“I know.” She fell in beside Dot. They stopped in Room 40 long enough for Margot to fetch the tea and crackers she’d brought for lunch—her stomach still objected at the thought of anything more—and they joined the crowds of laughing, chattering magpies known as secretaries who surged toward the roof and the rare autumn sunshine.

For the first time in her life, Margot left an encoded sentence half-decrypted.

For the first time in her life, she really didn’t care.

Der Vampir clattered onto the table. It gleamed in the lights, clean and straight and sure. But Das Gespenst’s hands were red. They might always be red.

Poor Yūrei. He’d found Der Vampir and already had it in his stomach before Das Gespenst could stop him. A gruesome way to go—not the way he would have chosen for a friend, and not solely because it meant blood to clean up. He’d had no choice but to finish him off quickly.

For days Yūrei had been begging Das Gespenst to end it for him. He should have done it before now. Quietly, easily. A pillow over his mouth, robbing him of what little breath he could manage to pull into his lungs. That would have been the better way. A way more deserving of a friend—a friend who would never know the favor he’d done him with his death.

He sagged onto one of the hard, simple wooden chairs and stared at the flat around him. Stared at the framed photograph on the wall, at the face of Yamagata Aritomo, the former Japanese prime minister.

A telegram lay on the table before him. It gave him orders, as they always did. Orders that didn’t care if his cough was better or worse, if he had pneumonia or didn’t, if he killed or was killed. They cared only that he was back in England again. Where they’d told him to be.

Get the codebook, it said. Just as the last had said Assist in Spain. He squeezed his eyes shut. He’d never before minded the way they had him travel—he’d welcomed it. England, France, Spain, Africa. He’d been sent everywhere because of his linguistic talent.

But why couldn’t they have sent someone else back to England this time? Why that same command he’d been working on for months already? The codebooks, always the codebooks. He pried his eyelids open again, seeing the Old Admiralty Building rather than the flat. He’d tried the direct approach. He’d managed to get inside once, with a fabricated letter inviting him, but it had gotten him no farther than the lobby. Enough to see that security was tight.

Enough to see that young women were there in droves. Pushing tea carts, carrying mops and brooms, acting as secretaries. They would be the weak link. They always were—may his mother forgive him for saying so.