Wolves of the Thousandth Winter novel · Chapter 13 of 24
Chapter 13: The Ink
My phone rang at six-forty on Sunday morning, and it was Edna.
"Come to the vault," she said. "Now. Bring him, if he's with you."
"Why would he be with me?"
"Thora, I am sixty-eight years old. Come to the vault."
Gunnar was already pulling on his jeans.
The silver glow on his shoulder had faded in the night.
But the crescent of my teeth still stood out dark and swollen on his skin.
He touched it once, with two fingers, and looked at me.
We reached the museum in ten minutes.
Edna stood at the top of the basement stairs with her thermos, in the same raincoat as before.
"I haven't touched it," she said. "I only looked."
"Looked at what?"
"Go and see."
The vault door still hung crooked from the break-in.
The ledger lay on the steel table, and nobody had undone the strap.
But it was open.
It lay open in the middle, flat, with its iron corners resting on the steel.
I pulled on my gloves.
The page was number two hundred twelve, the seer's page, black and slanted.
My name was still where it had been, under the margin note.
Under my name was a new line.
The ink was jet black and wet.
It shone under the bare vault bulb, and one letter had run a little.
The hand was the seer's hand, large and hard and leaning to the right.
"He will not choose."
Four words, and I read them three times.
"That was not there on Friday," I said.
"No."
"The ink is still wet."
"I know," said Edna, very quietly, from the stairs.
The rest of this chapter is part of the paid portion of the series. Chapters 1–12 of Wolves of the Thousandth Winter are free to read — start from the beginning, then unlock the rest with coins in the app.
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