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the pedophile—he hanged himself in the foyer after it was completed,” Oliver announced as we approached a small Palladian-style building. “Same architect as designed Rossetti—”
    “What’s a Molyneux scholar?”
    Oliver halted, teetering on the curb with one grimy wing tip toeing into the grass. He stared at me nonplussed.
    “I mean, is it some secret thing?” I went on. “Like I’m not supposed to ask?”
    Oliver and Angelica exchanged a look. After a moment Angelica said, “Well, yes, it is. It’s a—it’s something they test you for, before admitting you here.”
    “But I never—I mean, they didn’t ask me. I don’t think. Is it like an advanced placement thing?”
    Oliver pursed his lips. “You sacrifice some accuracy in describing it that way.”
    I tried not to sound petulant. “So what’s the big deal? I mean, Warnick was talking about it in class. It can’t be that secret.”
    “It’s not that kind of thing,” Angelica said slowly. The warm wind stirred her tangle of curls. She brushed the hair from her face and turned, sighing, to stare at Reardon’s neoclassical facade. “Some of it’s hereditary, a legacy—I mean if your father went here or something. It’s more like—well, like Skull and Bones. Have you ever heard of that? At Yale?”
    “Sure. If you’re a member and somebody asks you about it, you have to leave the room.”
    “Right. It’s more that kind of secret—”
    “But what do they test you for?”
    Angelica smiled wryly and shrugged. A few yards away, students lolling on the steps of Reardon were starting to gather their books and knapsacks, extinguishing spent cigarettes or lighting new ones. “I have to go. You’re in Rossetti, aren’t you? I saw your name on a dorm list. I’m on the third floor. You want to meet for dinner?”
    “I guess. But—”
    “The reception’s at seven,” said Oliver. He ducked his head, making agreeable noises as three white-clad friars rushed past us. “If we get separated, we’ll all meet there.”
    Angelica laughed—a surprisingly loud and heartfelt laugh, not at all what you expected from such a carefully assembled beauty. She shook her finger at me and said, “Well, Sweeney, let’s you and me not get separated. I’ll wait for you outside the dining hall—”
    She turned and hurried off, head bowed so that all I could see was her flag of shining curls.
    “Come on,” Oliver said. He was staring after Angelica with a hungry expression, but he sounded relieved. “The coffee’s pretty good at the Shrine cafeteria. Then we can hit Dumbarton Oaks.”
    “Let me make sure I got my wallet—”
    Oliver drew a wad of bills from his shirt pocket. “Don’t worry about it.”
    He spun around, like Puck in a play, and added, “Don’t sweat this Molyneux thing. Nothing but legacies. Alumni stuff, old school tie, you know. Another Old Boy Network—they’re just Very Old Boys, that’s all. Come tonight and you can see for yourself, okay?”
    His blue eyes were intensely earnest, almost pleading. I smiled gratefully and nodded.
    “Sure,” I said, and flapped the front of my shirt to cool myself. “Whatever you say, boss.”
    Oliver grinned, walking backward and gesturing wildly as he began once more to lecture me on the plight of the city’s Dutch elms. I was so busy watching him that I almost didn’t notice the two figures that stood watching us from the curb. A diminutive man in black and, behind him, an almost grotesquely tall figure in an ankle-length black monsignor’s cape, the hood pulled so close around its face that its features were lost to sight, except for the malevolent glitter of a pair of huge and watchful eyes.

CHAPTER 4
The Lunula
    M AGDA FOUND THE LUNULA on her first dig—not her first archaeological foray, but the first one she supervised. Not coincidentally, it was the first excavation she had carried out without any direct regulation by the Benandanti. She was twenty-six years old at the time,