Chapter 7: The Vault

I couldn't sleep, so I went to find out what my feet knew.

It was past two in the morning. The abbey was silent except for the wind in the arches.

I took the candle from the fireplace and slid back the bolt.

Nobody was in the corridor.

I started down the east stair, and at the first landing I stopped thinking.

Left. Down the steps. Right at the broken saint. Through a low door that stuck, unless you lifted it as you pushed.

I lifted it as I pushed.

My body had done this a thousand times.

The stairs ended at the catacombs, and the catacombs ended at an arch with a lock the size of my fist.

I put my hand in my hair and found a pin.

It was out and in the lock before I had thought the word lock.

I held still, with the pin trembling, and listened to the mechanism turn over.

The door opened.

"I did that," I whispered. "I did that, and I don't even know why."

The Mirror stood at the end of the room.

It was dark, with its red halo gone out, and it was the biggest thing I had ever seen. I hadn't imagined it could be so beautiful.

I walked the length of the vault to it.

My reflection looked back, a tired woman in a borrowed gown, with a scar across the bridge of her nose.

A stranger. But I knew where to put my feet.

On the right wall stood a tall shelf of black ledgers.

I reached for the third from the top, and my fingers closed on it.

It was heavy. The cover said, in gold, UNWRITTEN.

I opened it.

Names. Dates. A column marked "Sent." Row after row, for two hundred years, in a dozen different hands.

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