“THE LAND OF KINGS,” Ono said.

“That’s where we are, all right,” Jaime said. “Do you know what the next clue is, or what?”

“LAND OF KINGS, LAND OF KINGS.”

Jaime sighed. “I’ll have to teach you some new words.”

“What if he can’t learn any new words?” Tess said, as she ran her hand across the fireplace mantel.

Theo went to the writing desk between the two windows and leafed through the ledger that was open there. Columns of handwritten figures filled the pages. Just as he was turning away from the ledger, Ono yelled, “OH NO, LAND OF KINGS, OH NO, LAND OF KINGS.”

“What’s he going on about?” Theo asked Jaime.

“No idea,” Jaime said.

“Maybe he’s saying that you’re close to the next clue, Theo,” Tess said. She was still wearing the mirrored sunglasses that Aunt Esther had given them, and it gave her an inscrutable look. As if she were an FBI agent or a spy or something. As if she were someone completely different, a girl who had never lost anything.

Theo turned back to the desk. It had a couple of ledgers on it, some books and papers on a shelf above. He put his hand on the ledger. Ono said, “LAND OF KINGS.” Theo took his hand away. Ono said, “OH NO.”

Tess took off the glasses and came to stand next to him. She shut the ledger. There were no words on the cover. She turned to the front page. On the top, someone had written, “Land of the Kings.”

“Is it this book, Ono?” Tess asked the robot.

“LAND OF KINGS, LAND OF KINGS,” the robot said.

“The clue must be in here somewhere,” Tess said. She paged through the book.

“There are a lot of numbers,” Jaime said, joining them. “Some kind of code?”

“Could be,” Theo said. “The whole book could be one elaborate cipher.”

“Well, we can’t stay here all night trying to figure it out,” Tess said. When Tess picked up the ledger and tucked it into her coveralls, the robot beeped and squealed. It almost sounded happy.

Theo was not happy. “We can’t take the ledger.”

“Sure we can,” said Tess. “We’ll borrow it.”

“We ‘borrowed’ the silver puzzle from the 2nd City Reliquary and look what happened. Now he talks. Sort of.”

“I like this robot,” said Jaime. “He’s kind of cute.”

“What I’m saying is that the ledger could be valuable.”

Tess said, “It could be. Or it could only be valuable to us. Besides, we’ll return anything we take.”

“We’re going to have to start keeping a list,” Theo grumbled. He moved the other book to the center of the desk and rearranged an inkpot and a feather pen so it didn’t seem as if anything was missing from the display.