“It was a gift,” he finally said. “It arrived at the house one Christmas, addressed to Colin. He took it out of the box—it was in a glass case—and tried to open it, and then Aurellia took it out of his hands. They put the necklace, still in its glass box, and displayed it on the wall in their foyer really high up. Amanda was about fifteen at the time. She loved it. She said she used to stand there and look at it all the time, because it was so beautiful. She was never allowed to touch it. They had a break-in six months ago. The burglars took some jewelry, money, and somehow got the necklace down and made off with it. She was really upset about it.”

Lawrence looked at his hands. “I saw it at a pawnshop a week ago. I bought it for her. I…I killed her. She was so nice, so beautiful. She would sing little songs sometimes to herself when she was thinking about something or when she made coffee. And I killed her. She put it on and she just…she just died. I was right there and I couldn’t do anything…”

We stayed with him for another ten minutes, but Lawrence was done.

Ghastek waited for us in the hallway.

“Please tell me he’s on suicide watch,” Curran said.

“Of course,” the Master of the Dead said. “He is under the care of a therapist, he’s given access to the priest, and he is watched even when he sleeps. However, if he truly wants to kill himself, there is nothing any of us can do. It is unfortunate. He is nearing the end of his five-year journeymanship. We’ve invested a lot of money and time into his education.”

Of course. How silly of me to forget: the People didn’t have employees, they had human assets, each of which came with a price tag attached.

“I’ve examined your drawing of the writing on the necklace,” Ghastek said. “You said it appears to be a runic script of some sort but the characters are unfamiliar to me. How accurate is this drawing?”

“As accurate as humanly possible,” I told him.

He raised his eyebrows. “Are you familiar with the term ‘human error’?”

Are you familiar with the term “knuckle sandwich”? “The person who copied the runes from the necklace is an expert at what she does. Just because you don’t recognize the script doesn’t mean it’s not runic in origin. The Elder Futhark alphabet has undergone many modifications over the years.”

Ghastek took out the copy of Julie’s drawing. “I’ve studied this subject extensively and I’ve never seen a rune like this.” Ghastek pointed to a symbol that looked like an X with a double left diagonal arm.