Chapter 11: The Lamp in the Office

I woke in the hotel room at three in the morning, in the dark, with my heart going hard.

For a second I did not know where I was.

There was no light under the door and no hum of a refrigerator, only the dark pressing down.

I reached for the lamp and could not find it.

My hand found the wall, then the nightstand, then the phone.

It was a dead black slab, and for one terrible moment I thought it had died at midnight again.

Then I remembered the charger, and the plane, and the city outside the window.

I got up, put on my shoes, and turned on every light in the room.

It did not help.

The room was too quiet, and I could not stay in it.

I took my key card and walked out into the hall.

The streets of Myria were wet and nearly empty, and the lamps threw yellow circles on the stones.

I did not think about where I was going until I stood outside the glass doors of the office, two streets from the hotel.

One window on the third floor was lit.

The night guard looked at my badge, which Declan had put in my hand at the airport, and waved me through with a nod.

I took the stairs.

The third floor was an open room full of empty desks, dark except for a corner office at the far end.

Its door stood open, and a small brass lamp burned on the desk inside.

Declan Trevellian sat behind it in a rolled-sleeve shirt with his feet on a drawer, reading a printout with a pencil in his teeth.

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