Alex put his hand up to cover hers. “Walters is a little the worse for wear, but he was lucky the tool fused to the socket and threw him clear. It seems they did find an entry wound—through a tiny cut in his wrist. But his EKG and echo are reassuringly clear. When I spoke to Amel this morning about Temple, I mentioned Walters’s electric shock, and he’s adamant there’ll be some serious nerve damage down the line, but I’m not so sure. It seems you can’t kill the devil!” Alex tried to joke. “I think he’ll live to fight another day.”

“And be revenged upon the whole pack of us,” Lucy said with a shiver. She looked at Alex, concealing her emotions. He was still holding the silver key, and now she asked him, “Do you want to open it?”

Alex was affected by her analogy between Fitzalan Walters and Malvolio; it had an aura of truth. But he answered her with his usual soft smile and light humor. “The others want to be here. They’re catching some sleep and coming down later; but perhaps we’d rather not have a cast of thousands, if we’re going to unleash the Rapture from our Hampshire kitchen?”

“Is this how Pandora felt?”

She smiled, and they stood, Lucy freeing the small golden key from its place around her neck with just the suggestion of a tremble in her fingers. Alex carefully inspected the box once more; and a little solemnly, they inserted a silver key into a silver lock at one end of the box, and a golden key into the other, at the opposite end. Alex nodded, and they clicked in unison, the mechanism yielding at once.

As Alex lifted the lid, they both breathed. Whatever the contents of the box, everything was a foot deep in densely packed, pale-colored rose petals—giving up an air of the most overwhelming perfume. It seemed as though the very hour, the very minute of a high-summer garden had been packed into the tidy space. “The rose,” Lucy told Alex, “symbolizes that which is undying. Dee told me.” And he looked at her, all questions seeming superfluous.