There’s a wicked glint in her eye as she explains, “If the killing is related to the veil, we can’t just sit and wait until he decides to give us more information. I decided to be proactive. And really, he should be less careless with his research. It was all there, on his desk in his unlocked office. It could have been any number of Saint Bosco’s students.”

The wind ripples through the tendrils of hair falling in front of her face. She smiles. I smile back and it doesn’t feel false.

“Let’s go, then.”

Back at Maxine’s flat we run into her room and shut the door behind us.

Nina bangs on the door a few times begging to be let in, but Maxine bribes her with a promise to take her to the carousel later in the day.

Lena fans the stolen documents out on the floor in front of us, a variety of yellowing pages, freshly handwritten notes, and torn newspaper clippings.

The fight with Oliver in the train station still stings, like paper cuts all over, and I am grateful to have this distraction. I’m glad I told them all the truth about William and my father, but I’m unsure where Oliver and I currently stand. It feels as if we’re fragile. Not broken, but covered in hairline cracks that could rupture at any moment.

The papers are hard to discern. They include articles about art exhibits, grainy black-and-white pictures of archeological artifacts, nursery rhymes, poems, firsthand accounts of historical events.

It’s difficult to find a common thread between them, let alone a clue worth following. The ones that mention death at all are few and far between.

There are a few family trees that mysteriously end. Photographs of graves with the dates circled and annotated with question marks.

We work for hours to untangle it all, to find even a single thread of connection to pull on. But we don’t get far. I have a headache and Lena has painting class, so we call it quits for the day, stack the papers up neatly, and hide them in the drawer of Maxine’s desk.

I’m lying in my bed later that evening, thinking of the documents and trying to figure out next steps, rather than dressing for dinner, when a knock at the door startles me.

It’s Greta, the DuPres’ housekeeper with the perpetually stern look on her face.

“There’s a guest here for you.”

“For me?”

“Yes, Miss Hallowell, for you.”

I force myself upright before my brain has the chance to shuffle through its desk of worst-case scenarios. I picture Finn, pacing and sharp-toothed in the finery of the DuPre receiving room. He’d charm his way in. I know he would.