No.
I push the door open.
I have two hours, I reassure myself. Plenty of time to learn about himandThe Order. Because that’s the real goal. Figure out what The Order is. How far it goes.
This is part of that, I tell myself. I need to understand how Carrson fits into it.
Yeah.
That’s all this is.
The bed is neatly made. A glass of half-drunk water sits on the nightstand beside a book. I walk over and pick it up. A portrait of a stern-faced man stares back at me from the cover, all angles and disapproval, as if he personally hates everything I stand for. His clothing tells me he lived centuries ago, even older than the picture of Carrson’s ancestor. The one that broke when Carrson and Jackson fought.
I read the title.
Machiavelli — The Art of War.
Okay. That’s not ominous at all.
Some light bedtime reading, huh, Carrson?
Shaking my head, I set the book back down, careful to position it exactly how he left it. I go through the drawers in his dresser quickly but only find clothing. So perfectly folded they could be on a display table in The Gap.
Who knew Carrson was such a neat freak?
The closet has a few shirts on hangers, but that’s it.
The en-suite bathroom is dull. Toothbrush. Toothpaste.
Let’s not talk about how I opened his shampoo bottle and sniffed it.
I come back out, ready to keep searching, but there’s only the bed and a chair. I’m about to leave when I notice his backpack in the corner, leaning against the wall.
It’s gray, the canvas worn soft, the shoulder straps pulled all the way out to fit Carrson’s broad frame. A loose thread curls beneath the zipper, and dust clings to the bottom, probably from when he brings it to the clearing.
It’s a lot like mine back at Rosewood Hall, the one still crammed full of research on him.
The only difference is that Carrson’s doesn’t have the turtle charm on the zipper, the one Remi gave me a few months before she died.
For a minute, I stare at it, remembering all the nights I spent digging through fragments of his life, photos, records, rumors. Chasing pieces of him from a distance, trying to build something real out of scraps. There are pictures of thishouse in my files. I used to study them, wondering what it would be like to live somewhere so big, so untouchable.
Now I don’t have to guess.
I’m here.
Inside it.
Insidehim, in a way I never expected.
I can’t waste that, so I cross the room, unzip the bag, and blindly shove my hand into each pocket until my fingers close over a small rectangle. I pull it out.
Black and white. One of the composition notebooks we use in school.
I flip the pages and find notes on schedules, Ashford House meetings, reminder to call Lou and other names I don’t know. I’m at the end of the book, almost going to put it back when I hit several pages covered in his dense blocky handwriting. I bring the book closer and read. The information is in short bursts. One per line. Observations
Avoids eye contact when uncomfortable.
Over-explains when nervous.
