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I zip the staff hoodie up to my chin and stand in the back doorway for a minute, making sure my legs are steady, before I go out into the cold.

Billy Bob is fine. He’s asleep on his blanket, and when I open the door he lifts his head and gives me a long, injured look before he forgives me. I keep the walk short, once around the edge of the lot, and nobody sees us.

At five minutes to midnight, Lenart is waiting for me behind the club, at a door I hadn’t noticed before. He’s already heard about the freezer. I can see it in the line of his mouth, but he doesn’t ask me if I’m all right. He just asks whether I’m ready.

The ward stone is in a small brick room under the club, so low-ceilinged that Lenart has to bend his head. The stone itself is a waist-high slab of pale gray rock, worn smooth on top and carved along every side with the same symbols that lit up on the Solstice. It’s warmer than the room around it. I can feel that before I touch it.

“Your right hand,” Lenart says. “Flat. When it starts, don’t pull away.”

“When what starts?”

He looks at his watch. “Now.”

I put my palm on the stone.

For a second, there’s nothing. Then the symbols under my hand begin to glow, and the burning from the Solstice comes back into my palm, but it isn’t pain this time. It’s pressure, deep and steady, like the stone is pressing up into my hand as hard as I’m pressing down on it. Silver lines open under my skin and run out from my fingers across the stone, along the carvings, and up into the brick of the walls. I hear the building. I don’t know how else to say it. The old wood, the pipes, the floor above us full of people, all of it gives a long, low creak, like a house settling for the night.

Then the pressure lets go, and the light fades, and it’s just a rock under my hand again.

I’m breathing hard. My fingers, which have barely worked for an hour, are tingling all the way to the tips.

“That’s it?” I ask.

“That’s it.” Lenart is looking at the walls, where the last of the silver is sinking back into the brick. When he turns to me, his face is very hard to read. “Desmond used to say it felt like holding a door shut in the wind.”

“It felt like the building was holding me back.”

He goes quiet at that. Then he says, “Yes. That’s how it should feel.”

“At noon,” he goes on, “we start on the records. Desmond’s office. I’ll show you how all of this works.”

He looks at the hoodie and my red fingers, and I think he’s going to ask about the freezer. He doesn’t. He only steps aside to let me go up the stairs first.

The rest of the night is a blur. I take my one-thirty break with Billy Bob. I count down the minutes to close. At three, the lights come up, and the staff start breaking down the bar, and Kit sends me home with a nod I’d have killed for at Lucky’s.

Merek is waiting by the front doors.

He’s put on a black jacket he doesn’t need, and I can tell he’s been waiting a while.

“How are your hands?”

I hold them up. They’re pink and sore, but they work. “Still attached.”

“Good.” He studies my face. “Where are you staying, Tara?”

He asks it gently. It’s not like he’s trying some pickup line. He’s acting like anyone would after pulling you out of a freezer a few hours ago. And now, I have to lie to his genuinely-concerned-and- way-too-handsome face.

“The Nines,” I hear myself say. “Downtown.”

I walked past it this afternoon. It has a doorman in a long coat and a lobby full of velvet chairs and chandeliers. I couldn’t afford their parking.

“The Nines,” Merek repeats. “Do you need a ride?”

“I drove.”

“Then I’ll walk you to your car.”

“I’m fine. Really.” I step past him onto the sidewalk and make myself smile. “Thank you. For tonight. For all of it.”