A kill map. Progeny and their known murderers.

So many names, each of them the tiniest representation of a life . . .

Ink has bled through in several places from the other side. Heart thudding, I turn the page over.

A chart in the vague shape of a Christmas tree occupies the bulk of the sheet. At the very top are twelve names I don’t recognize, faded with age, their letters redrawn. The next tier contains fourteen names, and the next level twenty. There are other notes beside some of them in what appears to be Hungarian that I can’t make out. But several of those lower down, I can: “Hungarian army,” “Red Army,” “Hungarian Social Democratic Party,” “Socialist Federal Republic, Yugoslavia,” and more recent labels including “media,” “police,” “tech,” and the names of several global banks, each accompanied by a city ranging as far west as the United Kingdom and as far east as Turkey.

A chill crawls down my spine as I realize I am staring at the evolution of the Scions . . .

The birth of a massive cabal.

There’s a single line down the right side of the page, separate from the rest, connecting a progression of circles. Some contain names I don’t recognize, many are blank, only a few with dates. The succession, I assume, of the office of the Historian.

The last circle is very new, in crisp black pen. It is empty except for a year.

This one.

At the top of the page the title THE REAL SERIAL KILLERS is scrawled in my handwriting.

I have to be holding the most complete map of the Scions in existence.

Now I know what Nikola was willing to kill for.

33

With shaking hands, I cram everything back into the envelope, tie it up tight.

How much of this does Luka know? Have I shown him this grisly chart?

I glance at the time and panic. Tuck the envelope into the waist of my pants beneath my sweater and tie my coat over it, put on my sunglasses.

I don’t even bother to return the empty box to the counter.

“Good?” the woman in the room outside says.

Now that I’ve emerged from the vault, my phone begins to ping with a series of incoming texts, piling in one after another, and then with the chime of voice mail, again and again.

“Yes, thank you. But I, ah—I felt like my taxi driver was asking me a lot of questions about this place, what people kept here.”

Take me out the back way you go to your car.

“Yes. Come with me,” she says, as though this is not an unusual request. “I will escort you another way.”

I follow her at a brisk clip. I need to leave this place—and Vienna, and Europe, for that matter. We all do.