The ink had drawn away from Rosia. Claire replayed what had just occurred again in her mind to be sure. She forced the memory to advance, frame by frame. The every-person had seemed protective, and the ink had seemed to align with that. Rosia had been certain, and then she’d been gone.
Maybe not gone. Claire held on to that idea like a lifeline. Rosia was in there; she would get Rosia back. Because the alternative was failing, again.
Claire straightened from the pool as she recalled Rosia’s words: It wants to be more. More what, then? More than a ghost?
It was then that Claire remembered that ghost stories usually had unsatisfactory endings. She had loss but no closure. She had an unsettled fear but no answers. She did, however, have a pool of questions. She would stop hiding from them.
Ghosts, Rosia had said. If it was time to hunt ghosts, she first needed to put her own to rest.
9
RAMI
I have the wing to rights, as far as I understand it. The books sleep; the demons stay at a distance. Even Revka, the stone woman, seems to approve. Everything makes sense, except why this place should exist at all. And why in a place of suffering? The logbook is no help; it shows me words just cryptic enough to increase my questions.
I am in a world of damnation. I should not borrow trouble. But my mother taught me the viper that one doesn’t follow to its hole is the viper that bites you.
Librarian Madiha al-Fihri, 602 CE
IT’D BEEN UNUSUALLY EASY to explain his absence to Claire. He’d found the Arcanist near the front of the wing, staring with some indecision at the doors. She’d jumped when Rami cleared his throat.
“Rami. Right,” Claire said briskly, though Rami hadn’t said anything that required agreement. “I have a task for you.”
“Ma’am?” Rami had been gearing up to explain his absence, but Claire disappeared down the aisle at a brisk pace. Rami had to lengthen his stride to catch up. “Has something happened?”
“No!” Claire responded immediately and, if possible, quickened her pace even more. “No, of course not. It just occurred to me that there was an artifact overlooked that should go in quarantine.”
Rami grimaced. “The waxed dragon scales? I apologize, ma’am, but it seemed like an edge case—”
“I’m not—” Claire paused outside her private alcove and gave Rami a querulous look. “I wasn’t talking about the dragon scales. Not your fault at all. This one isn’t on the official inventory, after all.”
“Not—” Rami caught his breath as Claire pulled a key from her skirts and opened the bottommost drawer. Six months of disuse made the unoiled rails screech, and Bird complained from somewhere in the rafters above them. At the bottom of the drawer, the tip of a small blade poked out from beneath a tower of discarded paper scraps, like the fang of a viper. “Claire, are you sure? You said the safest place for that . . .”
“Was out of sight, forgotten. I know.” It had to be the dimmer light in the alcove that made Claire look abruptly pale. Her gaze flicked around nervously before she appeared to remember herself. “But if this ink is a lingering threat from the coup, I want him secured far away from it.” Claire studied an indefinite point on the desk. “And me.”
“You?” Rami considered his accumulated observations and the nervy tension in Claire’s face. “You mean you are afraid to touch it.”
“Really, Rami! I hold a cautious misgiving about touching it, with my stained hand,” Claire corrected, a shadow of her imperious self shaking her mood. She sniffed. “As if I would grant Andras the gift of my fear. He’s unworthy.”
“I agree.” Rami stepped forward to take the dagger artifact that contained the essence of their fallen enemy—once friend, as Rami had understood it, though he had been no friend of any demon. Claire stepped back, knocking the arm of her chair against the wall. She hid the moment she flinched in a grimace.
“I’ll wrap it and place it in the very back of the vault,” Rami said slowly. The exposed blade was chill in his palm, but no colder than any polished metal. He hesitated at the alcove entrance, but Claire didn’t meet his gaze. “Andras is gone and can threaten no one now. He’s dead, Claire. Or as good as dead.”
“Yes, well . . . the dead do have a way of making a nuisance of themselves when it comes to me.” Claire’s smile was too tight to avoid being a grimace.
“It only seems that way,” Rami soothed as he tucked the knife away, watching as Claire visibly relaxed once it was out of sight. “I think we do the haunting to ourselves. Death keeps its own secrets.”
Claire sighed, nodding defeat if not agreement. “We do. And Death—”
Her chin froze midmotion and her gaze sharpened enough to send a prickle of alarm up Rami’s neck. “Claire?”
“Nothing. Nothing. Just a passing thought to consider.” Claire straightened, and she appeared so much more her old self that Rami didn’t dare question it. She made a shooing motion. “Get that in the vault, if you please.”
* * *
IT WAS A CAREFUL matter storing what was effectively the Arcane Wing’s most notorious prisoner in the archive vaults. Rami was grateful for it. It gave him time to formulate the careful way he would broach Hero’s proposed lead with Claire.
“I’d like to look into some things,” Ramiel said after finding Claire near the ink reservoir. She appeared to have gathered her calm again and had convinced the wing to repair the floor to something resembling a small—if incredibly gothic-looking—reflecting pool for the ink. She stared into it with what appeared to be expectation—as
