Getting Wilde by Jenn Stark Page A

mademoiselle.” The young man turned around, his eyes eerily black despite the brightly lit interior of the limo. With a boyish grin, he touched his fingers to his head in a smart salute. “And no tip needed, but my number’s on the map. You need a ride out of here, call that line and ask for me by name.” He winked at me. “I’m Max Bertrand.”  
    “Bertrand of the French mausoleum Bertrands?”  
    His grin broadened. “The very same.”  
    I watched as the dark sedan shot down the Via dei Fori Imperiali, waiting until it was well out of sight. It was a few hours before dawn, and the Forum’s lights had been dimmed, throwing the ruins into shadow. Not even the most energetic of tourists was out at this hour, but I knew better than to waste any time.  
    Without hesitating, I hurried to the nearest fold in the imposing but ultimately harmless fence surrounding the long rectangular field of enormous ruined temples and scattered buildings. Where the structure dented inward, I paused, pulling on my gloves. I’d learned over time that sometimes, when it came to handling artifacts, it paid to cover your palms. The unexpected bonus was that for most modern climbing tasks, gloves came in quite handy.  
    The beautiful wrought iron gate proved easy to climb, and I was on the other side in less than a minute. And then it was off through the maze of ruins toward the Temple of Vesta, one of the few circular structures (or what was left of it) in the space. The temple had once been the home of the Palladium, the ancient statue of Athena carved of olive wood and said to have fallen from the heavens themselves. The piece had long since disappeared into the mists of history, but I was banking that the other great feature of the temple had not: its famed hearth, once kept constantly lit by an intrepid team of virgins.  
    I trotted the short distance through the Forum, past the Temple of Antonius and Fostina, and something called the Regia, which looked like a whole lot of nothing at all. When I reached my destination, however, my steps slowed, disappointment tightening my jaw. The hearth of the Temple of Vesta was intact, all right—mounted ornately on stacked slabs of rock in front of the temple.  
    What in the… I moved forward and circled the ancient building, still standing tall if somewhat tattered in her old age, a scant few of her columns remaining. I broke a few more city laws by clambering up onto the temple and skirting around it, then dropped back onto the rubble that marked what had once been the interior of the shrine.  
    Not helping, not helping, not helping . Dirt lay in huge piles all around the space, and only a few areas of actual rock were cleared off completely. I squinted into the darkness, trying to get a fix on where the center point might be, but it was almost impossible to tell. What were they doing here? Some sort of latter-day excavation? I grimaced, dropping to my knees to where it seemed that the rock that had been unearthed was actual bedrock and not simply stones moved around for the hell of it. And then I started searching.  
    It took me a full half hour to find what I wanted—deep, tool-cut grooves etched into a stone just off the center of the temple, the rest of the surface worn down. The section was bordered on all sides by more rock, which also boded well.  However, I saw no cut marks in the stone’s surface to indicate that there was some sort of hatch I could unlock. Suddenly unnerved by the thick darkness around me, I pulled out the Ceres seal and considered Armaeus’s words anew. How could this be a key?  
    No time like the present to find out.  
     Trying not to wince at the damage I was doing to the millennia-old seal, I turned the relic upside down and gingerly pressed it onto the stone.  
    Nothing happened.  
    I pressed harder. No dice.  
    “You have got to be kidding me.” I forced all my weight onto the seal. Still nothing. I settled back on my heels, then shoved