Chapter 7

CHAPTER 7 "Amy! Let's go!" Dan screamed. "No! The paper! We have to—" Amy pointed toward the pile of Cahill relatives flailing about on the stage. She looked like she was about to leap into the battle. Dan grabbed her arm. Now she was fighting him. How was he supposed to play this? "Let's just go plan our strategy," he said, in case any of the others could hear him. Amy flashed him a baffled look. He winked at her. Now Amy seemed completely confused. Dan looked around quickly to make sure no one was watching, then pulled her behind the stage curtain. "Dan, what are you doing?" Amy asked. "We've got to stay and fight—"

Dan whispered in her ear, "No, we don't. I kept part of the paper!" Amy jerked away, stared at him, and then pulled Dan deeper into the backstage area, farther from the other relatives. They ducked into a dimly lit room marked PROPS. Amy locked the door behind them. "We should be safe here," she whispered. "Now, tell me— what do you mean?" "When Ned and Ted tied me to the balcony, I made sure I had both hands behind my back," Dan said. "I knew they wouldn't let me keep the paper, so I started tearing pieces off and stuffing them in my pockets." "Dan— maybe that was a priceless document!" Amy protested. "Maybe it was an original page written by Shakespeare!" "And maybe I got enough of it that we can figure out the next lead!" Dan countered. Amy stopped arguing. Dan began pulling shreds of paper out of his pocket. "Well, it's not an original written by

Shakespeare— unless he used a typewriter," Dan said, smoothing out the first one. Amy seemed to relax a little. "Shouldn't we wait and look at this outside?" Dan asked. "No— we've got to see if you have enough or if we'll need to go back and fight," Amy said. It was so obvious that she was trying to be brave, battling the instinct to run. The swords and armor lining the wall cast scary shadows across her face. Dan quickly began assembling scraps. When they'd put everything they could together, Dan's piece of the page read: "I tore off pieces from the top and the bottom

both," Dan said apologetically. "Because I started thinking about how, with a lead, usually the stuff at the bottom is the most important, and since I'd never looked at the paper, I didn't really know which way was up." He touched the solitary "b" in the last line. "Sorry I didn't get the whole word there. You probably could have solved it then." "I can solve it anyway!" Amy said. She beamed at him. "You can?" Dan asked. "Because guess where William Shakespeare was born?" Amy asked. "I don't know, but I bet you're going to tell me," Dan said. "Stratford-upon-Avon, there," Amy said, touching the words as she spoke them. "So you think that one missing word in the last line is born," Dan said. Something like dread began to creep over him. "Oh, no, don't tell me—" "That's right, even though it was five hundred years ago, the house where Shakespeare was born is still there," Amy said. "And we're going to go

see it!" Alistair Oh hobbled into the Tate Modern museum of art. Alistair was no fan of modern art— in his opinion, it was proof that the Janus branch of the Cahills had gone insane. But the museum was practically next door to the Globe Theatre, and right now it was a good place to hide. Nobody would expect him to come here. Alistair tried to walk with his usual dignity, but that was difficult when the pocket of his cream- colored jacket flapped loose and he had blood caked on his cheek from the all-out family battle at the Globe. And— was that mud in his hair? All that, and he still hadn't emerged with even one scrap of the paper. I'm too old for this, he thought, even though his uncle, Bae Oh, was much older and still every bit as obsessed with the Clue hunt as Alistair. Alistair ducked into a dark, empty alcove, which turned out to be a tiny screening room. Lunacy, Alistair thought. People nowadays think video is art?

He eased himself down onto a bench and thought longingly of the museum his branch, the Ekats, had proudly maintained at their stronghold in Egypt. He'd always hoped that his own genius inventions would one day hold a place of honor there, amazing all visitors. But he'd been so focused on finding Clues over the years that all he'd ever really invented was the microwavable burrito. And, like so much else, many Ekat treasures from the museum had been stolen or destroyed during the Clue hunt. Treasures destroyed, hopes destroyed, lives destroyed… does it ever end? he wondered, as images flickered and died on the wall before him. The juxtaposition of three words— hopes, lives, destroyed— brought a flash to his mind of the lively, charming Hope Cahill, murdered years ago. Amy looked more and more like her every time he saw her. I didn't kill Hope, Alistair thought reflexively, as he'd been thinking for the past seven years. This time there was an echo to the thought: I'm still to blame….