“Those are the only names I have.” She frowned. Many people avoided the Halls of Law; not all missing persons became the subject of reports. Those that didn’t wouldn’t appear in Records at all—but she had four names, and one of them might. They didn’t look like they were the children of the wealthy, or the reasonably well-off, given the clothing they wore—but she didn’t know enough about the dead because, until yesterday, she mostly hadn’t believed ghosts existed.

No, that wasn’t completely true. She just hadn’t believed human ghosts existed. “Time?”

“Seven forty-five.”

She had to reach the front desk in fifteen minutes, and while the front desk was possessed of a mirror, searching Records in front of civilians was heavily frowned on.

Sergeant Keele wore an expression very similar to Caitlin’s, but with an added dash of deep suspicion. People didn’t volunteer for front desk duty; they were assigned it, and they went with minimal—but obvious—grumbling. Severn was still unavailable, which meant Kaylin was off her beat, and in any other circumstance, she would have stayed quiet and hoped to be passed over.

“I need to speak with Mrs. Erickson,” Kaylin told the sergeant.

“Mrs. Erickson.”

The younger Hawk nodded. “I saw her home yesterday, and we had a spot of trouble from her neighbor.”

“We? As in the both of you?”

“He didn’t seem all that impressed with the Hawk, no.”

Sergeant Keele’s lips compressed, but she nodded; this was an acceptable reason to volunteer for a duty one usually avoided like the plague. “How did she react to this?”

“She tried to make excuses for me, and to point out that I was young and didn’t mean to be disrespectful.”

The sergeant’s eyes narrowed. “Fine. Desk is yours.”

Mrs. Erickson tended to visit the Halls of Law in the early afternoon; Kaylin was certain she spent the mornings baking in preparation for that visit. She wondered if the children crowded into the kitchen while she worked; she suspected they did.

That meant that Kaylin was at the front desk when other, less amiable civilians visited. She dutifully wrote—by hand—the gist of their complaints, and forced herself not to doodle in the margins. Some were property disputes, which was difficult. Some demanded protection from...well, Kaylin wasn’t exactly sure what. She tried her best not to be judgmental, and that lasted about an hour.

Some were serious complaints, one involving domestic violence and children. Those she forwarded immediately to the Hawks whose investigative beat it was. And some were complaints from obviously well-heeled people who had thought it would be a lark—or a test of courage, if not a test of stupidity—to have a party in the warrens.

There was nothing outrageous enough to be humorous, and humor was one of the few rewards of the public desk—albeit a humor that sprouted from outrage and disbelief.

But Mrs. Erickson did make her way to the front desk. Only when Kaylin caught sight of her did she relax. The presence of the neighbor weighed far more heavily on her mind than she’d expected.