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particularly hard whisk.
    â€œHe has political aspirations and seeks to ride on the back of our discoveries here in order to better his own station,” said Bastian. “Between these blasted Roman politicians and the ElseWorld Council, it’s enough to send a man to drink.” A potent silence greeted his statement.
    â€œA joke, brother. Only a joke,” he added when the silence lengthened. “I do make them on occasion.” Bastian stretched his shoulders, causing the fabric of his waistcoat to stretch over honed muscle. The coat was of Chinese design, one of many unique items he’d brought home from his travels to the Orient when he was eighteen. He didn’t recall the circumstances of how he’d come by the garment. In fact, there was much he didn’t remember of that time after the death of his parents. He’d been drunk. For four long years.
    â€œWhat’s that thing you’re staring at?” Sevin asked after a moment.
    â€œA clue to the whereabouts of the goddess Vesta’s missing relics.” Pushing the goggles to his forehead, Bastian went to stand before one of his bookshelves. In the lamplight, his well-muscled, six-and-a-half-foot body cast an impressive shadow against the inside walls of the white canvas. Running all along its perimeter stood sturdy shelves lined with thick reference books, bits of precious pottery, maps, and ancient artifacts, all meticulously arranged and cataloged. To him, order and schedules equated sanity and sobriety, and he was hell-bent on retaining both.
    Locating Alexander Adams’s best-known work, Roman Antiquities, he thumbed to the passage he wanted, and read aloud from it, skimming: “ ‘Vestal virgins were chosen . . . by Pontifex Maximus, who . . . selected from among the people twenty girls above six [years of age] . . . free from any bodily defect . . . It was determined by lot in an assembly of the people which of these twenty should be appointed. Then Pontifex Maximus went and took her on whom the lot fell, from her parents, as a captive in war, addressing her thus, “Te Amata Capio.’ ”
    Bastian glanced up triumphantly. “There, you see?”
    â€œNo,” said Sevin, polishing with more zeal than finesse.
    â€œAmata,” Bastian said patiently, gesturing toward his desk. “It’s there, written on that shard, which was found today near the Temple of Castor and Pollux. Not fifty feet from here. Amata was a generic title given to all the Vestals.”
    â€œAh.” Realization dawned on Sevin.
    â€œExactly!” Bastian snapped the book shut and shoved it back into precise alignment with its neighbors on the shelf. Making his way back to his desk, he again lowered the goggles to examine the shard. Fourth century, he guessed.
    â€œAnd like our father, you believe Vesta’s Virgins are the key to reinforcing the magic that prevents humans from discovering that we walk among them?”
    â€œNot the Virgins themselves, as Father maintained. No, the relics they guarded are what I’m after. They’re referred to by the ancient philosophers as stones or relics, but I believe they were jewels of some sort. I think they’re the keys.”
    Bastian broke off abruptly, as something prickled over the back of his neck. Something ancient is stirring, somewhere deep in the earth. He replaced the centuries-old terracotta shard carefully upon his desk, his every sense going on alert.
    Directly across from him near the tent’s opening, a mist appeared where before there had been nothing. He squinted, attempting to determine whether it was only the annoying Ilari come back to prattle at him or an actual phantom; then he recalled that he still wore the goggles. Intended for close work, they were thick and greatly magnified his surroundings, making objects at any distance over a foot away impossible to see clearly. He ripped them off. And saw her.
    Just inside the door