“Byron had a daughter named Lovelace?” Angel asked as Puck leapt up and began scanning the collection.

“Oh, yes,” said Bond. “I remember reading about that. Some story about how his estranged wife raised their daughter to be logical and scientific to contradict the Romantic influence of the girl’s father.”

Ada Lovelace. Yeah, it was cooler than Lucky. I yawned again.

Bond pulled down a book and opened it to the index. “I think it was her married name. Here she is.” He opened the book and placed it on the coffee table. I roused myself to look. There, on the page, was a very familiar-looking portrait of a Victorian woman with Princess Leia hair.

“I’ve seen this,” I said. “Lucky’s got a poster of her hanging in her room.”

“Hero worship, huh?” said Angel.

“Ada Lovelace” sounded so familiar to me. I yawned again and Puck caught me. “I think I need to escort ’boo home,” he said. “I’ll make sure there are no monsters or CIA agents in her closet.”

“Maybe I should do it instead, to make sure ’boo gets some actual sleep,” said Angel with a meaningful glance at me.

“Maybe ’boo will just stretch out here,” said I, doing so. “This couch is comfy.”

“Suit yourself.” Puck stood. “I’m going home, then, before the news trucks arrive.” He waved to us all and headed out.

A moment later, we heard his voice in the hall. “Mail’s here.”

“Is it FedEx?” said Juno. “That’s weird. But who else would deliver here? Bring it in before it gets wet.”

“I suppose,” said Angel, “the nice thing about having an unlisted address like the tomb is you don’t see a lot of junk mail.”

I fought back the waves of sleep. Junk mail. Ada Lovelace. That’s where I’d seen that name.

“Guys,” Puck appeared at the door to the Library, clutching an open manila envelope, his face devoid of all color. “I think Lucky’s been kidnapped.”

He held up a long black braid.

15. Pied à Terre

I hereby confess:

I had no problem getting people

to believe me after that.

I was also not getting back to sleep.

“Oh my God,” cried Angel. “Don’t touch it! Fingerprints.”

“That envelope has been through too many hands,” said Juno. “And getting fingerprints off hair—”

“What are you,” said Angel, “CSI? No? Then shut up. And, George, for fuck’s sake, put that down!”

Nobody, I’m proud to report, thought of fining her at that moment.

“What should we do?” said Puck, holding the braid away from his body as if it were a live snake. “Call the cops?”

“Yes. Then call Soze,” said Juno. “And that Poe guy. You said he’d been helping, right, Bugaboo?”

I nodded dumbly. “What—what else is in there? Is there any kind of note?”

Puck shook his head. “I’m almost afraid to look.” But look he did, and to our collective relief, the envelope was devoid of any additional body parts.

“Well,” Juno reasoned, “at least it isn’t a finger.”

But this provided little comfort. I called Soze (who was still asleep) and Poe (who wasn’t—but vampires hunt at night, right?), and they both told me to wait until they arrived to phone the cops. Puck offered to call his dad, though we all thought that maybe Mr. Prescott needed to stay by his wife’s side this morning. I called Gus Kelting on the TTA board, who’d arranged my internship last summer, but his voice mail said he was away on business. We tried to brainstorm other sympathetic patriarchs, but the list was a bit thin at the moment.

“Who could have done something like this?” Angel said in a shaky voice. “Her hair was so beautiful….”

“Right, because beauty is the issue,” said Juno.

Puck moved from seat to seat. “I don’t believe it could have been—I can’t—it’s just a stupid society, right? A frat? I mean, shit, I don’t like her very much, but she’s a good kid, you know? They wouldn’t…”

We all spent a lot of time looking at the braid, which Puck had finally dropped on the coffee table.

It seemed to take Poe and Soze forever to arrive, but in actuality, it was probably closer to twenty minutes. Considering Poe’s apartment was a good twenty-minute walk from campus, I was impressed.

“How did you find it?” Soze asked.

Puck gestured to the envelope. “It was on the porch. Like, in the mail.”

Poe picked it up and studied the address label. “It was mailed? Here? How odd. The postmark says Manhattan. Thursday.”

“Well,” said Bond, “that narrows it down.”

I raised my hand. “Guys, the other day, when I took Jenny’s phone, there were some phone numbers in New York City. I called them, but there was no answer.”

“Again, not so helpful,” said Angel. “When are we calling the police? I think we’ve got evidence here.”

“But evidence of what?” asked Poe. “If it was the patriarchs, why leave the trophy on the stoop? Shouldn’t they be sending it to the guy running the website? Or even to Bugaboo or me, because we were the ones tracking them?”

“Evidence of what?” Juno asked incredulously. “Of a kidnapping, that’s what!”

“Okay.” I tried again. “Before we were interrupted with the Locks of Not-so-much Love, I was thinking about Ada Lovelace—”

“’Boo, what does that have to do with anything?” Puck asked.

I ignored him. “And I remembered that in Lucky’s room she had some mail addressed to Ada Lovelace. I thought it was junk mail, but now…”

“She probably used a fake name on some Internet site,” said Puck. “I do that.”

“Porn sites?” Angel asked. Puck shot her a look.

“You wouldn’t put a fake name and a real address, though,” said Poe, and turned back to me. “Do you remember what kind of mail it was?”

I shrugged. “I thought it was junk mail. It was still there on her desk when we were in her room yesterday. It’s probably nothing, but it’s weird. We should tell the cops—”

“Let’s go check it out,” said Poe.

“How?” I said. “You want me to break in again?”

Poe smiled. “Won’t be necessary.”

Soze stepped in. “What does this have to do with anything? We need to call the cops, right now. Lucky could be in trouble.”

“I called them last night,” said Poe, avoiding my eyes. “I was getting worried. But they backed up the dean.”

“But now…” Soze pointed at the hair.

Poe shrugged. “Try it again, see what happens. But I’m sorry to admit they may be mildly accustomed to lunatic phone calls about the Diggers. I don’t know if a hank of hair is going to convince them of much.” He looked at me. “Coming?”

I sighed. “Yeah.”

Angel picked up the envelope. “I’m going to look up this zip code, see what neighborhood it comes from.”

Soze shook his head. “If someone checks our Internet search records, don’t you think it will look suspicious that before we called the police, we checked up on the evidence?”

Poe laughed mirthlessly. “We’re Rose & Grave, junior. Everything we do looks suspicious.”

Poe was a man of mysterious talents. Unbeknownst to either the dean or me, he’d sabotaged Jenny’s lock yesterday while we were up there visiting. A small piece of tape held the catch in place. Now we slipped inside and collected the Ada Lovelace mail.

“This isn’t addressed to an Eli P.O. Box,” I said. “It’s all been sent to someplace in New York City.” And it was weird stuff, too. An electric bill, a cable notice…not your usual college loan consolidation crap. Of course, Jenny being a millionaire and all, she probably didn’t have any loans.

Clarissa called. “The zip code 10002 is for Union Square and the Lower East Side.”

“Thanks,” I said. I looked at the envelope. “Hey, where is Ludlow Street in Manhattan?”

I could practically hear her wrinkle her nose. “The Lower East Side.”