Wolves of the Thousandth Winter novel · Chapter 6 of 24
Chapter 6: Between the Stacks
We got to the museum at ten to three.
Gunnar drove his truck down the ridge road.
Edna was waiting on the front step in a raincoat over her nightgown, holding a flashlight.
"The alarm didn't go," she said. "The back door's open, and nothing's been taken from the cases."
"The vault?" I said.
"Open."
Gunnar went past us both without a word.
I followed him down the basement stairs with my heart in my throat.
The vault door hung wide on its hinges.
The lock had not been picked.
It had been torn out of the steel, and the bolt lay on the floor in two pieces.
"Claws," Gunnar said.
His voice was low and flat.
The ledger lay on the steel table where I had left it, strapped and untouched.
My shoulders came down.
Then I saw the cloth beside it, folded back, and the strap, which was undone.
"Someone opened it," I said.
I pulled on my gloves and turned the leaves.
Yesterday I had written a leaf number in pencil in the top corner of every page.
That is how I work.
I turned to the middle, to the seer's black slanting hand.
Her page was number two hundred twelve.
The leaf before it was number two hundred ten.
I counted again.
"Where's two hundred eleven?"
Gunnar bent over my shoulder.
At the gutter, close against the binding, was a clean narrow edge.
A leaf had been cut out with a blade.
"The Law," he said.
"What?"
"That page was the Law of the Thousand."
His breath was hot on my ear.
"The seer wrote down how the reading is done. Every word of it, and what the Alpha may do."
"What the Alpha may do?"
"I never read it. I couldn't bear to look at that page."
"You never read the rules."
"I read the first line, and shut the book."
"Gunnar."
"I know."
"You gave away a book that had your whole life in it, and you didn't read the rules."
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