Chapter 2 — A Door I Could Lock

"Then we go after her."

I was standing before Adrian could answer, the dispatch sheet clutched in my hand.

"Where?" he asked.

I looked at the ruined destination field.

He let the question stay between us. It was crueler than reassurance, and more useful.

"Get me a lamp I can lower," I said. "And a magnifying glass."

He brought both.

For the next hour, I worked over the scraped paper while the feast ended downstairs. The fibers had been cut away, taking the destination with them. No clever trick would restore what wasn't there.

But the stamp below it survived.

I sketched the broken edge, then compared it with the stamps in the death register. A notch appeared in the same place on six entries.

"One office," I said. "An old die. I need my reference impressions."

"Where do you keep them?"

"Somewhere I won't be taking you."

He glanced at the dark windows. "It's almost morning. That simplifies the argument."

Gideon returned with my signed copy and a receipt showing that the protection had been registered with the Council clerk. Adrian gave me both.

Then he showed me a bedroom across the landing.

There was a narrow bed, a washstand, a telephone, and a bowl of pears. Nothing was red velvet. Nothing resembled the rooms I had imagined vampires kept for human guests.

He placed a brass key on the washstand.

"The lock works from either side. The inside bolt has no external mechanism."

"You've thought about that."

"People sleep poorly when they expect to be interrupted."

I examined the bolt anyway.

"Where's the nearest street exit?"

"Down the back stairs. Left at the kitchen."

He remained in the corridor while I checked the window latch. His gaze lowered briefly to my hands, stained with wax and graphite.

"You can leave the documents in the study."

"I found the connection. I keep what we find next."

"Agreed."

"And you tell me what you're planning before you do it."

"I can agree to that."

"What happened to the people in that register?"

His expression changed.

"That's what we're trying to establish."

"I asked what happened before they entered it."

He looked toward the stairs.

"Ask me again when we've found the office."

I didn't like that answer. I wrote it down after he left.

Then I locked the door.

I tried the handle twice, rested my forehead against the wood, and let myself breathe.

At nine, daylight lay across the landing. I dressed in yesterday's borrowed gown and followed the route he had given me.

The kitchen door opened onto the street.

No one stopped me.

I walked three blocks before using a public telephone to call Celia Ward.

"I'm at Rook House," I told her.

Silence.

"Mara."

"Voluntarily. There's a contract."

"That is not improving this conversation."

I explained the dispatch note. Saying it aloud nearly broke me.

"It could be another Tessa," Celia said gently.

"Same registration number. Same age."

She exhaled. "Then bring me a copy. And tell me when you expect to call again."

We settled on dawn. If I missed it, she would take my protection document to the Council clerk. It wasn't a rescue plan, but it gave my disappearance a witness.

I retrieved my reference book from my stall, bought bread, and returned before noon.

Adrian was absent. The pears had been replaced by a covered breakfast tray.

I ate everything and slept with the bolt drawn.

By the second evening, I had a location.

"Old East Registry," I told him when he knocked. "They used that notched stamp before Revenue moved headquarters."

"The building is closed."

"To applicants. Archived records stay there. So do two night watchmen. I repaired one of their pay certificates last spring."

I held up a maintenance authorization.

He looked from the form to me.

"You made that here?"

"Your stationery is excellent."

"You could have asked."

"Would that have made it less illegal?"

This time, he smiled properly. It changed his face enough that I glanced back at the form.

"Wear a work coat," I said. "And don't speak. You sound expensive."

An hour later, the registry watchman barely looked at Adrian. He looked at the clipboard in my hand and the warning about water damage beneath the official heading.

"Nobody told me about a leak."

"They rarely tell the person who has to stand in it."

He grunted and let us through.

Inside, I checked the wall plan, then led Adrian down to the records room. His shoulders filled the narrow stairwell behind me. He moved quietly enough that I had to look back to make certain he was there.

The books we needed occupied two shelves beside a stained drainpipe.

"You were right about the leak," he whispered.

"I try to make my lies convenient."

We searched by the stamp's service dates. I found the index first and spread it beneath a portable lamp.

Each name linked to a certificate page and a second, abbreviated code.

The code beside Tessa's matched the surviving prefix on the dispatch sheet.

I copied both, then lifted the next volume. A metal binding corner sliced the pad of my finger.

The sting barely registered.

Adrian went still.

His eyes dropped to my hand. His lips parted, and I saw the length of his teeth.

I forgot the lamp, the books, the promise upstairs.

Then he stepped backward.

"Wrap it," he said.

His voice had roughened.

I pulled a handkerchief from my pocket and pressed it around my finger. Adrian turned toward the shelves, one hand braced against the wood.

"Can you manage that?"

"Yes."

He waited until I had knotted the cloth before looking at me again.

"Does that always happen?" I asked.

"I always notice."

"And the rest?"

His gaze met mine. "The rest is my responsibility."

Footsteps crossed the floor above us.

I extinguished the lamp. We waited in darkness while keys rattled and a door closed.

Adrian stood close enough that I could feel the fabric of his coat brush my sleeve. He didn't touch me.

When the footsteps faded, I switched the lamp on and returned to the certificates.

The deaths had supposedly occurred over six weeks. But every date sat on an abraded patch, written in the same ink over older entries.

I made rubbings of the page numbers and copied the names. Forty-one people. The same street on every line.

"Briar Street," I said.

My sister's printing shop had stood above its bakery.

Adrian's hand closed around the shelf.

I turned the last certificate toward the light. Beneath the altered date, the original pressure marks remained.

I knew that date.

Everyone on Briar Street had died on paper the night the gates were locked.