Bidding goodbye to the rest of the Norths, Lester and Amanda trundled off to school. They took their time, walking slowly as they lamented the end of the break. Both of their backpacks were heavy, and they stopped periodically to shift them from one shoulder to the other. Though they hadn’t thought it possible, their middle school coursework had increased considerably. They’d even been assigned homework over the holiday, and it was showing no signs of slowing down.

Crossing the edge of the soccer field, they heard a familiar voice call out and stopped to wait.

“Here she comes,” said Amanda, rolling her eyes.

Though she made a show of acting irritated, it wasn’t very convincing. While she’d never admit it, Lester knew Amanda had missed Mae while she was gone.

“You guys are not going to believe what I discovered!”

Dressed in a puffy pink parka, thick mittens, and a hat knitted to look like an alien was sucking out her brain, Mae beamed at them as she caught up. As usual, her arms were loaded with books.

“If it’s about that batboy, I already got your emails,” Lester said. He held up a shiny new smartphone and brought it to life with a gloved finger.

“Will you stop pulling that thing out every ten seconds,” Amanda grumbled.

“Jealous?” asked Lester.

“You know I am. My parents keep telling me to put it on my Christmas list, and I keep telling them that Christmas is a month away!”

Lester smiled as he slipped the phone back into his pocket. He was going to enjoy the next four weeks.

“Are you sure you’re going to be warm enough?” Amanda asked, turning to Mae and eyeing her outfit.

“Oh. I hope so,” Mae replied, again proving her imperviousness to sarcasm. “Do you think I should have worn my new boots? It’s freezing out here. I know I’m from the south, but this is as bad as it gets, right?”

Lester and Amanda shared a look. The day was already a balmy thirty-nine degrees, and it had barely been cold enough last night for the ground to freeze.

“This is definitely as cold as it gets,” said Lester.

“You’re through the worst of it,” Amanda assured her.

“Thank goodness,” Mae said, pulling her hat further down over her ears. “Anyway, wait until you see this. I took the opportunity to do some research in the university library while I was away.”

Mae flipped open the book at the top of her stack and thumbed to a spot marked with a paperclip. A black and white photograph of a large stone tablet covered in hieroglyphs filled the page.

“You found a picture of a rock?” asked Amanda, squinting at the image.

“It’s not just any rock,” said Mae. “This is the Kylver stone, discovered in Gotland, Sweden, in 1903. It dates back to 400ce.”

“So —,” said Amanda. “You found a picture of an old rock?”

“Very old,” said Lester, staring at the photograph. “CE means before the common era.”

“That’s right,” said Mae. “It’s the earliest known futhark, an ancient runic alphabet. This carving shows 24 symbols from one of the oldest writing systems ever discovered. And look what it contains.”

Mae slid her finger down a column of symbols, stopping just above one that looked like an hourglass without a top.

“That’s it!” Lester said excitedly. “You found it!”

“Yes,” said Mae, “and you need to see the translation.”

Lester scanned the key at the bottom of the page until he found the right entry.

“The Perthro,” he read, “is the rune of fate. It is the rune of the unknown and the art of magic. Most importantly, it is the rune of —”

Lester stopped and looked at Mae.

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“The rune of fate, magic, and most importantly, what?” Amanda asked, leaning over his shoulder to have a look.

“Prophecy,” finished Lester. “It means prophecy.”

“I don’t get it,” Amanda said, taking the book and reading the passage herself. “Why would a symbol that means prophecy be on my grandfather’s mailbox and grave? And what’s it got to do with rounding up the Lingering? Lester saw Bernard use it in the cemetery with Truck Boy, and it was hidden on the paper we found behind The Mortician’s Eye.”

“And stitched onto a cloth at The Marine Society,” Lester added.

Mae’s face suddenly went a ghostly white. “Unbelievable,” she whispered.

“No. It’s true. I saw it in a case marked for Edward Teach,” said Lester.

“Not that,” said Mae. “Look.”

Mae quickly took out a notepad and pen. Turning to a blank page, she wrote the words Mortician’s Eye. Then, crossing out each letter as she went, she rearranged them until they spelled something altogether different.

“Mortician’s Eye is an anagram for Marine Society!” gasped Lester.

“That can’t be a coincidence,” Amanda said, taking the pad and double-checking Mae’s work.

“Of course!” Mae said. “Why didn’t I see it before?”

“See what?” asked Lester.

“Think about it. The Dark carry around this symbol and show it to every Lingering before releasing them. I would bet they also show it to every thirteen-year-old before they’re Drawn In.”

Lester thought back to the card Doorman had given Bernard at his ceremony. He’d been too far away to see what was on it at the time, but he remembered how his brother had been transfixed.

“Also,” Mae continued, “Ben Titus was a member of The Light. Why did he live in Giles Hollow for all those years and never confront The Dark? Even after what he thought they did to his wife? Why would he wait so long? Then, there’s Amanda’s aunt. Jennie Poole disappears to travel around the world, only to return just before a three-hundred-year-old Lingering tries to destroy the town. That’s quite a coincidence.”

“What are you getting at?” asked Amanda.

“It’s almost like they’re all searching for something,” said Mae. Then looking fixedly at Lester, she added, “Or someone.”

“You can’t be serious?” Amanda scoffed. “You think this rune, this Perthro thing, has something to do with Lester?”

“It doesn’t matter what I think,” said Mae. “If The Light believes Lester is part of some prophecy, it means they’ll keep coming.”

Lester felt a familiar knot of tension twist in his stomach. These last few weeks had been like a dream. Mathis had come home, and his family finally felt complete. The Council had returned to just a place his father worked. And, with Thomas’s departure, that work seemed to have slowed considerably. His father was home each evening for dinner and remained there until morning. During Thanksgiving, he’d even taken four days off. Still, it wasn’t the possibility of losing all of that that worried Lester the most. If Mae was right, and she usually was about this sort of thing, it meant he would have to make a decision he’d been hoping to put off for at least another year. Would he join the family business, as so many expected of him, or would he go his own way?

“So what?” Amanda said. “Let them come.”

“Excuse me?” Mae asked, surprised. “I know it sounds weird coming from me but are you nuts?”

“Yeah. Thanks for the support,” said Lester. “Maybe you think I should wait by the side of the road with a sign so I’m easier to find.”

“No, you idiot,” Amanda said, giving Lester a quick jab in the arm. “Obviously, we keep a low profile. We tell no one about this. If they’ve been looking for so long, let them keep searching. Maybe, eventually, they’ll give up. But if not, don’t forget, we just thwarted a member of The Light, survived a Wrasp attack, and stopped a plot to destroy Giles Hollow, and we didn’t even know what we were doing.”

Lester and Mae looked at each other.

“We do make a great team,” said Mae.

“True,” Lester said. “But no more randomly throwing things at me to test what will happen.”

“We’ll see,” Mae replied, a gleam in her eye.

The three friends resumed their walk across the soccer field. Ahead of them, large yellow busses unloaded waves of kids outside the school as a sea of colorful backpacks trudged slowly up the front steps towards the entrance.

“Don’t think I’m going to be treating you any differently, Lester,” said Amanda. “Simply because a bunch of fanatics think you might somehow be special.”

“Don’t worry,” said Lester. “The only prophecy I care about is the one that contains my grade in Mrs. Q’s class. Frankly, I’m a little disappointed she didn’t turn out to be a member of The Light. I think I’d rather have to close another portal than take her mid-term exam.”

“One can always hope,” Amanda laughed.

“That reminds me,” Lester said, opening his bag. “With everything that happened, I forgot all about this.”

He removed a book and handed it to Mae.

“The Greater Key of Solomon?” Mae said, turning it over in her hands.

“I found it under my bed this morning,” said Lester. “The night I woke up in Mrs. Q’s classroom, it was sitting on her desk. I thought for sure it meant she was a member of The Light until she told me it was yours and asked me to return it.”

“Mrs. Q asked you to give this to me?” said Mae.

“Yeah,” said Lester, confused. “She said you’d left it there.”

“You’re sure?”

“Yes.”

“Then we have a big problem,” Mae said.

“Why?” asked Amanda.

Mae slid a beat-up book from her stack and held it next to the one Lester had just given her. The two volumes were identical.

“Because,” she said, “this is my copy.”