“It is. April has the Gutenberg we need. But the Order of the Dragon is going to kill her to get it first.”

August looked up. “How would you know that?”

“Because I just talked to them,” Xandria said.

As frightened as August had been before, his fear doubled. The Orphans were one thing. The Order of the Dragon was another. The Orphans were misguided; the Order, however, was cruel and merciless. If Xandria had aligned herself with them, then April and Charlie would both die. “You’re one of them,” he said.

She put a finger to her temple for a moment before saying, “I understand that it might look that way. But let me explain the truth: two years ago, I met a man named Dr. Winter at a convention in Berlin.”

“The head of the library’s archaeobibliology department?”

Xandria nodded. “We talked many times over the course of the weekend, and eventually the subject of the Orphans came up. On the last day of the convention, he explained to me that he was part of a new formation of the Orphans, which he wanted me to join.”

“And you said yes.”

“Not right away. I had a long list of reservations. But Dr. Winter— as you probably have heard from April—can be quite persuasive. After a month of e-mails back and forth, I joined. Over the course of the next year I devoted all my time to the Orphans, hunting for clues about the secret that had died with Gutenberg. I found nothing. And then, one day, through a short string of miracles I can’t begin to explain, I came into possession of Gutenberg’s journal.”

“The one that Station X found.”

“The very same,” Xandria said. “Not long after, I was contacted by a man named Cornelius Hood. He had somehow heard that I had the journal and was willing to pay any price to have it. I told him it wasn’t for sale. He said that there were other ways to convince me to give it to him. I hung up the phone. The next day I woke to find him standing at the foot of my bed. He pointed a gun at my head and told me that the journal was not mine to own, that it belonged to an ancient German society, a powerful organization that had nearly vanished after the World Wars.”

“The Order of the Dragon.”

“I wasn’t eager to die, so I told him about my involvement with the Orphans, thinking he might spare my life to get information. That ended up being a wise decision, because more than that, he asked me to join the Order.”

“As a spy.”

“Yes. But secretly I was doing the opposite.”

“So you’re a double agent?”

“This isn’t Mission: Impossible.”

“But you know every move the Order is going to make.”