Page 65 of The Witch They Crave

I pull my hands back. Still shaking.

Beyond the door is a room full of shelves. Iron, floor to ceiling, packed with boxes and ledgers. The air that rolls out is dry and old and smells like paper and cedar.

"Wait here," Leopold says, and goes in alone.

He doesn't browse. He crosses the room like he's walked it a hundred times, straight to the back corner, and crouches in front of a low iron safe I can barely see from the passage. He doesn't open it. He puts one hand flat against it, the way you'd check a stovetop for heat, and goes very still.

Then he exhales, and it's the most human sound I've heard him make.

"It's here," he says. Not to me. To himself, or to no one. "It's still here."

He straightens. Takes out his phone. Whatever number he calls picks up on the first ring.

"It's where he said it would be." A pause. His voice has gone quiet and quick, stripped of all the dinner-table warmth. "No. Tonight. I don't care what it costs—move it tonight, before anyone thinks to look." Another pause. "The Voclain route. You know the one." He listens for a breath. "Good."

He ends the call and slides the phone back into his coat, then turns to face me.

He's smiling.

Not the warm one he wears for strangers. This one is slow, private, satisfied—and it sends a cold crawl straight down my spine. I don't know what puts that smile on a man like Leopold. I only know I helped him get it.

"We're leaving," he says.

My brows knit. "You didn't take anything."

"I don't need to carry it out myself. I have people for that, and this—" a small gesture back at the safe, at the whole ruined house pressing down around us "—this isn't a thing you slip in a coat pocket and move on. It'll be moved properly. Quietly." His hand closes around my upper arm, firm, already steering me back toward the stairs. "By people I trust more than I trust this neighborhood after nine o'clock."

"Leopold—what is it? What did I just open a door for."

"Something my family should never have let out of their sight." He's walking me fast now, up the stairs, through the dead hall, and the easy unhurried grace he wore all through dinner is gone—he moves like a man who's gotten what he came for and no longer wants to be anywhere near it. "Something they buried behind a door they prayed no one could open."

"You're not going to tell me."

"No." He pushes the side door open into the night and the cool air hits me like a slap. "I'm not."

The car's at the curb where we left it. Leopold opens the back door and all but pours me into it, one hand on my shoulder, and before I've found the seat he's gone from the pavement and reappeared on the other side, sliding in beside me so fast the air moves.

"Campus," he tells the driver. "Quickly."

We pull away from the dead house. I catch my breath and I don't like the quiet, so I break it.

"So that's the arrangement, then." I keep my voice light. Conversational. "I do your bidding, I open doors I'm not allowed to ask about, I aid and abet whatever it is you're doing tonight—and I keep my mouth shut."

Nothing. He watches the window.

"Is that what the sponsorship was for? All of it? The debt, the mansion, the pretty dress?" I let a little edge in. "You needed a witch who could get past that ward, and I'm the one they built. That's it. That's the whole thing."

"You're upset," he says, mild. "It's been a long night. Rest."

"Don't do that."

"Do what?"

"Talk to me like I'm a child. Like I didn't just open up that vault and give you access to something important." I turn in the seat to face him. "What did I help you do?"

He sighs. It's the sound of a man deciding I'm not worth the energy, and it makes me want to burn a hole in the upholstery.

"You're not going to bait me, Calypso. You can push all you like."