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Paper was light. Paper was almost nothing. He learned the trick of getting under the corner and letting it fall, and the notebook crept forward through Nate’s thoughts, written down in pencil. Window measurements, wiring diagrams, an extensive shopping list, and on one page the words what is Leo’s duty?

Leo stared at the line for a while.

Good question, next one, please.

The next page, as it turned out, was full of numbers.

Columns of them, in Nate’s smallest writing. Sums with minus signs. Something circled twice with ROOF next to it, and under that a longer figure crossed out and rewritten lower. At the bottom of the page: videos needed to cover = and a crossed out number and then the words too many.

Leo looked at the page for a long time.

This was about his house, with its rot and its secrets and its ghost that couldn’t be cleared, eating through a man’s savings line by labeled line. And the man in question was asleep ten feet away with a stuffed seal, having spent hours scrolling a burial index for a stranger’s name instead of working, because Leo had asked.

Leo couldn’t hold that thought with any sort of comfort, so he didn’t.

He turned the page instead. It took three tries to find his focus again, but eventually he managed. Two more pages. A sketch of the staircase, dimensions everywhere. A list of towns and SALVAGE? Then —

The light had turned pale gold at the edges of the windows, and the page fell open, and there he was.

Leo let himself study the drawing in detail.

The jaw first. Then the mouth, ready to argue. Then the hair, and the brows, and the eyes…. It looked like Nate had fussed over the eyes. He’d used his eraser a lot, trying to get this part perfect. Was it perfect now?

Leo couldn’t tell.

He still felt like he was looking at a stranger.

A fine-boned, furious stranger with a stubborn mouth. Handsome, possibly. Objectively. If one cared about that sort of thing.

Leo cared a little bit.

Nate had said it was a good face.

The memory warmed him, and he found himself leaning over the page, close enough that his breath would have touched the paper if he had breath, when he heard something.

Leo froze.

Nate was awake.

Chapter

Twenty-Three

Nate had sat up and he was watching Leo without saying anything.

How long had he been awake?

How much had he seen?

Leo straightened up from the notebook with all the dignity available to him, which was not very much. “It was open,” he said.

“Was it?”

“The wind must have opened it. I found it like that when I was patrolling.”

“I see.” The fact that Nate wasn’t trying to argue somehow made the situation worse.

“This house is very drafty,” Leo tried to insist. “You should probably do something about that. Didn’t you come here to renovate?”