Chapter 15

CHAPTER 15 Amy, the coward, started babbling about how they'd have to be really, really careful now. "Whoever's in there had to have heard that chain fall, so they'll be on alert," she whispered. In the dim light from the flashlight, her face looked ghostly and terrified. "They're probably laying a trap for us. We should go back and get Nellie to help. Maybe Hamilton, too— Hamilton's helped us before, he'll help us now. We'll have to make plans, set our own trap—" "What? And let whoever it is escape with the clue? While we're sitting around talking? No way," Dan said. He stepped in through the door and was instantly engulfed in darkness. A plan came to him in that one step. Amy was right about the chain being too loud. Dan might as well use that to his own advantage.

He swung the beam of the flashlight toward the front of the church. "Police!" he shouted. "Freeze!" Nobody was there. Quickly, he flashed the light around the entire church. He listened for panicky breaths from someone hiding in the pews. He poked his head back out the door and said to Amy, "Come on in. The coast is clear." "You idiot," Amy muttered. "Moron." But Dan noticed that she walked into the church. Dan pulled the door shut behind her. "You forgot 'poisonous bunch-back'd toad,' 'knottypated fool' and 'vile standing tuck,'" Dan said. "But at least I'm not 'pigeon-livered and lacking gall' like you." "More Shakespeare insults?" Amy asked. "Want me to go on?" Dan asked cheerfully. "I know dozens of them now." "No," Amy said. "I want you to be quiet so we can hear if anyone comes." This actually struck Dan as a good idea. He shut

up, and they both tiptoed toward Shakespeare's grave. Dan held the flashlight low to the ground to light the uneven stone floor. But all sorts of dangers seemed to lurk in the darkness just beyond the flashlight beam. If one of the other teams isn't here digging up Shakespeare's grave, then— who did leave that door unlocked? Dan wondered. Is this a trap? There was nothing he could do but keep walking toward the grave. "Shakespeare died in 1616," Amy whispered. "I hope no one's replaced the mortar around his tombstone since then. Four-hundred-year-old mortar should be crumbly and easy to dig through. But if it's newer than that…" "We'll be fine," Dan whispered back. They were at the gravestone now. Dan bent down and moved the bouquet of flowers once again. His fingers brushed the secret carved words that had shown up on the grave rubbing— vague, random-seeming lines in the stone. It wasn't surprising that they could have gone undetected for almost four hundred years.

Amy bit her lip. "Don't break the stone or anything," she said. "Amy, it's a stone," Dan said. "How would I break it?" "Superpowers?" Amy said. For her, that was a really, really good attempt at a joke. Not that it was actually funny. Dan moved his hand to feel along the crack between Shakespeare's gravestone and the one beside it. He touched the mortar in the crack— and then jerked his hand back. "Amy!" he whispered. "That's not mortar! It's fake!" "What?" Amy said. Dan pulled her hand toward the fake mortar so she could feel it, too. "It's just— rubber?" she asked. "Made to look like crumbly mortar?" Dan began pulling on the rubbery fake mortar. It came up in one long strip. "Careful," Amy said. "One of the other clue- hunting teams might have put it there to cover

their tracks. It might be set to explode—" "Or someone's making this really easy for us," Dan said. He pointed to a set of hinges that had been hidden under the fake mortar. He used the nail file like a lever. One side of the stone began to creak upward, moving under its own power now. Dan shone the flashlight beam down into the grave. He was braced for some horrifying decaying skeleton. But all he could see was a coffin. Something gleamed on top of the coffin: an irregularly shaped metal pole. Words ran around the pole, circling it again and again and again. Dan rolled the pole to the side and realized that there were only five words, repeating over and over: Madrigal Stronghold Cahill Ancestral Home Madrigal Stronghold Cahill Ancestral Home…

"It's telling us where to go next!" Dan whispered. "The Madrigal stronghold," Amy said. "Of course." The Clue hunt had taken them to strongholds for all the other branches: for the Lucians in Paris; the Janus in Venice; the Ekats in Egypt; and the Tomas in South Africa. It made so much sense that they'd have to go to the Madrigals' headquarters, too. "'Cahill Ancestral Home'— think that means where Gideon and Olivia Cahill lived?" Dan asked. "Yeah— the last place the Cahill family was all together," Amy said sadly. "Of course the Madrigals would build their headquarters there." Dan rolled the pole again, scanning the words looping down its side.