He starts to copy them onto the pad. I strain the other way in front of the mirror, flipping the images in my mind.

“I think I know what that is,” I whisper and tug his phone from his pocket.

I search “Glagolitic script,” filter for images, and locate a chart of characters.

“Write this down. Z . . . B . . . G.” I search out each one, comparing boxy consonants, archaic vowels. “E . . . A . . . D. The last one’s not on there.”

He makes a face. “Zbgead something? Not Zagreb . . .”

“Are you reading up or down?”

“Down. Up spells something daegbz.”

“The same characters also stand for numbers.” I search through the chart. “Try 9 . . . 2 . . . 4 . . . 6 . . . 1 . . . 5.” I glance up at him. “That mean anything to you?”

“924615 . . .” he says. “924 . . .”

For a minute I think he actually pales in the black light’s purple glow.

“What?”

“I just . . .” He nods toward the key dangling from my neck. “Claudia said that was Shakespeare. I never saw you read Shakespeare.”

“Maybe you don’t know me as well as you think,” I murmur. Why do I feel like there’s something he’s not saying?

“Better than you do. Let me read that?”

I hold the key up, and he searches the phrase on the phone.

“Measure for Measure,” he says. I pull my shirt back over my head. But something’s bothering me, scratching at the back of my mind.

I squint at him as he reads: “A story of ‘morality and mercy.’ Sounds eerily familiar,” he mutters, and then hesitates. “It’s set in Vienna.”

“Vienna.”

“Austria. As in a few hours away.”

“We’re in Europe. Everything’s a few hours away. It’s practically New England.”

He frowns.

“I’m joking. Not really.”

“Who uses keys anymore? Old-school banks, maybe. But why would you need a key if you have a code? What if this key’s more about what’s on it than what it does?”

“So it’s telling me where to go, not how to unlock something.”

“Maybe. Meanwhile, if this is what you picked to remind you where it is—”

“I’m an idiot. Because anyone could have figured out the same thing. Seriously, a Google search? That’s my level of encryption?”

He gives a wry smile. “You have to admit, this does sound like your humor. ‘Some rise by sin, some by virtue fall.’ A jab at the Scions and claim to Bathory’s innocence in a single line.”

“Just in case it landed in the wrong pair of hands?” Apparently I’ve had my mouthing-off problem for a while.

“Audra,” he says slowly, “you could potentially find what Nikola’s after.”

I cross my arms around myself, not sure how I feel about that. And suddenly I have a very unwelcome thought.

And if you’re with me, then so could you.

I had thought my reservations about him settled. Literally put to bed.

“We don’t know what the other symbol is,” I say.