Two days after the date on this ledger.

“Shit,” Ana says softly, leaning back in the magistrate’s own chair.

Leaning over her, I take a closer look at the entry in the ledger. There is another smaller notation in the margins. “O, S, H. What do you think that means?”

Ana frowns, her lips pursing in concentration. Then, her eyes widen. “No. It can’t be.”

“Can’t be what?”

“Like I said, Esmeralda had a ledger just like this.” She taps the OSH notation. “When a girl was in trouble, she marked their name in the ledger with these letters so she would know that they weren’t earning for that period of time.”

“In trouble? What period of time?”

She looks at me as if I’ve just said something hopelessly naive. “Pregnant, Kiki. And roughly nine months. OSH is the name for the Ordo Sancti Hieronymi. When one of her girls got with child, she’d send them there. But why would—”

A noise captures my attention. My head swivels toward the door of the study. It is closed, but not locked.

“Did you hear that?” I ask.

Before Ana can reply, I hear it again. The distinct sound of a door opening and closing. The dull thud of footfalls approaching the study. I think about taking the ledger but it’s too big. Its absence would be noted. Instead, I opt for ripping out the final page and putting it back in the safe as quietly as I can.

“Kiki, what are you—?”

I clap a hand over Ana’s mouth and drag her behind the heavy curtains, praying there is space enough for both of us between them and the windows. There is. A padded bench provides ample room for us to perch—albeit precariously—and pull our feet up so our boots aren’t sticking out from beneath the thick velvet drapes. That’s the last thing we need. Starring roles in some kind of operatic farce.

The sound comes again, a heavy thud, following a distinctly male voice swearing with alacrity. The door bangs open as a man enters. But there are too many stomping boots for just one person.

“It’s your own impulsiveness that got you into this situation,” a gruff voice barks. I recognize it as the magistrate’s, though I’ve never heard him this angry. Whenever he was in my father’s presence, he was always obsequious, always sniveling after my father’s good graces.

“Regardless of that, I do expect you to do what you’ve been paid to do and make it go away.”

Beside me, Ana stiffens.

She knows that voice. We both do.

Sebastian.

“Make it go away?” The magistrate scoffs. The feet of his chair scrape at the floorboards as the leather shifts under his weight. “This isn’t one of your youthful indiscretions that can be so easily wiped clean.”