ALEX DID HIS SUMS, AND SAW AT ONCE THAT THE TABLET OF JUPITER, which was drawn on one small sheet of vellum, made the exact squares that satisfied Will’s sketch. Halfway through—this sheet was the midpoint, now he was sure. He’d assumed it was the first piece of the puzzle. He took up his pencil again. My alpha and my omega. Someone whose beginning was also their end—the same day, or place? Alex had a flash of inspiration, and he reached a book from the shelf. He checked a date. Then he stood up and took the Bible out of the collection of items that had only recently come back from the coroner’s from among Will’s personal effects. It was a modern version of the King James—the Old King’s Book, perhaps? A song of equal number. He glanced at the Song of Solomon, of which he now remembered Will had a copy in French among his things from France; but this wasn’t strictly numbered, per se; had Will made the same leap and the same mistake? So he tried the numbered songs of Psalms instead.

A DREAMY SENSATION NOW ENVELOPED LUCY. SHE WAS FLOATING IN A field of flowers and flames; she heard the voice she immediately understood she loved best; and her heart beat with a wildness and pleasure she’d never felt. She was aware that the thudding and thrumming was dangerously like a heart attack, because she was letting herself go; but she was not afraid, as she was not alone. “Equal number of paces forward from the start…” she recalled from Will’s text. She realized she was halfway around the year, virtually to the day, from the date she’d had her lifesaving operation; from the autumn to the spring equinox. It was halfway around the vital path of the first crucial year. And she was turning from the center of the labyrinth now, ready to walk outward, an equal number of paces to the end of it. “Our two souls are one.” Alex’s voice was beside her, inside her, again; and then, “I am what I am, and what I am is what you will see.” She knew what the words on the copied sheet said, even if not in strict order. Our two hearts are one, she thought; and her eyes widened. Oh dear God! My alpha and my omega. My beginning and end.