Rome, December 29. A mix-up with their reservations forces Harvey from New York, Mistral from Paris, and Sheng from Shanghai to share a room with the hotel owner's daughter, Elettra. The four kids discover an amazing coincidence they all have birthdays on February 29, Leap Day. That night, a strange man gives them a briefcase and asks them to take care of it until he returns. Soon afterward, the man is murdered. The kids open the briefcase. In it they find a series of clues that take them all over Rome, through dusty libraries and dark catacombs, in search of the elusive Ring of Fire, an ancient object so powerful that legend says even a Roman emperor couldn't control it. In the first book of the Century quartet, Italian author P. D. Baccalario begins a mystery that will take four cities and four extraordinary kids to solve.

P. D. Baccalario was born in Acqui Terme, a beautiful little town in Piedmont, Italy. He now lives in Milan.


From the Hardcover edition.

1

THE TRAP

Perfectly still in the darkness, twelve-year-old Elettra waits.

Her legs crossed, her hands holding the string that will set off the trap, she's sitting stock-still. As motionless as the old wardrobes lined up around her in a series of shadows, one darker than the next.

Elettra breathes slowly, silently. She ignores the dust, letting it settle on her.
Come out, come out . . . , she thinks, only moving her lips.

Shrouded in the darkness, her fingers clutching the string, she listens. The boilers hum in the distance, pumping hot water through the pipes in the hotel rooms. The meters tick away softly, each one at its own pace. A dusty silence reigns over the basement.

The hotel, the city, the whole world seems incredibly far away.
It isn't cold.

It's the twenty-ninth of December.

It's the beginning. But Elettra doesn't know that yet.

* * *

A little noise tells her the mouse is approaching. Tick-tack.

The sound of tiny paws on the floor, coming from somewhere in the darkness.
Elettra slowly raises the string with a satisfied smile, thinking, The irresistible appeal of pecorino Romano cheese.

"No one can resist pecorino Romano," her aunt Linda always says when she's cooking.

Tick-tack. And then silence. Tick-tack. Then silence once again.
The mouse sniffs the air, warily following the aroma's path.

He's almost in my trap, thinks Elettra, rubbing her thumb against the string. Then, in her mind, she asks, How long is this going to take you, stupid mouse?

She's built a simple trap: a piece of pecorino placed under a shoe box, which she's suspended from an old umbrella shaft. A single tug will make it drop down on the mouse. The only difficult thing is figuring out, in the dark, when the mouse has reached the cheese.

She needs to follow her instinct. And instinct tells her it's not time yet.

Elettra waits.

A little bit longer.
Tick-tack goes the mouse. And then silence.

Elettra loves moments like this. The very last moments of a perfect plan, when everything is about to end in triumph.

She can already imagine her father's look of admiration when he gets back from his trip in the minibus. And her aunt Linda's shrieks when Elettra shows her the mouse, stone-cold dead, held up by the tail, as is fitting for a stone-cold dead mouse.

Her other aunt, Irene, would simply say, "You shouldn't go down to play in the basement. It's a very dangerous maze down there." And then she'd add, with a flash of cunning, "No one knows where that maze leads."

Elettra hasn't come down here to play. She's on a mission to catch the mouse.
That's not playing.

Tick-tack goes the mouse.

And then . . .

Then the basement ceiling suddenly starts quaking, rattled by a series of booms that make the bottles shake in their wooden racks.

It can't be! thinks Elettra, looking up. No, not now!

But the quaking doesn't stop. The dust starts to stir restlessly. The pounding on the floor grows stronger, turning into a series of furious footsteps accompanied by a voice that grows louder. In the end, it sounds like a siren.

"EEELEEEEEETTRAAAAAA!" the siren howls, throwing open the door to the basement.
A flood of light drenches the stairs, the stacked-up furniture, the bottles of wine, the wardrobes and the statues. Elettra's eyes dart straight out in front of her. The little gray mouse is standing there, on its hind legs, barely a centimeter inside the shoebox.

"You're not getting away from me!" she says, tugging the string.

The box falls, but not on the mouse.

"No!" she cries.

At the top of the stairs, Aunt Linda's hand gropes around for the light switches and flicks them all on. A dozen bulbs blink on, their blinding light driving away all traces of darkness. They're hanging from the ceil

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Excerpted from The Ring of Fire by Pierdomenico Baccalario, Leah Janeczko
All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.