The Traitor of Belltroll by Lindsay Cummings

Author:Lindsay Cummings
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2016-09-19T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 19

Cave of Fire

This was turning into the longest night ever. The boys spent the rest of it in the Library, poring over books.

But there was nothing to find. No mention of anyone named Festus, or anything, on the off chance that it wasn’t actually a person’s name.

After they took a short break to slide down the zip line in the front of the Library, Hoyt suggested they go and ask Lucinda about Festus. She’d been there for decades, after all, longer than any of the boys had even been alive. And even though Albert didn’t trust the creepy woman, she did seem to have a taste for Core gossip.

But even Lucinda didn’t know who Festus was.

“I’ve never heard of such a person,” she said. Kimber writhed around her, doing his best to escape, his tongue flicking at rapid speeds.

“That’s enough of you,” she said to him. She’d taken to wrapping a leather leash around his neck so he couldn’t slither away. “You’re welcome to look through my books as long as you’d like. Perhaps try the Core Family Document? It has the most prominent bloodlines of the Core’s history. Professors, Apprentices, Pures, and the most successful of our workers. Back left room in the Library. I won’t even charge you to look it over.”

She tossed them an old golden key.

They checked the Family Document, a giant painting framed in gold. It was at least two stories tall, so they had to drag a wheeled ladder over to climb high enough to read every spot.

There were hundreds of names dating way, way back to times when the world didn’t even have phones or cars.

“Look!” Leroy said. “You’re on here, Albert!”

He pointed to a spot farther down the painting, toward the ground. Sure enough, there was Robert Flynn (Pap), Bob Flynn, and at the very bottom, Albert’s own name in freshly printed black ink. Someone must have added it a few terms ago, when Albert first came to the Core. There were even a bunch of female Flynn Balance Keepers listed.

“That’s pretty cool,” Albert said, touching his fingertips to the massive frame. “But no Festus anywhere on here. So if this guy or girl was here, they weren’t a Professor or Apprentice.”

“Or a Pure,” Hoyt said.

He tapped a little to the left, where the Jackson family line was. And then, beside it on another section, was Petra’s family.

“Petra Prince?” Leroy said.

Petra’s face reddened. “Yeah. It’s . . . kinda embarrassing.”

“Royal, more like,” Leroy said, chuckling. He bowed low to the ground and said, “Prince Petra.”

“Knock it off, Jones.” Petra swatted Leroy away, but he laughed nevertheless.

They moved on from the Family Document and continued their search. But after an entire night of examining dusty books, family trees, and crumbling documents in the archives section, they couldn’t find a single thing on Festus. Albert was sure he’d never heard the name before, but something was tugging at him, from the very back of his mind.

A memory, maybe? He closed his eyes and tried to pull it forth.

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