Chapter 15: The Vault

Celia spent the next day in a locked room at Cold Creek, with a splint on her arm and a guard at the door.

She had confessed to Tobias and me by a creek at night, and that was not enough for a Council.

I needed the book.

Maisy's brother met us on the Standifer knoll an hour after moonrise, with a leather roll of picks under his arm.

"Alpha's at the Ashfall hall with the Council," he said. "Beta's with him."

"The vault's got no guard, because nobody thinks anyone would be fool enough."

"Can you open it?"

"It's the same lock the yard puts on its fuel tanks." He crouched at the iron door and went to work.

"I open those every week."

The lock gave in less than a minute.

"I'll stay up top," he said. "Whistle's two notes. If I whistle, put the light out and don't breathe."

Tobias went down first, and I followed him into the dark with a hand on the cold wall.

The vault was a stone room as wide as Hester's kitchen.

A table stood in the middle with an oil lamp on it, and shelves ran along three walls.

The Seat Ledger lay on the table under a sheet of glass.

I lifted the glass and opened the book.

The first page was in a hand I did not know. The later pages were in my father's.

It was slanted and quick, the same as the page Hester had kept.

My eyes blurred.

Then, above us on the knoll, two sharp notes cut through the quiet.

Tobias put out the lamp with his bare fingers.

The dark came down all at once.

We stood in it, pressed against the end of the table, and we heard boots on the stone steps outside.

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