The side with the Veteres text was face-up. Nina looked at it for a moment, paying close attention to the edges of each character, then flipped it over.

‘It’s a different alphabet, isn’t it?’ said Cheng. ‘It looks a lot like Atlantean. At least, to me,’ he added, looking to her for validation.

‘My thoughts exactly,’ she said, holding the key up to the light. To her annoyance, she couldn’t quite focus on the fine details. ‘Damn it. I need my reading glasses! Back in a second.’ She handed the key to Cheng and hurried out, leaving the two men standing alone.

‘So, uh . . . Mr Chase,’ Cheng said awkwardly after a moment. ‘I, ah . . . I didn’t say thank you for getting me out of trouble earlier. So . . . thank you.’

‘No problem,’ Eddie replied. Another uncomfortable pause, then: ‘Your English is really good. You done a lot of travelling?’

Cheng shook his head. ‘No. The first time I left China was to come to New York! I learned English from, ah . . .’ He glanced at the door as if worried Nina might overhear. ‘From Marvel movies and Friends.’ A nervous giggle. ‘Could I be any more lame?’

Eddie’s silent stare in response told him that he probably could not. Luckily for the student, Nina chose that moment to return. ‘Okay,’ she said, taking back the key and donning her glasses, ‘this is what I thought. It’s definitely a different alphabet from the obverse, as you said, Cheng.’ The young man beamed. ‘Proto-Atlantean, for want of a better term. But if you look closely, you can see another difference between it and the text on the other side.’

She flipped the key over so they could make a comparison. ‘The text on one side is cast into it,’ Cheng said, almost immediately. ‘And so’s the skull. They were part of the original design.’

Nina nodded. ‘But the words on the skull side weren’t. They were engraved rather than cast – even carved, looking at it. The edges are quite rough in places. They’re a later addition. Possibly quite some time later, looking at the weathering.’

‘So what are the words?’ Eddie asked. ‘You said one of them was—’

‘“Resurrection”,’ Cheng cut in. Nina and Eddie both looked at him in surprise. ‘I, er . . . after I first saw Mr Krämer’s pictures and thought the characters looked similar to the Atlantean alphabet, I worked on translating it.’

‘What does that mean, then?’ said Eddie. ‘Stapper said a demon woke up and killed his friends, then it turns out he was holding something that literally says “resurrection” on it? What, did the key bring the thing back to life?’