As soon as Nirav and Pax part ways in the kitchen, Nirav kicks off the god-awful three-dollar oxford shoes Pax bought him, and he moves stealthily about the apartment. During the party preparations—the musicians tuning instruments, the florists arranging flowers, the caterers stacking mounds of food, most of which will go uneaten—no one sees the mouse who loops the fishing wire over the chandelier and ties it off on the leg of the table.
No one doubts his presence as he lays out a Ouija board with a magnet in the planchette and a luscious stack of tarot cards.
No one questions him when he stands atop a chair and writesHELP USin kerosene on the mirror, which will slowly reveal itself in the smoke from the forty-some-odd candles on the mantel. The others assume he is adjusting and lighting the forty-some-odd candles.
Then, his main job:
Find. The. Safe.
He tiptoes into the parlor—a room he painted sight-unseen weeks before—and lightly trails his fingertips over hundreds of leather books. The stifling hunger that surrounds Max Blanck’s personal belongings seeps into his bones.
How brave, this child! Every surface he touches in this cold, inhospitable apartment reeks of materialism and insatiable appetite. Nirav absorbs each emotion through touch, and as he searches Blanck’s bookshelves,
his stomach growls,
his throat dries,
his eyes narrow,
his jaw tightens,
his fists ball,
his heart hardens,
and his soul aches for more
more
more.
He is greed.
He DESERVES things. He needs them. He can taste the desire for excess. He could justtake, steal things and leave on his own, and to hell with everyone else.
He should do exactly that, shouldn’t he? Screw the others over and take, take, take. They are using him, after all. They need him. He does not need them.
(Oh, but greed is a liar.)
At last, his fingers trail over the three books that conceal the cold hollow of the safe. When he removes his fingertips from the books, it’s as if his soul has undergone a terrible fever.
Through the sweat dripping into his eyes, over the nausea churning in his belly, Nirav turns the books on either side of the three books that camouflage the safe backward.
Pax will now know where to place the stolen valuables.
JUSTICE
THE 11TH MAJOR ARCANA CARD
A ruler sits on a throne. They hold a sword in one hand and scales in the other.
Upright: justice, consequences, truth, honesty, integrity
Reversed: injustice, dishonesty, corruption, unfairness
Dear Friend, the justice card in tarot suggests that the system of justice is hazardous, even to the innocent. Pax Princip waited fourteen months after the murder of his sister Julia to seek vengeance. Fourteen months of seething, burning, soul-aching anger.
What no one else in Julia’s Bureau knows is that Pax’s plan also includes the murder of Max Blanck.
