Chapter 8: The Counting House

The address on Meeting Street was a four-story brick building with iron balconies and no sign.

Its windows were painted black from the inside.

I stood across the road in my yellow slicker and counted the cameras.

There were none.

Whoever lived here had never needed cameras.

I walked up to the brass-bound door and put the key in the lock.

It turned.

Inside, a narrow stair climbed into the dark.

I found a switch on the wall and a row of dim old bulbs flickered on one by one.

The smell hit me next.

Paper, dust and a faint metal sweetness underneath.

The second floor was shelves.

They ran back farther than the building should have allowed.

Green and black ledgers rose floor to ceiling, with years stamped on the spines.

I walked down the aisle trailing my fingers across 1790, 1850, 1911.

A card was tacked to the end of the last row.

THE REGENT'S PAPERS. Current century.

Pippa had known I'd come, and she had known which shelf.

I counted six years back and ran my thumb along the spines until one stuck out an inch.

It was a thin grey box instead of a book.

It had been pulled out and pushed in again, so you couldn't miss it.

I lifted the lid.

The first thing in the box was a photograph of a lanky young woman with a gold braid, standing on a porch in a work apron.

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