She looked up from her book. “For what?”
“Not giving him hell.”
“I know a lot of people who can’t read. It’s not a big deal.”
“Ward’s men are supposed to be able to, though. He’s one of a few who can’t.”
Zaria shrugged, flipping a page. “I’m not going to judge someone for the things they weren’t taught. Besides, what does it matter? I thought Ward’s men were yours now.”
There was a slight edge to her voice, and the words landed like a sobering blow. All at once, Kane remembered who he was.Whathe was. Something about sitting here with Zaria, surrounded by books and the sound of her voice, made his role as kingpin feel impossibly far away.
“They are,” he said, slamming a tome shut. He’d already forgotten what it was about. “I’ve made sure of it.”
He didn’t miss the flash of alarm in Zaria’s eyes as she turned back to her reading. Before Kane could try to mend whatever had just fragmented, however, Fletcher reappeared in the doorway.
“Guys? You might want to see this.”
ZARIA
Zaria stared at the symbol painted on the wall of Cecile’s bedroom. It had obviously been done in haste: The white lines weren’t quite straight, and the paint had begun to drip before drying completely.
That wasn’t what made her stomach plummet, though. No—she was far more concerned with the familiarity of it. Not because it was the symbol for alchemology’s Magnum Opus, but because itwasn’t quite.
“Three circles,” she murmured, approaching the wall to touch the bull’s-eye shape, lingering on the chalky texture of the thickly applied paint. “Just like on the Curator’s business card.”
Kane hollowed his cheeks. “Why would Cecile have painted this here?”
“I don’t know.” The floor felt unsteady beneath her feet. Try as she might, Zaria couldn’t force it to make sense.
“Can we be certain itwasCecile?” Fletcher said. “I mean, unless she tore her own apartment apart, someone else has been here recently. Maybe whoever it was drew the symbol.”
The prospect gave Zaria a moment of relief, but Kane was already shaking his head.
“Whoever searched the place was in a rush,” he pointed out. “They weren’t worried about leaving a mess. If they’d done this, the supplies would have been left out, but I don’t see paint or brushes anywhere.”
“That’s true,” Fletcher admitted.
“What’s more, it isn’t easy to mix paint. You need to have the right components.”
“Linseed oil, turpentine, and pigment,” Zaria supplied, remembering the times she’d watched her father do just that.
“Right. It’s not something you take the time to mix when you’re ransacking a place. I think we can assume Cecile painted this herself. But why? Who was meant to see it?” Kane paused, gripping the back of his neck. “Andhowwas she connected to the Curator?”
Zaria didn’t have an answer to that. The lump that had tightened her throat upon arriving here was back. Not only had Cecile been a walkable distance from the pawnshop for several silent years, but this was more proof Zaria hadn’t understood the woman as well as she’d thought.
“We need to keep searching her documents,” Kane said when no one offered a reply. “There must be something useful around here.”
With that, he and Fletcher made their way back to the sitting room. Zaria remained in the bedroom, trying and failing to imagine Cecile occupying the space. Nothing about it struck her as specificallyCecile. The walls were devoid of any art or ornamentation, save of course the painted white symbol. On the floor was a simple rugin a faded floral pattern. The bed was a mess, the mattress shifted slightly off the frame on a diagonal, the sheets untucked as if someone had attempted to look beneath them.
Zaria sank onto the mattress as she picked up yet another stack of parchment, her gaze refusing to focus on the text. She felt disconnected from reality. Hollow in a way that scraped at her insides.
Why?she wanted to ask the room at large.Why did it have to be like this?
But she couldn’t bring herself to speak aloud. What good would it do? Cecile was dead, and whatever reasons she’d had for staying away from Zaria all these years had died with her.
The documents continued to provide little illumination, even those written in Cecile’s own hand. Several referred to primateria in passing, which had Zaria’s heart lurching into her throat, but none mentioned the Curator, the Magnum Opus, or anything to explain what the woman had gotten wrapped up in. Once, Kane called her into the sitting room to examine an excerpt from one of Cecile’s notebooks—he had a difficult time deciphering handwriting—but Zaria’s hope faded when it turned out to be nothing more than the procedure for activating aleuite.
An hour or so later, she picked up what appeared to be a folded piece of correspondence. She’d managed to procure a candle from one of the cabinets in Cecile’s small kitchen, and she sat hunched on the floor beside the lambent flame, squinting at words that grew progressively more difficult to see. Strangely, it appeared the letter had been written by Cecile herself, which could only mean she’d never delivered it. It wasn’t formal by any stretch of the imagination.
