No Escape by Julie Moffett
Chapter Fifty
Lexi Carmichael
Tito reached the door first. He fumbled with the doorknob before pulling it open. Bright light flooded into the room, temporarily blinding us.
“Come on,” Tito said, waving his hand at us. “Let’s see what’s in here.”
Squinting my eyes and blinking, I cautiously followed him into the room. As my eyes adjusted, I saw it was a much smaller room than the planetarium. The walls were flat and adorned with stylistic drawings that looked vaguely familiar, which was odd, because I wasn’t much of an art aficionado.
Where had I seen drawings like that before?
One drawing had a lion, another a goat. I could make out a ram, a scorpion, and some people. I felt like I should know what this was.
“Signs of the zodiac,” Alessa promptly said, solving the mystery. “Wonder what that means.”
I scanned the room as I automatically counted the drawings. There were twelve, as expected. There was nothing else in the room except for one empty frame against the far wall with a small shelf beneath it.
As I got closer to the frame with the shelf, I could see it wasn’t completely empty. It contained six niches arranged in a circle. Each niche was about three inches square. On the shelf below the frame were twelve metal blocks, each with a sign of the zodiac engraved on the back.
“It looks like these blocks go into the squares in the frame,” Juliette mused from over my shoulder.
As I mentally compared the sizes of the niches and blocks, my dad picked up one of the blocks and stuck it into one of the niches. It slid in perfectly and clicked, as if it sealing itself magnetically.
“Okay,” Dad said. “That was easy.”
“Yes, but is it in the right place?” Mom countered. She reached in and tugged on the block. There was another click, and it popped out right into her hand.
By this time the entire group had gathered in the front of the empty frame. We seemed to know this was the puzzle to solve in this room.
“It seems a fairly straightforward challenge,” Father Armando said. “We must put the right block in the right hole to solve it.”
“I agree,” I said. “But which block goes in which hole?”
“Well, since there are only twelve blocks and six holes, we can try all the combinations until we hit the right one,” Mia suggested.
I’d already started my mental calculator to determine the odds of success with that approach. “That’s not a viable option, Mia. It could take up to 665,280 attempts to find the right permutation of six blocks from twelve choices while putting them in the right order. Even at one combination per second, that would take us over a week to complete. We have to solve this puzzle logically.”
My mom tugged on my arm. “Correct me if I’m wrong, sweetheart, but we have two problems at hand, right? We need to determine which six of the twelve blocks we use, and what order we put them in.”
“Yes, but there are three problems, Mom. In addition to determining which six blocks and what order, we need to figure out where to start placing the blocks in the circle. We could have the right order, but with the blocks rotated one spot to the left or right, it might not work.”
“Might I suggest something?” Juliette said. “Before we get too involved with this puzzle, are we sure there’s nothing else we should do first? One thing I’ve noticed is these challenges have had a lot of subtlety to them, and the direct solution has not always proved to be the best.”
She was right, and I’d totally forgotten to factor that in. “That’s an excellent point, Juliette. Do you have any ideas?”
“Unfortunately, I don’t. I just thought I’d mention it in case anyone else did.”
“There’s nothing else in this room except for the drawings,” Alessa said, looking around. “And we’ve already determined they’re the signs of the zodiac.”
Nonetheless, I walked to the middle of the room and studied the zodiac drawings as a whole. Slash joined me.
“I know nothing about horoscopes,” Tito said, standing next to Slash. “Are there any missing?”
“There are twelve signs and twelve months, so I’m pretty sure that’s the right number,” Alessa said. “I don’t see any that are missing, but I’m not exactly an expert in this area.”
“I have an idea,” Vittoria suddenly said. “I’ll be right back.” She exited the room, and we all looked at each other, shrugging.
“Okay, for the moment, let’s presume that all twelve zodiac signs are accounted for, and none are missing,” I said. “Let’s see if we can properly identify each one.”
We started at the far left, with Alessa calling out the ones she recognized and others helping with the ones they knew.
“Capricorn, Gemini, Libra, Taurus, Virgo, Aquarius, Cancer, Scorpio, Leo, Pisces, Sagittarius…and I’m not sure of the last one,” she said. “It’s the ram.”
“Aries,” Mom said. When I looked at her in surprise, she shrugged. “It’s a common answer in crossword puzzles.”
“Wait.” Oscar spoke up suddenly. “I think I see a pattern here. All the challenges I participated in had a zodiac connection. Let’s think about it. In the black room, there was a scorpion made from red mirror tiles. And when I was in the garden maze, the statue in the hidden alcove had a woman pouring water onto twins. That could either represent Aquarius or Gemini, depending on whether you focus on the twins or the water. And the pool had two big fish drawn on the side. Remember that, Juliette? That would be Pisces, right?”
“Oh, my brilliant darling,” Juliette said. “You’re absolutely correct. There were drawings of fish on the sides of the pool. And I was in the room with the bull that had a ring in its nose. That could be Toro.”
“Taurus in English,” Stefan said. “Plus, the library had the scale. That’s Libra.”
“I think we’re definitely going somewhere with this, but what about the game room?” Alessa said. “What’s the zodiac sign for that room?”
“Sagittario,” Gio said, stepping forward. He mimicked shooting an arrow at the ceiling. “The archer.”
“That’s six,” I said. “Six signs, six niches. Guys, I think we have this.”
“But which one do we use for the maze?” Oscar asked. “Aquarius or Gemini?”
“We’ll try them both to see which one works,” I replied. “The number of different combinations to substitute between Aquarius and Gemini is manageable.”
I walked over the shelf and separated out the seven blocks with which we would work. “Now the question is, in what order do we put them in the niches?”
“There’s a couple of possible orders,” Slash said. “We could use the order in which they occur on the zodiac calendar or, alternatively, we could try the order in which we completed the challenges. There are others orders we should consider, but those would be my first two choices at this point. Anyone else have any thoughts?”
“I vote for trying the order of the zodiac calendar,” Tito said. “That seems to make the most sense to me.”
“I concur,” my dad said. “Most obvious first.”
I shrugged. “Doesn’t make any difference to me. Does anyone know the order of the zodiac calendar? I don’t think these pictures are hung are in the right calendar order.”
Everyone looked at Alessa. “Aquarius is first, I think,” Alessa said sheepishly. “Sorry, while I know the zodiac signs, I don’t know the exact calendar order.”
I glanced hopefully at Father Armando, but he lifted his hands with a small smile. “Don’t look at me for answers to pagan puzzles.”
“Good point,” I said. “In that case, let’s pivot. We’re going to have to try the order of the challenges instead,” I said. “So, the room with the bull was first, followed by the garden maze, correct?”
“That’s correct,” Slash confirmed.
I studied the blocks and picked up the one with the bull… Taurus. “Where do I start, guys? At the top of the circle? Should I go clockwise?”
Everyone agreed that the top was as good a place as anywhere to start and that clockwise made the most sense. I placed Taurus in the niche. It slid in and clicked into place.
“Okay, what should I put for the garden maze? Aquarius or Gemini?”
“Let’s try Aquarius first,” Slash suggested. “Fountains imply water, and you said the woman was pouring water on the twins at the other fountain.”
“Not to mention the only other statue in the maze was a woman pouring water,” Mom added.
“Aquarius it is.” I picked up the block and put it in the niche. After further discussion I placed Sagittarius, Pisces, Libra, and Scorpio. As I stuck the last block into place, we all waited expectantly for something to happen.
Nothing.
“Swap out Aquarius for Gemini,” Stefan suggested.
I did as he asked, but nothing happened. I tried various combinations of the order of each of the challenges with no success. I finally stopped in frustration. “This isn’t working. We don’t even know if we’re starting in the right place.”
Vittoria returned carrying a book. “Sorry it took me so long to find this. I saw it in the map room during our challenge. I hope it’ll help. It’s an astrology book from the library.” She handed it to Slash.
“That was a great idea, Vittoria,” Gio said giving her kiss. “Brilliant, actually.”
She smacked him on the arm. “I keep telling you that. See, I do not have pregnant brain.”
We laughed as Slash flipped open the book. “Does it have the proper calendar order of the zodiac signs?” I asked.
Slash shrugged. “It depends on what you consider proper calendar order. Capricorn begins in December and goes into January. But if you start with that, you get Capricorn, Aquarius, Pisces, Aries, Taurus, Gemini, Cancer, Leo, Virgo, Libra, Scorpio, and Sagittarius. Since Capricorn isn’t one of our blocks, Aquarius will still be first.”
“Okay.” I put the six symbols from our challenge in the proper zodiac calendar order as he read them off. When he was done, I slid them into the niches. As I snapped the last block into place, I held my breath, but nothing happened.
I replaced Aquarius with Gemini, but still to no avail. “No luck,” I said in frustration. “We must be missing something.”
“Maybe rotate the whole circle one spot to the left,” Dad suggested.
I tried that, but still nothing. “I’m not sure what to do now,” I said, blowing out a breath. “It would take hours to try all the different possible combinations. There has to be another clue somewhere.”
“But there’s nothing else in this room,” Mia complained. “This is just too hard.”
“Maybe there’s another clue in the planetarium room,” Juliette said. “We were so focused on solving the stone circle and star puzzles, we didn’t really give anything else in there much thought.”
“There wasn’t anything else in that room, either, except for the table and the stone circle with the brass discs, Mama,” Gio said.
“It won’t hurt to take another look,” I said.
“I’ll stay here and keep trying different combinations while everyone else looks for another clue,” Slash said. He handed the astrology book to Stefan and took my place in front of the blocks. As I rose from the chair, he ran a hand down my ponytail, then tugged me toward him, brushing his lips against mine. “Good work,” he murmured.
“Back at you,” I said, touching our fingers together once more before I headed out with the rest of the group to see what we might have missed in the planetarium room. We all looked around, but Mia had been right. Other than the stone circle, the rod, the brass discs, and the table, there was nothing else in the room.
“Are those statues of twins?” Mom asked, walking back and forth between the statues of the naked guys holding up the table. “Their features are identical. Could that be a clue?”
“If they’re twins, it could mean they’re Gemini,” Alessa offered.
“What do we know about Gemini?” I asked. “Stefan, can you read from the book about the Gemini twins?”
“Sure.” He moved to the doorway so he could get enough light to read. “‘Gemini is the third sign of the zodiac, and it covers May 21 to June 21. The sign is represented by twins, or in Egyptian astrology, by a pair of goats. In Arabian astrology, Gemini is a pair of peacocks. The brightest stars in the constellation of Gemini are Castor and Pollux, which help form the heads of the twins. According to Greek mythology, the twins have also been related to other celebrated pairs, such as the younger and older Horus in Egyptian mythology or Romulus and Remus for the Romans.’”
“Did that you say that Gemini was the third sign?” Alessa interrupted. “If so, we’re one sign off. We put Gemini in the first block in place of Aquarius. We need to go back and make sure it goes in the third.”
We hurried back to the room where Slash was trying different combinations with the blocks. Alessa told him what they’d uncovered about the twins and Gemini, but Slash didn’t react like we expected.
“I’ve already tried it,” he said. “In fact, it was the first set of combinations I tried, but it didn’t work.”
“Damn, I really thought that would be it,” Alessa said, leaning against the wall.
“There might be something else to the Gemini or Castor and Pollux story we’re missing,” Slash mused. “Maybe it’s the constellations. What if the stars were designed not only to help us open the door, but to tell us when to start? Maybe whatever constellation is over the door to this room represents the time of the year to start.”
“Orion!” Mom, Dad, and I said at the same time.
“That’s the only constellation we saw,” I said. “But maybe we missed something.”
We hurried back to the planetarium, closed the door, and waited for our eyes to adapt to the dim light again.
“See, there’s Orion,” my dad said. “Right by the door.”
“What’s that constellation to the left of Orion?” Slash asked. “Lower on the door.”
I stared at the door until I saw what appeared to be a pair of angled snake eyes.
“Gemini,” Alessa shouted before I could say anything. “That means the eyes on the door must be Castor and Pollux. Start with that, Lexi.”
We opened the door again and surged into the room. I ran over to the frame and started placing the blocks. This time, when the last block clicked into place, the shelf slowly slid out, revealing a secret crevice.
“That’s my girl,” Mom said proudly, causing me to smile.
Just inside the crevice, I could see a business card-size piece of paper. I carefully pulled it out and read aloud. “Twenty-six Via del Colosseo.”