“Thanks!” Jaime said to the nearest ant. He held out a finger as if he wanted to pat the ant’s silvery thorax, then thought better of it. He patted Nine instead, who meowed her approval.

They left the ants behind and started to climb the narrow stone staircase that zigged and zagged. The first five minutes were easy enough, the second five were harder. The next ten were torture.

“This is an inordinate number of steps,” Theo said.

“I rebuke these steps,” said Jaime.

“I rebuke the Cipher,” Tess said, wiping the sweat from her brow.

“No, you don’t,” said Theo.

“Sometimes I do,” said Jaime. “Like when I look around our new apartment and everything is so white it hurts my eyes.”

“And maybe when you have to climb ninety bazillion stone steps to nowhere?” said Tess.

“That, too.”

But the Cipher wasn’t leading them to nowhere. Just when they thought they would never stop climbing, when they thought their hearts would burst, they reached the top stair. And a door with no knob. Just a metal loop with the hasp of a combination lock threaded through it. The lock appeared to be old, something from another century. It had an oddly jagged steel hasp with three brass dials, each dial stamped with numbers one through nine. Tess tugged on it, but of course it was locked.

“Okay, we need a combination,” she said.

Nine meowed.

Theo’s brows scrunched. “Three dials would give us . . . seven hundred and twenty-nine possibilities.”

“Better than a million possibilities,” said Jaime. “But worse than, say, one.”

“There has to be a clue around here somewhere,” Tess said.

They examined the stones all around the doorway, looking for any kind of sign or symbol, but found nothing. They examined the door itself, but the surface had no writing they could find. Tess dropped to her knees and ran her fingers along the stone floor. Jaime and Theo did the same. Jaime went so far as to study the last ten risers leading to the door.

“Maybe the clue was in the number of steps?” Jaime said. “Did anyone count them?”

“I didn’t,” said Tess.

“I didn’t, either,” said Theo, sounding extremely disappointed in himself.

“So, how are we supposed to open the lock without any sort of clue?” said Tess.

Nine scratched at the door, meowed again.

“Maybe there isn’t any clue this time. Maybe there’s just work,” Theo said. “Start with one combination and go through them until we get it right.”

Nine twirled around their ankles, pausing only to give Tess a tiny nip on her ankle. Tess bent to pet her.

“We should have brought snacks,” Jaime said. “And some water. Because we could be fooling with this thing till next Thursday.”

Theo started with 1-1-1, then 1-1-2, then 1-1-3. Jaime kept a record in his sketchbook. Tess sat on the stone steps, her hand on Nine’s back.