So they did. Tess and Nine went to explore the back of the museum, Jaime stayed in front by the door, and Theo wandered the maze of shelves and display cases in the middle. It didn’t take long for Theo to find what he was looking for. On a rickety metal shelf in the center of the Reliquary sat the puzzle in Ada’s drawing. A dirty, tarnished thing. The tag on it said VERY OLD PUZZLE.

Theo glanced around, but no one was watching. He picked up the puzzle. At one point, the puzzle must have had different-colored stones set into the smaller cubes, but many of the stones were missing now. If their challenge was to solve the puzzle, how would that even work? Do they collect all stones of the same color on a side like a Rubik’s cube? Form some sort of other pattern? That would be difficult. Maybe impossible. It could take days, weeks, months. They might never work it out.

And then another thing occurred to him, knotting up his gut: He couldn’t take months or weeks or even days standing in this museum, trying to solve this puzzle.

He would have to steal it.

With one hand, he yanked at his own bushy hair, trying to pull himself back to himself. His mother was a detective. A burglary detective. He couldn’t steal this puzzle.

He had to steal this puzzle.

How was he going to steal this puzzle?

How was he going to steal anything?

What if this wasn’t the only thing they had to steal?

He thought about the relics and the artifacts in the other museums, not just in New York City, but around the world. So many of those artifacts were stolen, too—from graves, from houses of worship. Did it matter that this was just a lost and damaged old puzzle? Did it matter that someone had already stolen it long ago? Did it matter that, now, they were trying to do something good?

He felt the way he imagined Tess felt all the time, mind spinning with question after question, enough questions to make a person sick. And sure enough, as if she were able to sense his spinning mind, Nine came charging around the corner, dragging Tess behind her.

Nine nibbled at his fingers. Tess whispered, “You found it.”

“Yeah,” he said.

“What’s wrong?”

“It’s damaged. It will be hard to solve.”

“Not impossible, though,” she said.

“Maybe impossible.”

“Not.”

“Even if we can solve it, it will take forever.”

Tess thought a moment. “We’re going to have to borrow it.”

“You mean steal it.”

“No, I mean borrow it. We’ll take it home, solve it, figure out the next clue, and then bring it back.”

“But what if they figure out it’s missing? What if they have a camera in here and they’re taping us right now?”