The pendant exploded with illumination, like a star caught between Zofia’s fingers. Enrique blinked against the sudden brightness, and when his eyes adjusted, the world seemed a little different. Zofia did not smile, but held the pendant out expectantly. In that moment, the light silvered her, so that it seemed as if she was what gave off the light in the dark.

He’d barely had a moment to hold that thought when the light off the pendant caught on the ridges of a tombstone. The tombstone stood about a meter high and looked as if it had been fused together from two separate pieces. Lichen splotched the surface, but as Enrique took a step toward it, he noticed the granite was curiously blank except for a string of numbers etched in relief on the stone: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. The hairs on the back of Enrique’s neck prickled as he got closer and took in the object—the earth around it was slightly sunken, and under the light, he could see that the curious shape of the tombstone was in fact the suggestion of two faces looking in opposite directions.

The god with not one head.

“Look,” said Enrique. “I … I think we’ve found something!”

A moment later, Hypnos appeared. He clapped his hands. “Mon cher! You did it! I never doubted you.”

Enrique glared at him. “Zofia, come look!”

But Zofia stayed some three meters away, holding up the pendant which cast plenty of light. Her hand was placed right above her heart, and she fidgeted where she stood, as if the grave and the falling dark had unsettled her.

“Felicitations etcetera,” said Hypnos airily. “Now what am I looking at? Also, it seems prudent to say that in the event I die with you all, which is seeming more likely by the day, please get me a far more elegant tombstone than that.”

“I thought we were looking for a god,” said Zofia.

“It is a god,” said Enrique, grinning. “It’s Janus, the Roman god of time … he looks backwards and forwards. He’s the guardian of gates and beginnings, passages and thresholds.”

“Janus?” repeated Hypnos. His nose wrinkled. “It also happens to be the name of the rudest House in the Italian faction. They’re keepers of cartography or some such, and always throw an epic, secret party for Carnevale. Have I been invited to a single gathering? No. I am not envious, per se, but I am—”

Enrique placed his palm against the front of the tombstone. He wasn’t sure what he thought would happen … maybe the lichen would clear, or maybe the faces would spit out a key. But instead, a Forged image contorted the stone revealing a fifteen-centimeter square outlined in light:

A few centimeters below the grid, the stone numbers quivered, and the riddle clicked into place.

“Show the sum of what you see, and this will lead you straight to me,” recited Enrique. “That seems simple enough … maybe even too simple. If it’s the key to a safe house, wouldn’t the matriarch have protected it more?”