The Romans, it seemed, had been shocked and appalled by all of this. Had banned human sacrifice. Sure, Ned thought, the Romans who were so gentle and kind themselves.

He tried other word combinations, found another site. Read: “A Celtic oppidum must have been as gruesome as a Dayak or Solomon Island village. Everywhere were stakes crowned with heads, and the walls of houses were adorned with them. Poseidonius tells how he sickened at such a sight, but gradually became more accustomed to it…”

He didn’t know what a Dayak was. Entremont was an oppidum. The word just meant a hill fort. They were back to that. He checked the top of the page for the source of this one. Some Englishman, in 1911. Well, what was he going to know? A cup of tea with his pinky extended and opinions on two thousand years ago.

Ned swore and gave up. This wasn’t his thing, it was making him nervous, and he didn’t have a sense it was leading anywhere. He scraped his chair back and went out on the terrace. His father and uncle were sitting there, coffee mugs on the small table.

His dad glanced up. He looked worn out. “Well?”

“I’m wasting time, there’s way too much. I mean, that’s what they did—sacrifices. So it could be anywhere.”

His uncle sighed. “Yeah, Kim thinks so too. Get yourself a coffee, you must be beat this morning.”

Ned shook his head. “I’m fine, I just want to get going.”

“Have to have destinations first, don’t you think?”

The glass doors opened.

“All right,” said Kate Wenger. “Here’s what I think. There’s no point checking every Celtic site in the books.”

“Tell me about it,” Ned said.

“I am, listen. If we’re right, this whole find-me thing instead of a fight is because Melanie’s inside Ysabel, right?”

“I still don’t know how that’s possible,” Edward Marriner said.

“It is,” Uncle Dave said. “Go ahead, Kate.”

Kate was biting her lip. “Fine. Well, my point is, if the search is happening because of Melanie, then the one thing we can do is focus on places she knows about. For Celtic sacrifices. Right?”

The three of them looked at one another.

“Google is not my friend?” Ned said.

No one laughed. “Only if Melanie googled something and made a note. That’s what I’m thinking,” Kate said.

She had his McGill sweatshirt on again, over her brother’s shirt, and jeans.

Ned’s father was nodding. “That’s good, Kate. It gives us something logical.”

“Were they logical?” Uncle Dave asked.

“Melanie is,” Edward Marriner said.

“And so’s Kate,” Ned said. “So what’s in her notes? About Celts and rituals or whatever?”

“I found two places we haven’t been to yet.”

“We have three cars,” Dave Martyniuk said. “Only two? Give me one more.”

Ned cleared his throat. “I’m going back to Aix,” he repeated. He’d told them last night.

“Why?” Kate asked, but softly.

Ned shrugged. “To the cloister. I’ll let you guys be logical. I need to go there.”

None of them said anything.

GREG, NOT EVIDENTLY THE WORSE for two rabies injections with more to come over the next while, courtesy of Dr. Meghan Marriner, found the name of one of the sites amusing.

“Like, if the Celts were illiterate or whatever, why’d they name something Fort Books?”

Ned’s mother was in a mood. “I’ll make the next shot hurt if you don’t cut the jokes, Gregory. And I know how to do it.”

“He called Pain de Munition, east of here, Painful Munitions,” Steve declared.

“Ratting me out?” Greg said indignantly, but he looked pleased to have it recalled.

Fort de Buoux, apparently, was about forty-five minutes north, a hilltop off a rough road, nothing near it, a walk and climb to ruins—with a sacrificial altar at the summit. It sounded like a place where you could take an impressive photograph. Or hide.

The other site was farther north and west, more touristy, starred in all the guidebooks—something called the Fontaine de Vaucluse. A place where water gushed out of a mountain cave at certain times of the year. Melanie had noted that Oliver Lee wrote a section for the book describing the place from ancient times, through the nineteenth century, up to how it looked today. Some Italian poet had lived there in medieval times, but it had also been a Celtic holy site.

That figures, Ned thought, having googled goddesses and springs of water, caves and chasms in the earth.

“I’m still going into Aix,” he said again, as Uncle Dave and his father started sorting out who’d be in which car. He was beginning to come to terms—a little—with the fact that the others would listen to him and do what he decided.

More or less.

“Not by yourself,” his mother said.

“I’m not in danger, Mom. Brys is the one who was after me.”

“Not by yourself,” Meghan Marriner repeated, with a firmness that really was kind of impressive. It wasn’t a voice you could argue with; it didn’t actually occur to you to argue.

Ned ended up in the city with his mom and dad.

Dave was driving Kate and Steve to Fort de Buoux, Greg took Aunt Kim to the fountain. The idea, again, was to be in touch by phone, meet up if anyone found anything, or come back here for mid-afternoon to figure a next step if nothing happened.

It could actually have been funny in a different time and space, walking into town between his parents. Ned half felt like asking for an ice cream or a popsicle or a ride on the merry-go-round near the biggest of the fountains.

The cathedral was open but the door out to the cloister was locked. The guide who had the key and ran the half-hourly tours was coming in only after lunch. Ned didn’t even think of having his dad try to pick the lock. Not here. He wondered if his mom knew her husband could do that.

They went through the medieval streets back towards the main drag, the Cours Mirabeau. On the way they passed the café where he’d gone with Kate. He saw the chair he’d used to block the dog attacking him. He didn’t say anything to his parents about that. His father was looking stressed enough.

On the Mirabeau, lined with cafés on one side and banks on the other, shaded by enormous plane trees, he stopped. The feeling was becoming almost familiar.

“She’s been here,” he said.

“How do you know that?” his mother demanded. His logical mother, exasperation in her voice.

“Jeez, Mom, I have no idea. I just do. Same way, sort of, that I knew Cadell was at the tower last night, I guess.”

“Why ‘sort of’?”

She didn’t miss a lot.

Ned fumbled for words, looking at the tourists sitting at small outdoor tables. They seemed to be enjoying themselves. Why not? People dreamed of coming here, didn’t they? Of sitting at a café in the south of France in May.

“It isn’t exactly the same,” he said finally. “I don’t get her as an aura like the other two, or Aunt Kim. Or my own.”

“You can see your aunt, inside?”

He nodded. “If she’s close enough, and isn’t screening herself. Same with them.”

His mother sighed. “And…Ysabel?”

“Different. I just have a feeling she was here, like she was at the cemetery.”

“Why?”

“Jeez, Mom.”

She frowned. “I take it that eloquent phrase means we lack an answer?”

He nodded. “Yeah. We lack an answer.”

“Maybe because of Melanie,” his father said suddenly. “Maybe you’re picking up Melanie, not Ysabel.”

“Ed! You’re as bad as they are.”

His father still looked strained.

“Let’s have lunch,” his mother said, after a moment. Ned saw her looking closely at his dad. “We have to wait, anyhow.”

They picked a café near the end of the street. The inside looked flashy in an old-fashioned way, lots of green and gold, but on a day like this it was way nicer outdoors.

His father bought a newspaper next door. He found a report on the return of the skull and the sculpted bust. No details that seemed to matter. The police hadn’t any idea who had returned them, other than that it had been a man in a black leather jacket, on a motorcycle.