Eve looked at the library table.
At the notes. The open books. The shape of a forty one year investigation arriving at three nas and one location.
"Can you get to her," Eve said.
"I think so," Vessa said. "Not directly. She’ll run if she thinks it’s connected to any of this." She paused. "She needs to feel safe before she talks. She needs to believe that coming forward won’t kill her."
"Can you make her believe that," Eve said.
Vessa looked at her.
"No," she said. "Not alone." She held Eve’s gaze. "But you can."
Eve looked back at her.
"She left because she had a limit," Vessa said. "The sa limit the unnad person had who warned your mother. She didn’t know about you specifically....I don’t think she knew Lilith was pregnant. But she knew what Malachai was doing and she couldn’t keep doing it alongside him." She paused. "That kind of person.....they don’t need strategy. They don’t need legal argunt." She looked at Eve steadily. "They need to know it ant sothing. That leaving cost them forty years of hiding and it ant sothing."
The library was quiet.
Eve thought about a woman who had been hiding from the sa man she had been hiding from for years.
"Where," Eve said.
"A village," Vessa said. "Four hours east. Small. Old." She paused. "She runs a bookshop."
Eve almost smiled.
"Of course she does," she said.
***
She told Damian that evening.
He listened.
When she finished he was quiet for a mont.
"You want to go yourself," he said.
"Yes," she said.
"Not Vessa alone."
"Vessa gets us to her," Eve said. "But Vessa is connected to all of this....to the history, to my mother, to everything Sable has been running from for years." She paused. "I’m connected to it differently. I’m what it was for." She looked at him. "I’m what Sable’s limit was protecting without knowing it."
Damian looked at her.
"When," he said.
"Two days," she said. "Before Raphael cos back. Before Malachai finds his next angle." She paused. "While the window is still open."
"I’m coming," he said.
"I know," she said.
"Silas and Damon...."
"Stay here," she said. "Soone has to hold the estate. Soone has to be here when my uncle’s information arrives." She paused. "Two days. In and out." She held his gaze. "Trust ."
He looked at her.
At the pendant at her collar.
"I trust you," he said.
She noddedn then left to find Vessa.
***
She told Damon last.
He was in the training room. Working through sothing physical the way he did when his head needed quieting. She stood in the doorway and watched him for a mont.
He stopped when he saw her.
Read her face.
"You’re going sowhere," he said.
"Two days," she said. "With Damian and Vessa. There’s a witness....Malachai’s forr archivist. She’s been hiding for years. We think we can get to her."
Damon looked at her.
"And you’re telling to stay," he said.
"I’m asking you to hold the estate," she said. "You and Silas. Soone has to be here when Uncle Raphael’s answer cos back."
He was quiet for a mont.
"Is it safe," he said.
"Safer than the vault retrieval," she said.
"That’s not reassuring."
"No," she said. "It isn’t."
He looked at her for a long mont.
Then he crossed the room.
Put both hands on her face.
Looked at her directly the way he always look at her when he is about to say sothing serious.
"Co back," he said.
"Always," she said.
He kissed her deeply.
"Go get her," he said.
Eve peaked his lips then left his office.
****
They left before dawn.
Vessa in the back seat. Damian driving. Eve watching the road co awake through the passenger window....grey first, then pink, then the flat ordinary light of early morning that made everything look temporary.
Four hours east.
Nobody spoke during the journey until they got there.
***
The village was called rrath.
Smaller than Aldenre. Older. The kind of place that had stopped trying to be anything other than what it was a long ti ago and had found a specific peace in that.
One main street. Stone buildings. A bakery with its lights already on. A post office that looked like it opened twice a week if the weather was good.
And at the far end....a bookshop.
No sign. Just books visible through the window. Stacked without system, the specific beautiful chaos of soone who had been accumulating them for years and had stopped pretending organization was possible.
Eve looked at it through the windscreen.
"She’s inside," Vessa said.
"Does she know we’re coming," Eve said.
"No," Vessa said. "If she knew she’d run."
Damian looked at Eve.
Eve looked at the bookshop.
At the warm light through the window. At the chaos of spines visible from the street. At the life a woman had built in a small village four hours from everything she’d once been.
"I go in alone," Eve said.
Damian went still.
"Eve...."
"Alone," she said. "You and Vessa wait here." She turned to look at him. "If she sees Vessa she’ll know imdiately what this is. If she sees an alpha she’ll feel cornered." She paused. "She needs to think this is ordinary. Just a custor. Give ten minutes before she knows anything else."
Damian looked at her.
She held his gaze.
"Ten minutes," he said.
"Ten minutes," she said.
She got out of the car.
A bell above the door.
Small. Old. The specific sound of a place that had been announcing custors the sa way for decades.
The shop slled like paper and sothing warm....tea, maybe, or just the particular sll of a space that had been lived in carefully for a long ti.
Books everywhere.
Floor to ceiling on two walls. Stacked on the floor in towers that had their own logic. A small table near the window with three chairs and a teapot that was still steaming.
Behind the counter at the back....a woman.
She looked up when the bell rang.
Fifty sothing. Dark hair going silver at the temples. Sharp eyes....the kind that assessed and filed and missed nothing. The kind that had spent twelve years archiving everything Malachai touched and had learned to see quickly and rember completely.
She looked at Eve.
A feeling crossed her face, small and Involuntary but it vanished almost imdiately.
But Eve had seen it.
Recognition.
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