Page 29 of He’s A 10 But… He Bites

Riley is at the table when I return, the original page flat under the lamp, turned at an angle to the light. She doesn't look up. "I found something."

"So did Cassandra."

"Me first." She points. Below Thomas' verified line, there's a faint mark—a small spiral with a dot at its center. "He used to draw this on my lunch notes. It meant look underneath. When I was a kid we hid messages this way. This is he wrote dates backward, plus a locker prefix. There's a storage locker. Under a name he used for his fellowship work—a name nobody official would know. I know it."

I set the copy beside hers. "The archive records were altered from inside. Someone kept his name and erased the rest. Which means⁠—"

"He left a second trail." She finishes it. "Outside their reach."

"Outside everything they control."

For a moment neither of us moves. Downstairs, Gabriel shifts at the door. Outside, the fog presses the window. Somewhere in this city, leadership is already deciding how badly they want her, and Lucien is gathering believers by telling lies.

"We go now," I say. "Before they make a move on finding you."

Riley folds the page back into her boot. "Ok."

I open the door. I've crossed a line tonight that doesn't let me back over it. I find I'd rather not.

19

RILEY

Gabriel waits until our taillights clear the block before he disappears. Nico drives. I'd navigate, except there's no real address. My father left a crease in the corner of his page, folded into the little spiral. Follow the spiral, he'd say, you'll find the middle of anything.

The middle of anything is a storage lot two hours west, past the last honest gas station and a billboard for a church. Rows of metal roll-up doors, a sodium lamp doing its best to murder the dark. The office is shut. A renter list is taped inside the window, and halfway down it: T. Easton, paid through. A name my father published under once, a fellowship he never explained, a name no one with fangs would think to look for.

"Easton," Nico says, low.

"His ghost has a library card." I'm already at the lock.

It's a cheap padlock, the kind that insults a person of my profession. I have it open in under a minute, then I just stand there.

Nico doesn't crowd me. He angles toward the lane, reading the dark, one hand loose at his side. "Clear," he says. "For now."

I roll the door. The smell lands first—dead toner, floor wax, the sweet rot of paper breathing the same stale air for years. Cardboard stacked high. A folding table. A space heater nobody unplugged. It's so ordinary that my throat closes.

The first box is tax returns. The second: conference programs, a stapler, a mug ringed brown. My father, reduced to a yard sale. I almost laugh. Then I open the third box and the laugh dies.

Notebooks. Dozens, his exact kind—black covers, margins crammed sideways with that scrawl. A pencil rests on top, chewed to splinters, his teeth still in the wood. Tucked in the lid, a diner receipt. Two short stacks, one coffee. Sunday mornings, our place. I was eleven and convinced syrup was a food group, and he would let me believe it.

I open the top notebook with hands that aren't quite mine. It isn't history. Or it is, but not the kind he taught. Met with the eastern party. They keep their word better than ours keep theirs. Translation done; the Concordance must not move while L. is listening. If the peace holds, no one will ever know we held it.

"Riley." Nico's voice arrives careful, like he already read over my shoulder and is bracing for the floor to give.

"He worked with you." It comes out flat, scraped clean. "Not you. Them. Vampires. He was a—what. A go-between. A translator." I flip faster, hungry and sick with it. The Concordance is not proof they exist. It is proof of what they did to stay hidden. L. wants it as a blade. The old houses want it buried. Both are right to be afraid.

My legs drop me onto the concrete.

"My whole life," I say, and it cracks. "He taught me locks. Puzzles. He made me into this—" I wave at myself, the thief, the girl who slips into rooms she shouldn't, and the thought comes with teeth: was any of it for me, or was I being built for this.

Nico crouches an arm's length off. "I'm not sure what he intended. I won't pretend I know."

"Did you know him?"

"No."

"Did Cassandra? Did your leadership know there was a human doing their quiet work and decide not to mention it to the human's daughter?"