Page 47 of Control's Undoing

“Xavier…” Colum’s voice was tinged with alarm.

Annie whipped around in her chair, eyes going wide as Xavier touched the skull with one finger.

“Xavier, don’t,” Annie ordered, rising from her chair.

Xavier cocked his head to the side and smirked.He would never admit it, but he sometimes watched videos of cats pushing—booping—things off counters.The videos always made him laugh.A friend told him it was because he was essentially a black cat in human form.

Xavier pushed the skull off the table.“Boop.”

Annie and Colum both lunged, but there was no chance of saving it.The plaster skull hit the hard floor, shattering.

Annie and Colum were both yelling, but Xavier crouched, brushing aside chunks of plaster, picking up the wooden tube that had been hidden inside.The ends of the tube were capped with cloth tied in place with disintegrating blue ribbon.

When he pulled, the ribbon fell apart, raining small bits of blue over the plaster pieces.

Annie and Colum joined him, both silent as Xavier carefully worked the papers out of the tube, gingerly unrolling them just enough to read the first page.

“‘A clever fool is the most dangerous kind, and by reading these pages you irrevocably declared yourself to be one such as that.’”Xavier read aloud, satisfaction and awe sliding through him.

“We did it.”Colum sounded odd—both pleased and disappointed.

Xavier sat at the table, carefully separating the pages.At that, Colum made a distressed noise and ran for his suitcase, returning moments later with preservation tools.One by one, Xavier passed the pages to Annie and Colum, who’d silently set up a mini lab, photographing each page and backing the frailest of them with acid-free paper to stabilize them.

They were working to preserve the manuscript, but Xavier was reading it.Not fully, not with the detail Wilde’s writings deserved, but reading nonetheless.

Colum and Annie began speaking quietly about what to do next, clearly planning how to wrap up their mission.Their voices were tinged with emotion, though they seemed to be trying to hide it.

Xavier reached the last page and exhaled, his suspicions confirmed.

This had been too easy.Not objectively, but for a treasure hunt designed by Oscar Wilde, this had been far too simple.

“This isn’t the end.”

Annie and Colum both looked up.

Xavier gestured to the last two pages, which he had spread out on the table.“This isn’t the end of the manuscript.He says he’s not yet done.”

Colum smiled in clear relief.Interesting.

Annie, however, narrowed her gaze.“Is there a clue where to go next?”

Xavier shrugged.“I need to read it more slowly.”

“Or,” she said, smiling sharply, “the clue was somewhere on the skull that you just shattered into a dozen pieces.”

Oh.

Xavier looked down.Merde.

“Damn it, Xavier, you couldn’t have waited?”

“No, I could not,” he shot back.“Someone tried to murder us, and you want to wait to find some X-ray machine?What then?We had to get it out.”

“We could have done it gently.Made a hole.We could have done this methodically and logically.”

“How long would that take?How long do you want to wait?”

“It’s not waiting.”Annie shoved to her feet, leaning over the table to get in his face.“It’s working the problem.”

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