Thrown Out at Midnight, I Saved a General by Dawn novel · Chapter 19 of 24
Chapter 19: The Ledger
Ansel's POV
The man who ran Lab 4 sat on the edge of a hotel armchair and could not get his case open.
His hands shook too badly.
He was seventy years old, gray and narrow, in a coat that had been good thirty years ago.
I took the case from him and set it on the table.
"The latches stick," I said. "Let me."
"Thank you, General," he said. "I have been afraid of this case for twenty-seven years."
Tessa sat on the bed with a drip in her arm and a blanket on her shoulders.
Her left hand had come back, and her right was still dead in her lap.
She did not take her eyes off him.
He did not take his eyes off her either.
"You have her eyes," he said. "She said you would. She sent me a drawing, when you were two."
"She sent you a drawing," Tessa said.
"She wrote to me for years, under a false name. Every few months, a card. In the last one she said she was sick, and that she thought she knew why."
I opened the latches.
A single glass vial lay in gray foam, with a hand-lettered label gone brown.
Beside it lay a black ledger as thick as a bible.
"The reversal," the lab director said. "She finished it the week before she ran. She left one vial in the vault and told me to hold it until someone came who could use it."
"Twenty-seven years," Tessa said.
"I changed the seal every year. The vault is checked every month."
"Why didn't you come to me?"
"I did not know where you were. Nobody did. Until this morning, when your face was in the Norfolk newspaper."
He turned to me.
Keep reading free with an account. Start Thrown Out at Midnight, I Saved a General by Dawn from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.
← Chapter 18 · All chapters · Chapter 20 →
Want to keep talking to characters like these? Chat with AI romance characters: AI Boyfriend · AI Girlfriend · Dark Romance · Fantasy Romance · BL (Boys’ Love) · Billionaire Boyfriend · Mafia Boyfriend · Possessive Boyfriend · Hockey Boyfriend · Older Boyfriend · K-Drama Boyfriend · Anime Boyfriend · Vampire Boyfriend · Werewolf Boyfriend · Demon Boyfriend · Fae Romance · GL (Girls’ Love) · Anime Girlfriend · Goth & Alt Girlfriend · Gamer Girlfriend · Tsundere Girlfriend · Fantasy Girlfriend