Amelie dragged the limping Isaac to a blank wall. “Right here. All you need is a wall, right? Just that and the key and the request?”

“I guess,” Isaac said. Was that right?

“Get the key,” Amelie said. “Now.”

He fumbled with his shirt. That’s where the key was, right? He thought so. He pulled at a chain. He tugged it out and wrapped his cold hand around the cold pendant at the end of the chain. “Cannot remember.”

“You have to,” Amelie said. She had him by the arms, holding him against the wall.

“Okay,” he mumbled. “Um, hello.”

Nothing happened.

Kat began to weep.

Then, with metal scraping on stone, Bedwyr moved toward Isaac, lifting his sword as he came. Isaac’s head swam as he watched the sword. Bedwyr was going to kill him, right there.

Bedwyr raised the sword level with Isaac’s neck, then pressed the point against the stone wall. He pushed, tracing with a slow scratch-scritch, as he made a mark on the stone.

The eternity knot.

Isaac remembered then. Bedwyr knew. Isaac needed the symbol to form the door. And the request. Images and words swam up in his memory—the woman called Mistress Vivienne—and he said, “Guardian. Requires you. Door. Here and now. Please.”

He felt it then, the door, as it formed beneath his hand, and the other children gasped as he and Amelie tumbled into the Vault and the door disappeared.

*   *   *

The two of them were inside. Isaac had a profound desire to sleep.

“Come on,” Amelie said. She dragged him toward the table with the ledger since he was unable to put weight on his injured leg. “We’ve got to find the Elixir.”

Isaac fell against the table.

Amelie opened the ledger and leaned over it, scanning it quickly. “Isaac, there are instructions here. To become the Guardian, you need to recite that spell, like Leo said. It’s all right here, in detail. I’m going to find this elixir.”

“Right.” He leaned his head on the table.

“Elixir, elixir,” Amelie murmured, turning the pages. Turning and turning. “There. That’s it.”

She ran, disappearing in the low light of the Vault.

Isaac lay with his head on the table for what seemed like forever. The world had become very pleasant. Dreamy. His head swam and he couldn’t see anything any longer, just an inky black. Nothing mattered.

He took the chain from around his neck and placed the chain and pendant on the table next to his cheek. Amelie could do it. She could be the next Guardian. There was no reason he had to stay any longer. He pulled the Death’s Head watch and Adder Stone cuff from his pocket and put them on the table, too.

He felt Amelie’s hands on his face, warm and soft. “Hmm,” he said. “Take key. Be good. Be strong.”

“No,” she said. “You’re going to drink this.”

“’Kay.”