Wolves of the Thousandth Winter novel · Chapter 14 of 24

Chapter 14: Edna's Key

Edna's office had one window, one radiator, and a framed photograph of a dead logging crew on every wall.

She shut the door behind me at nine o'clock sharp.

On her blotter lay a plain brass key on a loop of leather, black with age.

"Sit," she said.

I sat.

"I'm going to tell you a thing, and then I'm going to give you a thing," said Edna.

"Please don't talk until I've done both."

"That's not a fair start."

"It's the only one I've got."

She took off her reading glasses and let them fall on their chain.

"I did not hire you by accident," she said.

I did not say anything.

It cost me.

"The Founders Collection was an excuse.

I posted the job in August, and I asked for Old Norse on purpose.

Forty-one people applied.

Three of them could read it."

"And one of them was me."

"One of them had a name that I had seen in a book.

I put your application on the desk and looked at it for an hour."

"You read the page," I said.

"I read it at twenty-eight.

My mother was the director before me, and she showed it to me on the day she told me about the pack."

Edna folded her hands.

"A name with a little hook on the g.

I did not know the hook was real until your résumé came."

My ears were ringing.

"So you picked me," I said slowly. "Out of forty-one. Because I was in the book."

"Because you read Norse better than the other two, and because you were in the book.

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