Now gloved, she did risk a touch. Just a fingertip, above the teeth, where the lips would have been stretched back around the bulbous jar.

She draped sheets of gauze over the skull as carefully as if wrapping a newborn. Its face—its gaping jaw and strange jar—vanished behind the layers of soft white. She set the bundle in a ring of foam inside the crate and layered more around it. She scoured the alcove for any small pieces or artifacts she may have missed. Nothing. Not even a bead. All they have is their jars.

The camera flash had returned, throwing her shadow in front of her, up the cave wall and across the skeletal drawings, as if she were another soot monster swallowing the stick-like figures whole.

But Henri wasn’t documenting the remains anymore. He was documenting her, just as he’d probably been told to do from the beginning. More of a spy than a guide and assistant. But he didn’t have the authority to stop her. And even if he went straight to Dr. Knochdieb, she’d have a few hours to study her sample and make her case. There was little hope either way, but at least she could learn something about the bones.

***

Ashley’s body ached as they reached the foot of the mountain. Every knuckle was skinned and bleeding, the tendons in her wrists and ankles throbbing from every twist and fall. But the specimen was safe, its crate wrapped in her blanket in the padded compartment of her pack. She’d been careful to pitch her weight forward when she fell. Her palms, her elbows, even her face took the brunt of her falls. After the first few, Henri had stopped helping her up, leaving her to the natural consequences of her decision to keep them in the mountains past dark. The mountain dark of the Alps was as black as the inside of its caves, and her dimming lantern hadn’t shown every peril on the path. She’d embarrassed herself. But she tried to focus on her project—the specimen in her pack—her future.

She nearly wept at the sight of the single lamp post that illuminated the door to their isolated research center. It was tucked in a folded valley between steep hills, along the path of an old glacier flow. The scars of its ancient passage could still be seen from the hills above. At least, in the light they could.

She wanted the close space of her drafty clapboard dorm. The antique, Alpine barn conversion had been anything but welcoming, but she’d make a home of anywhere with Tylenol and a hot bath. And a private lab.

Henri flashed his keycard at the sensor and held the door for her as she limped across the threshold. “Do you need first aid? There is ice in the kitchen.”