She shuts the door behind her as Finn strolls out of the bathroom, shirtless with a towel wrapped around his upper arm and tied across his bare chest.

“I’ll live,” he announces. “Much to your displeasure, I’m sure.”

“Oh, Finn, we don’t think enough about you to be displeased. Don’t flatter yourself,” Maxine replies.

Oliver stands and walks to the window. “No one out there. I don’t think we were followed.”

“So who shot at us?” I ask.

“At Finn,” Maxine corrects.

Finn sucks back on his teeth. “It was the Sons. I’m sure of it.”

“How can you be so sure?” I ask.

“They’ve wanted me dead since New York.”

“But that means they saw you at the gala. It could mean they know we have the key now. It can’t be that hard to put two and two together.”

“All the more reason to fix this quickly.” We have nearly everything. All we need now is the spell to close the veil and it will be finished and Finn’s enemies will no longer be my problem.

Finn sighs and lowers himself onto the carpet, joining our circle. “So, shall we see what all of this trouble was for?”

Maxine levitates her handbag across the room and pulls out the key. It’s about the length of her palm, gold all over, and faded with age.

“May I?” Oliver extends his hand, grasps the key, raises it to his lips, and bites.

There’s a chorus of confused cries, but he pulls the key out from between his teeth and says, “It’s real gold.” He points to the tiny dent in the key where his incisor just was. “This is how you tell.”

“And this helps us how?” Lena asks.

“I don’t know, I just thought having as much information about the key as possible would be helpful.”

Oliver talks with his hands. The key grasped between his long fingers reflects the sunlight streaming in from the window.

“Wait!” I cry out. “Wait, let me see.”

Oliver passes me the key, and I tilt it on its side. On the small side of the shank there is an engraving. In elegant script, shining as if it could have been done just yesterday, are the words Si Sin Morte.

I whisper them under my breath.

Beside me Oliver goes completely still. “We will be deathless,” he mutters.

“What?”

“That’s what it says. It’s Latin. We will be deathless.”

Oliver slips out the door and down the elevator before breakfast, and Maxine, Lena, and I go to our respective rooms to dress.

I have Maxine’s mother’s lady’s maid, Gabrielle, this morning. She combs the snarls out of my hair with a gentle touch and removes the heavy rubies dangling from my ears.