Chapter 14: The Archive

The group home's one phone had been cut off in June, so I couldn't ask the matron anything.

The only place on campus that kept records of the past was the archive.

"The archive is sealed," said Posy.

She said it from under her blanket at one in the morning, after I had shaken her awake and asked her to help me break a law.

"The dean keeps the key. Fae wards on the door, wolf locks on the cabinets, and a bell if you so much as breathe on the glass."

"You said shadow-walkers can go where light can't."

"Through a shadow. Not through a wall." She sat up with her black bob flattened on one side. "Mira, why do you need this?"

"Because the Alpha knew about a window," I said. "And I'm done being the last one to know things."

She looked at me for a long moment.

Then she reached for her cardigan.

Ilyan met us at the foot of the east stairs at two, silver-gold hair loose and his hands in his pockets.

"I asked to come," he said. "I'd rather watch you take the truth than be told afterward I didn't earn it."

"You can't lie to the wards?"

"I can't lie at all. But I can stand very quietly."

The archive door sat at the end of a dark corridor under a stone arch carved with moons.

Posy put her palm flat on the shadow the arch threw across the floor.

"Hold my hands," she said. "Both of you. Don't let go, and don't look down."

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