought to destroy the wolf’s magic teeth. The captain brought her to the dungeon to see them. She gasped at the power the wolf would hold when he returned to life. Yet when she begged the captain to crush them, still he refused.

    So she used more truth-telling potion on the captain, down there in the dungeon, right next to the wolf’s magic teeth.

    The captain told her how and when the teeth would be transferred to the knights’ cave. Then he again professed his love for her. And this time, the princess felt her own heart jump. She realized she was in love with this captain of the knights.

    She told the captain she loved him, and then she showed him, and then she helped him forget.

    Later that night, finally, a plan, forged out of her love for her captain, and out of her hatred for everything the wolf represented, took shape.

14 October 1946

There are lies more believable than truth

    Her plan was so simple it was brilliant: trick the captain into giving the magical teeth to the princess’s friends, and find something else to place in the cave.

    What could she put in place of the magical teeth? After thinking long and hard, she chose to deposit her story. Then, when the wolf returned to life, he would learn how the brave princess had thwarted him.

    And how would she trick the captain? A friend of her godmother had offered to help; he and his men would fool the captain and take the magical teeth someplace safe.

    The princess is very excited: tomorrow the wolf’s teeth will be out of the knights’ hands. Tomorrow they start their journey back to the families of the wolf’s victims.

    Soon she and her fairy godmother will be safe in a new castle. Soon her knight captain will become a general, and soon he and the princess will live happily ever after.