She jumped at the sound of a bird landing on the pole shed roof. Hannah felt the urge to laugh hysterically from sheer nervousness. She balled a fist over her mouth and commanded herself to breathe slowly. This was the day she had decided to tell him. It would be a new beginning or the bitter end depending on how he took the news. The girl scurried over to one of the chairs set in front of the table. She sat on the very edge, waiting for Daniel, then jumped again at the sound of the door knob turning.
“Hannah?” a voice called tentatively.
“Back here. I’m here, Daniel.”
A sallow-faced man of about thirty bearing a laptop computer came to stand beside her. “Did you have any trouble getting away today?”
Hannah gave a mirthless laugh. “The diviner’s favorite wife can do what she wants.” She was only fourteen, and her husband was in his seventies. It was hardly the marriage of her dreams. “Nobody questions me anymore. They’re afraid I’ll tell on them and get them into trouble with Father Abraham. What about you?” she asked in turn. “Any problems?”
Daniel returned an equally bitter smile. “Bearing the title of scion and being the heir-apparent has its advantages, too.”
“Then I suppose we should count our blessings.” Hannah sighed.
“Such as they are.” The scion sat down beside her and busied himself with connecting cables and booting up the machine. For the thousandth time, he said, “I can’t tell you how sorry I am that all of this happened.” He was referring to their brief unconsummated marriage which had provoked the diviner to take Hannah away from Daniel and reassign her to himself.
“I know,” she replied in a small voice. “You’ve done all you could to make up for it.”
“Hardly,” Daniel said wryly.
“No, you really have,” she insisted, turning to face him. “You did everything I asked. You’ve taught me all about the Fallen Lands. How the people really are and not how we’re told they are. How they dress and act in the outer world. How money changes hands and how they travel about from place to place.” She paused to regard the computer. “This machine has unlocked so much.”
“Yes,” he agreed. “I suppose that’s why father has banned everybody except his council from having one.”
“The diviner says that computers are instruments of the devil meant to ensnare us in sin.” Hannah tipped her head to consider the machine. “I suppose he would say that. He’s afraid we might learn all kinds of things he doesn’t want us to know.”
Daniel followed her gaze. “And there’s so much to learn. Here look. I’ll show you the great city that lies close to where we are.” He opened a screen showing pictures and a map of Chicago.
Hannah’s eyes grew wide with amazement. “It’s the size of ten compounds.”
“More like ten thousand. This is only a part of it.” He typed some more commands into the computer, and the screen changed. “This is the library in the heart of the city where I go to perform research. I’ve become friends with a handsome young librarian named David.” Daniel’s eyes grew soft at the mention of the name. A fleeting smile crossed his face. “The only happy hours I’ve known in the past six months have been spent in his company. He has taught me so much about the Fallen World. So very much.”
Shaking himself out of his pleasant reverie, he typed a few more words, and a map appeared. “This is where we are.” A blue line connected the location of the compound to the library.
“Is the library place very far from here?”
“Over an hour’s drive by car.”
“So that’s where you get all the information to find these objects that Father Abraham wants so badly,” Hannah remarked.
Daniel turned away from the screen as if the thought of the relic quest was painful for him. “These cursed relics are drenched in the blood of the innocent,” he whispered.
“Yes, I know,” Hannah said consolingly. “I remember what you said about the three people and the rock slide. And then the one who fell over the cliff.”
“That wasn’t all,” Daniel sighed and shut his eyes briefly, apparently trying to erase the memory of what he had seen. “This man, Leroy Hunt, also killed the sister of one of the Fallen. Before we met them at the cave on Crete. Father had sent him to a shop in the city to find the granite key.”
“You mean that key you showed me last time?”
“Yes, it was in this woman Sybil’s possession, and Leroy killed her for it.”
“How horrible.” Hannah’s hand flew to her heart.
Daniel barely heard her. He continued with his monologue. He seemed compelled to confess all of the crimes the relic search had caused. “This Sybil owned an antique shop. The key wasn’t there. It was found in the possession of her sister Cassie. She’s the one who died in the cave.”
“Show me,” Hannah urged.
“What?” Daniel peered at her uncomprehendingly.
“On this map. Show me where the shop is.” She placed her palm flat on the computer screen as if touching it could open a portal.
The scion didn’t ask why. He typed in an address. A new blue line stretched from the library to the shop. It wasn’t a very long line at all.
“So, you think there are no people left who are looking for these objects besides you?” she asked.
He shook his head in despair. “Mr. Hunt made sure that none were left alive. I pray to God nobody else appears as we continue the quest, or I’m sure he’ll kill them too.”
Hannah bit her lip, trying to decide if this was the right
