“Finally the proceedings have finished. William played his role to a T but the hard work continues. If my Constitution is to pass, it will need a rousing defense.”

The office was pitch black except for the reddish glow from my screens. An assortment of empty energy drink cans littered the floor around my chair and on either side of my monitors, there were ever-growing towers of coffee cups.

It was crunch time, in more ways than one.

The newest demo of our game was due to the backers by the end of February, which meant I had spent all of January getting as many quests (the video-game kind) up-and-running so we wouldn’t have an angry mob at our doorstep. And that had meant multiple back-to-back all-nighters, where I was oftentimes completely alone in the office, my other co-workers deciding that 10 PM was a good time to call it quits.

Lisa’s multi-continent bachelorette party was also fast approaching, which meant my assigned responsibilities were all exploding at the same time. I still hadn’t been able to get us upgraded to business class, still hadn’t been able to get us a reservation at some fancy Indian restaurant in Westminster that used to be a Victorian-era library, and still hadn’t heard back from some tiny boutique where Lisa’s favorite designer was having a pop-up show. At least we already had tickets to the New York Fashion Week lecture, which was oh-so-conveniently located at the Met.

And, I had a Konami Code up my sleeve that I hadn’t yet activated: Duncan, who could get the flight and restaurant reservations done with a 30-second phone call. But ever since our fight on New Year’s, I had pulled back reflexively. We still kept up with our regular FaceTime calls, but there was an obvious tension each time we spoke, as if we were both just trying to maintain the status quo.

Our Paris rendezvous was just after the bachelorette, which meant coming up with the answer to his question, and I still didn’t have it. It should have been an easy decision, after Beatrice’s murderous admission. I would be insane not to try to get as far away from her as possible, and Duncan’s offer was the best cover I was ever going to receive. Would she really insist I blow up my own life to honor my contract? But part of me didn’t want to say yes to Duncan just to run away from Beatrice. Part of me wanted to keep going down the rabbit hole, and that same part didn’t want to be stuck all alone halfway around the world with someone who I still wasn’t convinced loved me.

And then of course there was still the Raid, which meant figuring out how to steal something from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, of all places. When I hadn’t been coding into the wee hours of the morning, figuring out that puzzle out had been my other dedicated focus.

Beatrice had decided against going to the Museum just to figure what was hidden there, as she was certain that she was still being followed. Fortunately, the Met had made a bunch of virtual tours available online, but unfortunately, they didn’t cover the whole Museum. And, there was the added complication that we didn’t know which floor the latitude and longitude was “pointing” to. We had narrowed it down to either something in the Egyptian wing or a series of rooms on the second floor that housed a bunch of random objects not tied to any particular exhibition or collection. The latter seemed like the obvious choice, but the Museum’s website was woefully out of date for that collection’s current objects.

We also needed an escape plan, which Beatrice had taken on herself to formulate, and I assumed she was whipping up some sort of alchemic-timed explosion that would go off in the opposite end of the Museum and distract all the guards and the other people attending the lecture.

Oh, that was the other thing: we were going to pull all this off on the first night of Lisa’s bachelorette party during the fashion lecture at the Museum. To say I wasn’t thrilled about this particular aspect of the plan would be an understatement to the highest degree. The thought of Lisa, Stacy, and Lisa’s other friends in near orbit of Beatrice had been giving me indigestion for weeks now

It was my fault, really. I was the one who had mentioned the lecture in the first place. But that had been months ago, and I didn’t think Beatrice was the sort to pay attention to an offhand comment of no significance.

I had begged and pleaded with her to figure out an alternative, but on this point Beatrice would not bend. I still extracted a concession though: I could go to London and Paris free and clear. And if we succeeded in our mission at the lecture, Beatrice had agreed to handle the aftermath on her own if she didn’t want to wait for me to get back.

As the days counted down to the lecture, I kept envisioning the million ways my entire life was all going to blow in my face at once. It was almost a relief when we were only three days away, and I would hopefully soon be on my way to London and away from it all.

The cursor on my screen hadn’t moved down a line in about an hour and I figured 3 a.m. was as good as any time to pack it in for the night. I felt myself nodding off, my eyes closing for just a second, before I beat down sleep’s siren call and snapped back to attention. But in that moment, somehow, a green apple had appeared on my keyboard, a string of random letters and numbers flying across my screen.

I looked down at my hands to see if I was awake or trapped in another memory before a familiar voice sounded in the empty office.

“Burning the midnight oil again?” said Beatrice, peering over the top of my monitors.

“What are you, how long have you been here?”

Beatrice let out a chuckle before walking around the long shared desk to take up the seat next to me.

“About ten minutes. You were out for about five before I put the apple down on your keyboard. I was going to wake you but it seemed like you needed the rest.”

“You’re so thoughtful,” I said, rubbing my eyes before pointing to the apple. “What is that doing here?”

“It’s for Thursday night. I wasn’t sure if you had any of your own left over from my Quest so I wanted to give it to you ahead of time.”

“I don’t have any left,” I lied, “but why do I need this?”

“So we can communicate while we’re at the Met without your friends or anyone else knowing. Put it in your purse and start eating it halfway through the lecture and I’ll do the same. I don’t want anyone seeing us within five feet of each other.”

“What about right now? I thought you were supposed to be keeping your distance.”

“I was. But I snuck out the service entrance of my apartment and have spent the last four hours crisscrossing the city. If anyone followed me in here, then at least there’s two of us to fend them off.”

I grabbed the apple and put it inside my work backpack. “You do remember what happened the last time we ate these, don’t you? Aren’t you worried about more of your memories seeping into my mind?”

“No. Last time was different. As long as you don’t do something crazy, this is just going to be like using a walkie-talkie.”

“Fine. Did you finish whatever you were making to draw out the Met’s armies? Make them blind to all else that moves?

“What the hell are you talking about?” said Beatrice.

“A diversion. You were supposed to be handling that part of the op.”

“Oh. Yes, it’s ready.”

“OK, great. What is it?”

Beatrice shook her head.

“I’ll tell you after you eat the apple.”

“Umm, fine. But I feel like we should maybe think this through some more? We’re talking about the Met here, not some two-bit pawn shop we’re robbing. And we don’t even know what we’re supposed to steal.”

“Just trust me, OK? Besides, we have the combined magic of alchemy and GPS tracking, do we not? They won’t know what hit them.”

I wanted to push her for more details but before I could, she got up from the chair and retreated back into the darkness from whence she came.

“Ladies and gentlemen, without further ado, the impeccable Dalia De Wyck!”

The audience burst into applause, as a woman with short jet black hair, an even shorter black dress, and knee-high boots strode out from behind the curtain, her image mirrored on a big screen hanging from the middle of the stage. She adjusted the tortoise shell glasses on her nose, cleared her throat, and began to speak.

“Thank you so much Cassie for that great introduction. You know, I remember coming up in the business as a bright-eyed young woman, like all of you, dreaming of a chance to sit front row at all the big runway shows. Hell, I would have killed just for the opportunity to stand on the sidewalk outside of Bryant Park and watch all the icons and the luminaries and the celebrities walk out of their fancy cars and into those white tents all those many moons ago. How many moons, I’m not saying…”

The audience burst into laughter at the line, worst of all Lisa, who I thought was going to pass out from all her fake guffawing. I wanted to tell her that no one would know if she didn’t laugh at the joke, least of all this Dalia person, as we were so far back that we were almost outside, but I kept my mouth shut as Dalia continued. Her image towered over us from the big screen, and I noticed that what I previously thought was a simple black dress was actually covered in an intricate embroidery of black thread, the shape of which I struggled to make out. It looked like it could be a tree or a bush or a school of fish, I couldn’t be sure.

I glanced at my watch. Five minutes of the hour-long lecture had elapsed, although it had felt like a lifetime already. And we still had an entire cocktail hour where Lisa was going to try to talk to Dalia before the attendees would be given free rein of the Museum.

The green apple, which I had cut into slices just before I left my apartment, was stashed away in the clutch on my lap. The remaining buffs Beatrice had given me were in there too. At Beatrice’s urging and against my protestations, I had also brought the Medoblad. Bringing a knife into a museum, let alone a magic knife that turned people to stone hadn’t seemed like a good idea, especially when we were trying to remain inconspicuous, but Beatrice was quite confident that the knife would sail through security. Or maybe I was the diversion that Beatrice would use to retrieve whatever it was we were looking for.

I had spent the rest of the lead-up to the lecture figuring out how to get the knife in undetected and had devised a pretty clever plan. I had slid the blade under my Spanx just above my waist and after slipping on the new dress that Lisa had picked out for me, I fastened a recently acquired belt with a disgustingly garish and, most importantly, metal buckle that was sighted right over where the knife was.

When we arrived at the Museum, the line to get in was already down the block, and I waited nervously with Lisa, Stacy, and the nine other girls as we had slowly inched toward the front. By the time we had made it up the stone stairs, my nerves were so frayed that I actually considered just turning around and flying straight to Hong Kong.

Finally, it had been my turn to go through the metal detector, which had immediately starting blaring. But thankfully, the guard spent only three seconds waving the beeping hand wand over my belt buckle before waving me in and I breathed a sigh of relief. One step down, only 400 to go, I thought.

“... I would not have believed you if you told me that someday I would not only be sitting front row but would also be invited to give the inaugural Tia Lansplan Memorial Lecture, especially after working so closely with her for so many years. Her wit, wisdom, and warmth will be severely missed. Now, I’m sure that a lot of you here today are wondering…”

I zoned out as the impeccable Ms. De Wyck blathered on about the seven things necessary for a successful career in the fashion world and how even she would have had such a tougher road today, but that didn’t mean it was impossible, blah blah blah. The waiting was excruciating and at this point, I just wanted to eat the apple so Beatrice could start bossing me around rather than having to keep listening to this drivel.

“And so rather than naming my line after myself, as so many do, I wasn’t talking about you, Lars.”

The crowd burst into laughter again at the expense of whoever Lars was.

“I instead named it after my grandmother, Thera DeWitt. She lost everything when her childhood home, a house that had been in her family for hundreds of years, burnt to the ground one night.”

My watch started blinking zeros and it was finally time. I reached a hand inside my clutch, pulled out a couple of the slices, and began to chew, waiting for the link between my mind and Beatrice’s to open.

“But that didn’t stop her. She rebuilt her house, rebuilt her family, and rebuilt her life. And, in a way, she built my life. I remember early in my career, working late nights for months on end, and whenever I felt the urge to quit, to just walk away from it all, I would remember the stories she told me and what she had been through and it kept me going.”

I couldn’t concentrate for the rest of the lecture, as any second I was expecting Beatrice’s voice to start whispering in my head. Finally, Dalia got to number seven on her list, and the room erupted into a final round of applause and a standing ovation that I was forced to participate in.

Suddenly, I felt a throbbing in my head, as if someone had clamped a vice around my temples and was beginning to tighten it.

“Leave the auditorium and go to the bathroom,” said a voice that I could barely hear over the still-going applause.

“What?” I said out loud.

“The bathroom, go now!” said Beatrice in my head. “And don’t try to look for me.”

“OK,” I thought back as I slid out of the row passed Lisa, who had an annoyed look on her face.

“Sorry, just want to get to the bathroom before it becomes a mob scene,” I said to her. I didn’t wait for a reply or look back, and thanks to our terrible seats, a few seconds later I had cleared the auditorium and entered the foyer, which had been elaborately decorated with gowns from Dalia’s line and pictures of her with various celebrities.

“OK, I’m out of the auditorium. Where’s the bathroom?” I thought.

“To your right,” said Beatrice’s voice, which, now that I was out of the raucous cacophony, sounded like it was coming from right next to me.

“Why can I hear you so well?” I asked her.

“Been trying to improve the effectiveness of the apples. I have a small plot of land upstate where I hid the tree.”

“What? If you had your own apples this whole time, why did you post that Quest to go to the orchard?”

“Focus, Jen. And you already know the answer. Because I can’t go back there and I didn’t want to waste my own apples on an experiment.”

“Fine. I’m in the bathroom” I said.

“Good. Go into the third stall and open the toilet tank. There’s an envelope taped at the top for you.”

I walked over to the stall, which thankfully was empty, and locked myself inside. The porcelain lid on the tank was heavy, and I slid it off its moorings to see the promised envelope. I pulled it free and pushed the lid closed again before sitting down on the seat.

“What is this?” I asked.

“Notes. For your friends. Go out to the reception and give one to Lisa and the other to Stacy and then meet me in the Egyptian wing.”

“What? Why do I need to-”

I opened the envelope and pulled out two folded sheets. I slowly unfurled one, only to see the familiar dark black ink scrawled across the paper.