18. Nico
NICO
Riley is walking ahead, fast, her shoulders pulled in tight. Every dozen paces her hand drops to her boot—a quick press against the leather, checking the page is still there. She thinks I don't notice, but I notice everything about her now. I just don't say it.
"We're clear," I say. "No tail. Slow down."
She doesn't. "You said that two streets ago."
"It's still true."
A foghorn drones somewhere out on the water. The street is wet, and empty.
"What does it mean?" she asks abruptly. "Failsafe viable. The line said failsafe viable. What is that?"
"I don't—"
"You must know." She interrupts.
"I don't."
She studies me like she's deciding whether I'm lying. Whatever she sees in me, she accepts it. She starts walking again. "Great. Wonderful. My dead father's handwriting in a vampire custody ledger and the one person who's supposed to understand any of this has nothing."
"No. But I know who can prove whether it's real."
"Then we go to them."
"No." I keep walking before she can turn that word into a fight. "You don't. If I take you into one of our rooms with that page in your boot, they'll call you evidence and lock the door. I take a copy. You keep the original. First, I get you somewhere they don't own."
The place is a furnished apartment above a shuttered tailor's shop two miles inland, the kind Gabriel keeps on standing arrangements under names that lead nowhere. No one, vampire or human, owns it. No one will think to look here.
Gabriel is already there when we climb the stairs, leaning against the kitchen counter. "Street's quiet," he says. "I walked it multiple times." He nods at Riley, easy, unbothered. "Bathroom's down the hall. Kettle works if you want it."
Riley doesn't answer him. She crosses to the window and stands with her back to the wall, the page still in her boot. I make a copy of her father's handwriting with the photocopier while Riley stands over me.
"I need Cassandra to read the archive side," I say. "The records around the ledger, not the page itself. She can tell me who touched the chain."
Riley looks at the photocopy on the table. "And if they ask where the real one is?"
"They won't get an answer."
"From you."
"From anyone. The annex doesn't need you there to become dangerous.
The moment they know Thomas Harrow's daughter is alive, holding the original, they'll start treating you like a problem.
" I nod toward the copy. "They get that.
A shadow. Enough for Cassandra to read the damage, not enough for anyone to bury your father's page. "
Her hand drops to her boot again. This time, it stays there. "And while you're gone?"
"Gabriel keeps the door. You keep the page. Nobody crosses either."
"Door, window, street," Gabriel says. "I've got all three covered."
The annex beneath Boston is cold stone and recessed light. Cassandra has the route logs open before I finish explaining. She lays my rubbing beside a bound register, traces the line with one gloved finger.
"It's real," she says quietly. "Not the paper.
I can't prove paper from a copy. But the language is ours.
" She turns the register toward me, one gloved finger stopping on three separate columns.
She points to the notes. "Those aren't notes.
They're fields. Someone filled them in, then stripped the surrounding record so only Thomas' line would survive.
" She turns another page, slower this time.
"The transfer number is missing. The custody mark was confirmed, then sealed.
And failsafe—" She stops. "That column should not exist in this ledger. "
My phone jingles. Gabriel. Lucien's moving.
Showed his fragment to the old houses. Telling them leadership buried the vault to protect their own seats.
A second message, a clip of intercepted audio—Lucien's voice, unhurried, almost gentle.
We were not protected. We were managed. Ask yourselves what else they decided you didn't need to know.
I hate that it's persuasive. The alert comes before I've pocketed the phone—a soft tone through the annex, and then footsteps. One representative, senior, robed in the red of leadership. He doesn't waste words.
"You'll surrender the original page. The relic. And the thief's location. She'll be placed under sealed containment until the matter is resolved."
"No," I say.
"You're attached, Serrano. Compromised."
"I'm careful." I step closer, slow. "You can have the obsidian when this is finished. You will not have her. You won't learn from me where she is."
He holds my gaze longer than he wants to. Then he steps back, and lets me leave.
Riley is at the table when I return, the original page flat under the lamp, turned at an angle to the light. She doesn't look up. "I found something."
"So did Cassandra."
"Me first." She points. Below Thomas' verified line, there's a faint mark—a small spiral with a dot at its center.
"He used to draw this on my lunch notes.
It meant look underneath. When I was a kid we hid messages this way.
This is he wrote dates backward, plus a locker prefix.
There's a storage locker. Under a name he used for his fellowship work—a name nobody official would know. I know it."
I set the copy beside hers. "The archive records were altered from inside. Someone kept his name and erased the rest. Which means—"
"He left a second trail." She finishes it. "Outside their reach."
"Outside everything they control."
For a moment neither of us moves. Downstairs, Gabriel shifts at the door. Outside, the fog presses the window. Somewhere in this city, leadership is already deciding how badly they want her, and Lucien is gathering believers by telling lies.
"We go now," I say. "Before they make a move on finding you."
Riley folds the page back into her boot. "Ok."
I open the door. I've crossed a line tonight that doesn't let me back over it. I find I'd rather not.