Page 26 of The Curse Breaker

“She thought stealing the treasure was wrong,” Benny said gently, “but she did it anyway to save all of you from the Cough.”

Gil’s eyes became watery. “She was too hard on herself,” he said, turning back to a book.

Benny let him have a moment. They were missing something. Her eyes scanned the riddle again and stopped on apro poe. She pointed it out to Zara. “Wait a minute. This isn’t how you spell apropos, is it?”

Zara pursed her lips and stared at Evelyn’s neat scroll. “It looks weird. Like she’s writing apropos poe. Saying poe twice. Did she just happen to misspell it?”

Benny’s fingers tingled. “Nothing Evelyn has done so far has been an accident. Poe… Do you think she meant Edgar Allan Poe?” They each grabbed their phones again and started searching. The Wi-Fi was slow following the storm, and Benny felt like it took forever before she got to a page about Poe. She scanned the listings for his different story titles.

“The time period is correct,” said Zara. “He was a writer in the mid eighteen hundreds.”

When Benny spotted the word bug among Poe’s story titles, she squeezed Zara’s arm. “Look! The clue is a bug, not a dragonfly! It has to be. Poe has a short story called ‘The Gold-Bug’ that was originally published in a newspaper.” This is it. Benny was sure of it.

Zara gripped Benny’s other arm with her free hand. “You ready for this? ‘The Gold-Bug’ is about buried treasure.”

“It sounds like a story about us!” Gil marveled.

Benny felt a thrumming in her chest. Evelyn, you clever girl.

“There’s more,” Zara said, excitement in her voice. “Poe was known for popularizing cryptography, which is a type of secret writing, and he used it in the short story.”

“If only we had a book with this story so we could read it,” Gil mused.

Benny felt like her whole body was fired up with excitement. “We don’t need one. Hang on!” Benny pulled up the short story on her phone and read it fast. “So the main character looking for treasure realizes a scrap of parchment has invisible ink on it.” Her heartbeat sped up. “And when the character held it over heat, the words revealed themselves.” She pulled out the blank pages Evelyn had given them and held them up. “Maybe we don’t actually need to find a book. We already have all we need. We just need a match.”

“I can help with that.” Wally came into the room at that very moment as if he’d been listening and took a candle off a shelf. He pulled matches out of his pocket and lit the candle. “Be careful not to hold the pages too close to the flame, or we’ll have a fire.”

Getting as close as she could, Benny held one of the pages over the flame. The four of them watched as handwritten words in a bright-blue ink began to appear one by one.

“That’s Sparrow’s handwriting.” Gil’s hands were starting to tremble.

“Hold your hand steady!” said Zara holding her phone over the page as it lit up with words. “I’ll take pictures of each page so we can read it back later.”

“Never would have thought of that,” Benny said, her heart soaring now.

They’d done it. Cracked Evelyn’s first new clue. Which meant there were most likely two to go. At least that’s how it worked for the first game. Wait till she told Kimble. And Aggy. She was one step closer to finding the missing treasure and banishing Tesouro Eterno forever on that island so it wouldn’t be tampered with again. One step closer to saving Evelyn’s friends and Kimble.

Finally, Benny reached the last blank page. It was a second riddle. With the handwriting visible, she began to read.

For Everly Benedict,

A place the piping plovers know,

not far from where beach roses grow

is dedicated to remembering “thee”—

Those who have been “lost at sea.”

While I am scorned and not allowed

to be among that mourning crowd,

I visit in stealth, to think and reflect.

This rock is where I genuflect.

This monument is where it calls to me—