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wavy; the other looked immediately familiar to Maureen. Her hand flew to the necklace she was wearing, a gift from Bérenger on her last birthday. It was a delicate diamond-encrusted symbol, a spiral of ram’s horns—the astrological glyph for the sign Aries. Maureen was born on the twenty-second day of March, in the first degree of the first zodiac sign on the edge of the vernal equinox, as the sun passed through Pisces and entered Aries. The symbol of ram’s horns had been emblematic of the vernal equinox since antiquity. But what could it mean on this document? And the more pressing questions, who sent this to her and why?
    Maureen opened the card carefully. The elegant paper was em-bossed with a strange monogram at the bottom. A capital letter A was tied to a capital letter E , the letter E facing backwards as in a mirror image. The card was handwritten:
    As you travel through the Land of Flowers,
    You will come upon the Vale of Gold.
    Do you seek the Book of Love?
    Then here you will find what you seek…
    Hail Ichthys!
    Maureen sighed, half with relief and half with agitation. This was how her search for Mary Magdalene’s gospel had begun—with a strange gift and a mystery to be solved. She had prayed for clues, and now they were appearing. Clearly, whoever sent this knew something of her personal history, which was a little disconcerting. That the phrasing on the card was identical to the words spoken by the little madonnain her dream was downright disturbing. She shuddered at the strange intimacy of such a note. While she had faith that she would be guided by God on her path, as she had always been, there was something unmistakably ominous about an unknown correspondent who could see into her dreams. Was it possible that someone was actually influencing them? She wasn’t sure which of those scenarios was more menacing, but both worried her.
    She did the only thing she could think of to do. She got down on her knees and prayed for protection and guidance on the journey that was about to commence.
     
    Maureen did a quick mental inventory. There were only three people in the world she could consult with on this immediate mystery, all of them in Europe. The first was her cousin, Peter Healy, the Jesuit scholar who was currently based in the Vatican. Peter would be able to translate the document and perhaps even identify it. Maureen was willing to bet that whoever sent the mystery package was well aware of her relation to such a resource. Otherwise, they likely wouldn’t have left her to her own devices to translate something so elaborate. She would call Peter, of course, although she knew that his first reaction would be to worry. Better to do a little more investigation before dumping this on him quite so blindly.
    That left Bérenger Sinclair and Tamara Wisdom, both currently in residence at the Pommes Bleues headquarters in the Languedoc. Bérenger, like Peter, would immediately worry and demand that she come to France while he investigated. That was not the reaction she wanted or needed at the moment.
    That left Tammy.
    Tamara was Maureen’s closest friend, confidante, and partner in heresy. A brilliant and acerbic independent filmmaker from L.A., Tammy had lost her heart while making a documentary about the Magdalene legends in France—both to the magnificent landscape andto the gentle Languedoc giant named Roland Gélis, to whom she was now engaged. Tamara, Roland, and Bérenger all lived in the magnificent Château des Pommes Bleues, the French estate of the Scottish Sinclair family that served as headquarters to their beloved society of the same name. While a call to one was a call to all, perhaps Maureen could get Tammy on her own by ringing her cell phone first.
    Midnight in New York. That made it six a.m. in France. It was early, but this was important. She dialed Tammy’s cell number and heard the international double ring on the other end. Then a click as Tammy answered, not sounding the least bit