Chapter 5

CHAPTER 5 Amy walked with the rest of her tour group toward the Gate of Heavenly Peace, wondering if Dan had located the mysterious Janus crest they had spotted in the movie. The tiny twists of fortune that spelled the difference between discovering a Clue and being left clueless could be so minor. It would almost be funny— if the fate of the world didn't hang in the balance. As for the thought of her eleven-year-old brother on the loose in the Forbidden City— well, it made her nervous, but she was learning to live with it. Over the past weeks, the two of them had survived near misses that made this seem like playtime at day care. Anyway, they would be reunited when they met Nellie in— she consulted her watch— half an hour. She hoped the au pair had found them a decent hotel.

The thought made her frown. Lately, there had been hints that Nellie might be more than she seemed. Or maybe I'm just getting paranoid…. She had no trouble believing that paranoia was very Madrigal. Her parents had been paranoid— and with good reason. Everybody had been out to get them. And one had succeeded. Yet even with their small children, Mom and Dad had been strangely secretive. Thinking back, there had always been rules— keep out of the basement or a certain closet; don't open that crate or that duffel bag. Only now did it occur to her to wonder what they'd been hiding— black-market grenades, a severed head, uranium 235, the Ebola virus, the lost remains of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. They were "Nudelmans," after all. She cringed as if shrinking from something horrible. She had so few memories of her parents, and now even the tiny scraps that were left had to be put through the Madrigal detector— every word, every gesture scanned for signs of evil. How

pathetic was that? A member of her tour interrupted her tortured reverie. "Excuse me, dear, but isn't that your little brother over there? Why does that soldier have him in handcuffs?" Just inside the gate stood an angry-looking man in a military uniform, with Dan in custody. Amy rushed forward. "What are you doing to my brother?" The guard spoke up. "You are in charge of this boy? You yourself are a child." "We're meeting our au pair in Tiananmen Square," Amy explained. "Dan, what happened?" Dan winked at her and shrugged. "I couldn't find you, so I climbed up on some temple for a better view. And this guy got all bent out of shape about it." The guard reddened and unlocked the cuffs. "You will leave and never return." "How about that," Dan said mildly as they were escorted through the Gate of Heavenly Peace, across the footbridge, and over the moat. "Forbidden from the Forbidden City. Oh, well, if

you have to get forbidden, I suppose this is the place for it." "Very funny," Amy hissed as they crossed the boulevard into Tiananmen Square. She shuddered. Considering the vast size of the square, it was packed with people. Amy didn't like crowds— and here she was in the most crowded place in the most crowded country on earth. "Now we can't go back and look for—" "I've already got it," Dan said, removing the folded silk from inside his shirt. "Here, hold it by the edges. I had to blow my nose in it so Mr. Happy would think it was a handkerchief." He handed it to her. Amy nearly dropped it. "You put snot on the clue?" Dan was annoyed. "You want to see it or not?" Amy unwrapped the soiled, wrinkled silk, keeping it hidden from curious passersby in the bustling square. In the bright sun, they could see that the pale gold silk was overlaid with a pattern of butterflies:

"'Lucian plus Janus plus Tomas plus Ekat equals Cahill,'" she recited aloud. "What could that mean? That if you add up the branches you've got the whole family?" "If that's the big message," Dan concluded, "then it wasn't worth getting arrested. That's like saying hearts, spades, diamonds, and clubs make a deck of cards." "What's this shape?" Amy traced a line that circled the Lucian crest. "There's one around each symbol, including the Cahill coat of arms." Dan frowned. "I wish we could translate some

of this writing." "Uncle Alistair knows Chinese," Amy mused. "No way!" Dan was adamant. "I'm never trusting that guy again! We know he was with Mom and Dad the night Isabel set the fire!" Amy tried to choose her words carefully. "You know, Dan, I've been thinking about something that won't go away." Dan was alarmed. "I don't like that look on your face. It usually means I have to do research on Mozart or Howard Carter or some other boring dead guy." "Be serious," she chided gently. "There's something pretty big we have to face up to." She took a deep breath. "Mom and Dad were Madrigals. Did it ever occur to you that the fire had something to do with that?" Dan was wide-eyed. "You don't think they helped Isabel burn their own house down!" "Of course not. But who knows what kind of weird stuff a couple of Madrigals could have been into? We look at the other teams as the bad guys. But what if, back then, that's how the rest of the