83. Kate

Now I have the amulet back I feel safer, Austin is still using me for meetings, but the suspicion has lessened. Over the past couple of weeks I have most of my meals with Seraphine and Mina. I laugh sometimes. I have a routine. I am assembling the fragments of a life here in Greenway.

It is all necessary to provide a cover for my true intentions.

Every time a meeting ends and I head down to the library to add to the records I open a filing cabinet drawer. There is no apparent logic to the previous scribe’s system. Random years, random topics spill out as I take a couple of minutes each day to try and find whatever it is I need to help Dex.

In the two weeks since we returned, I have gone through just one silver filing cabinet, another two dozen to go, plus the meters of bulging wooden shelving, plus the lockboxes. I need to get faster but the howling anguish of Hugo reminds me of the price I will pay for being found rooting through these documents.

Just as I finish putting away some