Valia knocked once, and Helly called, “Come in.”

Kerrigan stepped inside, closing the door behind her. “Helly.”

“Oh, Kerrigan, good. She found you.”

“I was already on my way.”

“Oh? What for?”

Kerrigan crossed her arms. “You closed the investigation.”

Helly sighed. “You heard about that?”

“Yes! What were you thinking?”

“It wasn’t my call. The head investigator found no evidence to trace back to the perpetrator. No one had any information.”

“And you didn’t get any because you refused to question the Society members!”

Helly frowned and slowly sank into her seat. “I was overruled in that as well. You must see how it looks. As someone now in the Society, we go through vigorous training. Our life is dedicated to this place. To question our own would mean to question the very methods that put them there.”

“Maybe that’s a good thing.”

“Maybe it is,” Helly said. “But you’re young, and you change much more willingly. The others …”

“So, you’re going to let them get away? Someone within the Society did this, and you aren’t even going to find out who it was?”

“That is the way of things. We have suspicions, and we’re waiting to see if they slip up.”

“You’re waiting for another murder?” Kerrigan gasped.

“Gods, no, Kerrigan. Don’t you know me better than that? I have people being watched. I am doing what I can through the means I have. I cannot publicly accuse people, but I can search out evidence my own way.”

Kerrigan finally sank into a seat next to Helly, her anger turning into resignation. “Why must it be this way?”

Helly took one of Kerrigan’s hands. “The Society has been around for thousands of years. We’re changing incrementally all the time. We’ll do what we can, I promise.”

It wasn’t enough, but it would have to do for now.

“And I called you here because Zina sent me this.”

Helly passed Kerrigan a slip of paper with Zina’s scrawl on it.

I can start training the girl on the Night of the Dead. Let her know, will you, Hell?

Kerrigan shivered. The Night of the Dead was still six weeks away, and just thinking about it made her nervous. “Why do we have to wait so long?”

“With Zina, who knows? If she says the Night of the Dead, then she knows what she’s doing.”

“All right. The Night of the Dead it is,” Kerrigan said, rising to her feet.

Irritation about the investigation hit her. She hated that this place was still so set in the past. And she was starting to worry that one girl wasn’t going to be able to fix it.

27

The Library

“You’re doing just fine,” Audria said, clapping Kerrigan on her back as they headed to lunch later the next week.

“I suck,” she grumbled.