People always assumed that Alex was more brawn than brain. They took one look at his stocky build and scarred hands and came to their own conclusions, and usually they weren't far off. Alex had never been afraid to get physical—but he also enjoyed research. Maybe not as much as Jake, but then few people enjoyed research like Jake. Alex liked to learn new things, and he liked to piece together information until it solved a puzzle or turned into a tool he could use. He might have enjoyed digging through the Curator's files and finding out more about magic, if it wasn't currently trapping him in a basement.

That put a damper on the situation.

They'd divided their tasks as soon as the Curator left them; Alex began looking for information on the Gifts of the Magi while Cassie worked on getting a message to the others. Alex would have liked to focus on escaping over cooperating, but Cassie assured him it was impossible. "Our best bet is breaking the spell from the outside," she'd said. "We're not going to be able to do this on our own."

So he resigned himself to research. The room Gregory had wanted them to wait in contained a single computer, which, as promised, had a very limited connection to the internet. He could access a search engine called Alexandria, but he couldn't open any other web pages. He could also pull up a closed network of the Curator's information, which he could search using an index he'd found on the desktop screen, but there was nothing on the Gifts of the Magi except a single screenshot of a Wikipedia entry: There was a 15th-century golden case purportedly containing the Gift of the Magi housed in the Monastery of St. Paul of Mount Athos. It was donated to the monastery in the 15th century by Mara Branković, daughter of the King of Serbia, Đurađ Branković, wife to the Ottoman Sultan Murat II and godmother to Mehmet II the Conqueror (of Constantinople). After the Athens earthquake of September 7, 1999, they were temporarily displayed in Athens to strengthen faith and raise money for earthquake victims. The relics were displayed in Ukraine and Belarus in Christmas of 2014, and thus left Greece for the first time since the 15th century. A note attached to the screenshot read "Case secured. Relics fake—real ones stolen in 1780."

"1780," he muttered. He pulled up Alexandria and searched "Gifts of the Magi 1780", but found only unrelated articles. He repeated the search in the Curator's database and got similar results. "This is a waste of time," he muttered. "You can't find things like this from an internet search. We need to go wherever the trail went cold."

"In 1780?" Cassie said, peering at the screen over his shoulder.

He rubbed his eyes. "Shoulda let Jake do this part. Don't get me wrong, I can be an egghead if I need to, but all this magic and secrecy… it's not my thing."

"That's because you're yellow," Cassie said.

"I'm what?"

"Gold, really," Cassie said. "So is Eve. But not the same shade—she's like the sound of trumpets, like a Roman coin. You're like… like sunrise over a wheat field."

Alex stared at her. "Is that some kind of code?"

"Only to me," she said, shrugging. "I have synesthesia. You know, letters have sounds, equations have smells… sometimes people have colors. You threw me at first because Jake is blue. I guess I was expecting you to be too."

"Blue?"

She nodded. "Like blue jeans and… and spilled ink, when the light hits it just right. Like the number 22."

That didn't make any more sense to Alex, and his expression must have said so. "Blue people tend to be a little more withdrawn," Cassie said. "They don't show their true selves right away, but when they do… they're deep. There's so much more to them than they let on."

"Well, that does describe Jake," Alex admitted.

Cassie smiled. "Gold people, on the other hand… They can be discreet, don't get me wrong, but what you see is what you get with them. They're loyal, and loving, and they always do the right thing." She looked back at her phone. "I guess that explains why you're here, then. Most people run away from the idea of evil magic items, but you ran towards it."

Alex hitched one shoulder. "Jake needed help. And this stuff with the Curator and Flores… it's personal."

"You mean because of what happened in the Philippines?" she said. "When Jake was shot?"

He nodded, clicking on an article to block out the image of his brother lying bloody on the pavement.

"He told me about that," she said quietly. "A little. I'm sure it was worse than he made it sound. Jake tends to downplay stuff like that."

"Yeah, that's kind of a family trait," Alex muttered.

Cassie shifted around his chair and perched on the end of the table without looking up from her phone. "I don't mean to be nosy… Jake doesn't talk about himself much, or about his past, but I kind of got the impression that you weren't super close before the Philippines."

"Ah… yeah, that's true."

"He's happier now," Cassie said. "Not that he was unhappy before, but it's like... like a weight has been lifted from him. He isn't as defensive when his family comes up, and he has more patience—especially with Ezekiel—and it just seems like he enjoys things more now. Like it was at the beginning."

"You mean when he first started this..." Alex gestured vaguely around the room.

"When we first became Librarians," Cassie nodded. "Everything was so new then, so exciting. And Jake seemed fascinated by everything. But I guess even magic can get old after a while. I was getting worried about him. But then he came back from the Philippines and—" She broke off and looked up from her phone, smiling. "He came through the door to the Library and hugged me. Just picked me up in the middle of the room and told me I'd saved his life, and that he wanted me to try some amazing new soup."

A smile tugged at the corner of Alex's mouth. "It's really good soup."

"Well, maybe after this I'll come visit and get myself a bowl."

"Assuming we get out of here."

Cassie tapped at her screen again. "We will. We always find a way out, eventually. If I can just match the frequencies of… Ah!" She shot to her feet on top of the table, holding the phone up like she was searching for a signal. "Mr. Jenkins, can you hear me?"

"Ms. Cillian?" A voice crackled from her phone, faint and static-y, like a badly tuned radio.

"Ha!" Cassie grinned down at Alex and lifted the phone higher. "Mr. Jenkins, we don't have much time. Alex and I are trapped in the basement at the fort. Can you let the others know?"

"Does this—anything—Falaya?" the voice asked between the static.

"I didn't get that," Cassie said.

"The—Nalusa—Falaya."

Cassie looked at Alex, but all he could do was shrug. "We don't know what that means. The Curator is holding us here until we can find out the location of the Gifts of the Magi. Do you know anything about it?"

There was a pause. "The Gifts—missing in the—century."

"Do you know what happened to them?" Cassie asked. "Or where we might look for them?"

"The only—for sure—" the voice said. "Twelve Days of Christmas—represents a location—need—hens."

"The what?" Cassie said. The voice repeated itself, but without much clarification, so Alex pulled up a new page of Alexandria and typed "the Twelve Days of Christmas" with "Gifts of the Magi".

"Look," he said.

"It's—a—map," the voice gritted out over the phone. "Can—me? A map!"

Cassie stared at Alex. "If it's a map, how are we supposed to read it? Mr. Jenkins? Are you there?"

The phone went silent. Cassie tapped at the screen again, but after a few moments she sighed and let her arm fall at her side. "I lost him."

"But he can tell the others where we are," Alex said absently. He scrolled down the website he'd found and read a passage out loud. "Listen. 'The song is said to represent the locations of several different treasures, though we can only speculate about what they are.' It lists a few of them."

"What site is this?" Cassie asked.

Alex kept scrolling. "Looks like a conspiracy site. Most of it is about tracking some time traveler in a phone booth, but there's a whole page here about the song."

"Mr. Jenkins mentioned 'hens'," Cassie said. "What does it say about the three French hens?"

"Three French hens… commonly thought to represent hope, faith, and love," Alex muttered. "Blah blah blah… Ah! 'However, some people think they actually represent the locations of three connected artifacts, such as the bridles of Baba Yaga's three horsemen or the gifts of the three wise men'."

"That's it!" Cassie cried. "Where is it? Oh, it's been so long since we went to Paris! Please let it be Paris!"

Alex read on. "Actually, the French part might just be a placeholder for foreign, according to this. And it says that the artifacts are probably divided among three locations."

"But I suppose it doesn't say which locations," Cassie said.

"Nope."

She sighed. "Of course not. I'll see if I can get Mr. Jenkins on the phone again…"

"Shh," Alex said. He tilted his head, listening, and heard the same hint of a sound repeated outside the room: a footstep. He pushed away from the computer and leaned into the hallway, saw nothing, and crept down the hall and looked up the stairs.

"Ah," Gregory said from the top of the stairs. "Dr. Stone. Just the man I was hoping to see."

"Why's that?" Alex said uncomfortably.

He unfolded a pair of spectacles and set them on his nose. "Well, isn't that interesting? Another man who looks like Jacob Stone, and yet isn't. I am beginning to wonder if it isn't just a pseudonym."

"I remember those glasses," Alex said darkly. "They let you see a person's true identity, right? Flores had a pair."

"Every member of the Curator's staff has a pair," Gregory said. "And it's a good thing. When I tried to scry the location of the real Jacob Stone, I got no results. It's as if he isn't real at all. Care to explain that?"

"Not particularly," Alex said. He didn't know how to, anyway. The spell keeping him and Cassie in the basement worked just fine—he had no idea why location magic would be any different.

Gregory frowned. "How uncharitable. I'm afraid you leave me no choice: Ms. Cillian will have to continue the search on her own. Come along, Mr. Walker. The Curator will have questions for you."

"I'm not leaving without Cassie," Alex said.

"Maybe not willingly," Gregory said in a mild tone. He reached into his pocket and withdrew a small stone, which he held up before his face. "The Somnus Stone. You've heard of Somnus, yes?"

"Roman god, right?" Alex said.

Gregory smiled. "That's right—the Roman personification of sleep. Mind your head, now."

Alex was about to ask what he meant, but the room tilted before he could open his mouth. The lights dimmed—or his eyes shut—and he felt the side of his head rap against the wall as he staggered back from the stairs.

"Ah, pity," Gregory said, and then everything faded away.