“Do you know who the tenth Elder was?” Crayton asks. “Changing his age is how Loridas was able to live as long as he did, even after the other Elders had passed away. Each time he grew old, he made himself young again, and assumed the vitality that comes with it.”

“Are you Ella’s Cêpan?”

“Only in the surrogate sense of the word. Since she was just born, she hadn’t been assigned a Cêpan yet.”

“I thought you were a Mogadorian,” I say.

“I know, but only because you misinterpreted the clues. This morning when I was talking to Héctor, I was trying to show you I was a friend.”

“But why didn’t you just come and get me when you arrived? Why send Ella in?”

“I tried approaching Adelina first, but she cast me out the second she knew who I was, and we needed you to have your Chest. I couldn’t pull you away without it,” he says. “So I sent Ella in, and she started looking for it even before you asked her to. The Mogadorians have known your general location for a good while now, and I’ve done my best to keep them off your trail. Killing some, well, killing most, but also planting stories in villages hundreds of miles away, about kids doing amazing things, like about a boy who lifted a car above his head and a girl who could walk across a lake. It was working until they discovered you were in Santa Teresa; but even then, they still didn’t know which one you were. Then Ella found the Chest and you opened it, and that’s when I came here, to talk to you in private. When you opened the Chest, it led the Mogadorians right here.”

“Because I opened the Chest?”

“Yes. Go ahead, open it up now.”

I let go of Ella’s hand and grab hold of the lock. I’m sick thinking that I’m able to open it on my own, now that Adelina is dead. I remove the lock and toss the lid open. The small crystal is still glowing a faint blue.

“Don’t touch that,” he says. “The fact that it’s glowing means a Macrocosm is in orbit somewhere. If you touch it now, it will tell them exactly where you are. I don’t know whose Macrocosm is operational, but I’m pretty sure the Mogadorians have stolen somebody’s,” he finishes. I haven’t the slightest idea of what he’s talking about.

“Macrocosm?” I ask.

He shakes his head, frustrated. “There isn’t time to explain it all,” he says. “Relock it.” He opens his mouth to say more, but is interrupted by banging on the door at the bottom of the stairs. We can hear muffled bursts of foreign voices.