Zada waited until their footsteps faded down the hallway.
“Did that just happen?” Zada blurted in a whisper. “An entanglement? Betweennuns?”
Daphne smirked. “Yeah, they sure looked entangled to me.”
“Oh my,” said Zada. She could feel her own face heating at the thought. The Sisters of Perpetual Reflection weren’t subject to the Heartsong program. Did this mean they were all in entanglements of their own choosing?
“On the bright side,” said Daphne, “it seemed like they were going to be a while. We just need to figure out where to start.”
“They mentioned that their missing something had been misfiled,” said Zada. “Sounds like maybe something in the Archives?”
“Do we really think they filed their illegal pamphlets?” Daphne pointed out. “What, under T fortreason?”
“They’re missingsomethingarchived,” said Zada. “And it has this place in an uproar, so it must be at least a little scandalous.”
“They only showed us one wing of the archives anyway,”said Daphne. “Maybe we start back there and poke around?”
Zada sighed. “If we can ever find it.”
“It’s two lefts back and then a right,” said Daphne. Zada stared at her. How in the world had Daphne remembered? Daphne, who was now giving Zada a very quizzical expression.
“Nothing,” said Zada quietly. “I’m just glad you’re here.”
“Me too,” said Daphne. “Let’s go.”
The Archives room looked the same as ever, with its whitewashed walls and densely packed shelves. Instead of slipping off to the side room of recorded interviews, Zada headed straight for the books. She tugged one volume off the shelf and read the title:Logbook of Lighthouse and Buoy Tenders, 1886–1947. The next book was nothing but census records from the 1950s.
“Nothing,” she announced. “It’s just a bunch of old files.”
“Well, yeah,” said Daphne. “Because whatever was important enough to cause that commotion is missing.”
“There has to be more than something here,” said Zada. “They hurried us to the recordings room awfully fast, don’t you think?”
Daphne and Zada searched the shelves at random. They found more census records, a yellowing book of old maps, and one folder that was just page after page of old death certificates.
“This is a bust,” groaned Daphne. “Nobody would ever curate these. They’re too boring.”
Zada hummed. Flora had taken an elective on library science at one point. She’d come away raving about how libraries were designed to be as user-friendly as possible. Maybe the trick was to think like a user of a criminal library. Keeping contraband with the rest of the collection wouldn’t just bedangerous, it would be inefficient. A person looking for illegal pamphlets wouldn’t want to wade through all of the legal, respectable titles—
She stood up straight. “What if there’s another archive?” she said suddenly.
“Only you could get a thrill from a sentence like that,” said Daphne.
Zada frowned, thinking. She reached out and tapped the wall.
“What are you doing?” said Daphne.
“My mother always says the best way to store things is to put like with like,” Zada explained. “So if there’s another, secret archive, it could be around here.” She walked a few paces and tapped again.
“What, behind a secret passageway?” said Daphne. “You read too many novels. Anyway, that’s an exterior wall. If there was anything, it would be over here or over there—”
Zada crossed the room and tapped again. Nothing. She tried a different spot. It was a distinctly different sound this time. A strangely hollow thunk, as if there was empty space on the other side. Empty space like some kind of room.
“I guess the nuns read novels, too,” said Daphne breathlessly. “Where do you think the mechanism would be to open it?”
Zada groped around the wall, finding nothing. There was no obvious sign, no brick out of place or candelabra to pull on. There was no ornamentation on the wall at all, other than an old-timey framed oil painting of Orion Fallow, gazing benevolently at the viewer. The thought of lifting it off the wall felt outrageous, a clear act of disrespect against New Ionia’s mostimportant Founder. On the other hand—
“Can you reach that and take it down?” Zada asked.
