“Oh—whatwasit? Let me see ... Twenty-two something-or-other ... not Main, I remember turning off that road to get there ... Oh yes! Grand Avenue. Twenty-two Grand.”
Bernie frowned. “Hey, Em, isn’t that near the place you were renting?”
“No.” She pressed her fingers against her cane, feeling lightheaded enough to keel over. “No, thatwasthe place I was renting.”
A few minutes later, she was full circle—standing in front of the tiny Cape Cod that six months and a lifetime ago she’d moved into.
She supposed it wasn’t the biggest coincidence in the world that she ended up in Vintner’s former home, considering their shared goal of living as close to Ashburn as possible for the least amount of money. Even so, she could hardly believe it.
“I guess this place was nice back in the day,” Bernie said, taking in the faded paint, the overgrown scrap of lawn and the ragged “For Rent” sign.
“That day was long ago.”
He laughed. “Shall we?”
They walked to the back yard, where no one would see them, and teleported in. Bernie looked around theempty kitchen, living room, laundry room, bathroom and bedroom, the extent of the house save for one exception.
“You’re sure you’ve never been up to the attic?” he asked.
“Certain.” She tugged at the trap door in the bedroom ceiling and found built-in steps that pulled down. “I didn’t even have enough stuff to fill up the one level. Here, take my cane—I think I can get up on my own.”
She stopped halfway up the steps, speechless at the sight.
“Well? Out of the way, Em,” Bernie said, sounding as impatient as a kid held back from birthday presents.
But he gaped just as she had when he poked his head through the hatchway. Then he let out a long whistle.
Every inch of floor space besides the spot where she stood was covered in boxes—piles of boxes reaching as high as the pitched roof.
. . . . .
Exhaustion and hunger eventually forced a retreat, both of them to their respective homes. But she returned the next day, slogging through the unfortunately unlabeled boxes with her one good hand, her still-healing foot propped up with a pillow.
When Bernie popped in after his classes, she shook her head. “Still nothing. A whole lot of old clothes and toys.”
“It occurred to me that he might have stored something in the Inferno itself,” he said. “Lots of old boxes there, too—”
“Oh! That’s true!”
But it was his turn to shake his head. “I looked through them all. Nothing but old campus-related paperwork.”
She grimaced. So this was it. If none of the boxes belonged to Vintner, she had no idea where to go next. In more ways than one—her Inferno research was all she had at the moment, and though her physical recovery was coming along nicely, the emotional one was still mired in first gear.
When she wasn’t dreaming of the battle, she dreamt of Hartgrave. Saw him in every bald passerby. Was constantly reminded of him by everyday life.
And she wondered all sorts of pointless things. How many people he’d killed. What caused him to see the light. What he would have been like if Kincaid had never found him.
As she shifted another box, she thought suddenly of the wizard Hartgrave had knocked out—the man whose injuries were partially her fault in a legal and moral sense.
She winced. “Have you met a wizard named Jack?”
Bernie looked up from the box he was re-taping shut. “Jack Stearne? Ex-Organization man?”
“Yes,” she said. “Yes,” she repeated, trying not to think of what the nurses had said—when she came in forherhead injury—about the difference between ablackout of less than sixty seconds and one lasting a quarter of an hour. “Is he all right?”
“Seems fine to me,” he said, shooting her a perplexed look.
“Are you sure? He, uh, got knocked out when—well, you know when. And he was unconscious for about fifteen minutes.”
