Inside, Rhoda did not look at the Boys. She did not look at the cats. She crossed to the arch where Lazlo was standing.
"Lazlo," she said.
"My dear."
"Come with me. I want to look at Nadia's file. You knew her best of anyone."
A small thing moved at the corner of Lazlo's mouth. He cocked his head sideways, "Thank you, Rhoda. I would be honored to help. But, I'm not sure…"
"Leave Duchess, please."
Lazlo looked down at Duchess. Duchess glared back up at him.
"She will stay right here. The rest will do her good."
"Thank you."
Rhoda turned and walked out of the parlor. Lazlo's hand drifted into the inside pocket of his coat as he turned to follow. The cats in the parlor did not say a word. Fat Bastard watched them go.
Rhoda crossed the front hall. She turned into the corridor. She passed the dining room door. She passed the door to the kitchen. She turned at the back hall, and Lazlo walked at her elbow, his hand still in his coat pocket. She stopped at the door beside her study and laid her hand on the porcelain plate. She laid her palm flat against a particular panel and lifted her other hand to her throat and brought out a small amulet on a thin silver chain. The amulet was the soft worn color of old emerald, no bigger than the pad of her thumb. She lifted it free of the chain. She waved it across the panel in a careful arc: left to right, then up and down, then in a small tight spiral that ended at the center. The panel did not move. The runes that had not been there a moment before lifted themselves a hairsbreadth off the wood, glowed once with the deep slow green of Rhoda's magic, and sank. The door swung inward on a hinge that had not been visible, and a flight of cold stone steps fell away into the dark.
Behind her, Lazlo drew in a small breath. "Clever."
Rhoda did not turn around. She slipped the amulet back onto its chain and dropped the chain inside her collar. Her hand, when she lifted it to the lamp on the bracket beside the panel, was steady. The light flickered on.
A small unease moved up her spine like a cold finger and was gone before she had time to name it. She shivered once. Then she lifted the lamp from its bracket, stepped over the threshold, and started down. Lazlo, his hand still in his coat pocket, stepped down behind her. The door swung shut.
Chapter 11
The Spilling
The stair was steep and narrow and old. The boards were dark with the polish of centuries. The wall on the right was rough cool stone. The wall on the left was the back of the house's original chimney, brick that had been laid before the front porch was built. The stair ended at a heavy old door with three iron locks set one above another at chest height. Rhoda took the chain from around her neck. She turned the top lock, then the middle lock, then the bottom lock. Each one made a small flat clack like a stone dropping into a still pool. The door swung in.
The vault was a long low room with rows of narrow file cabinets along three of its walls, each cabinet labeled in her careful hand. The fourth wall was the gold-coin wall. Sleeves on sleeves on sleeves. Hundreds of years of bonds laid into their narrow gold homes. The air was the air of a place that had been kept cool and dry on purpose. It smelled the way the back of an old library smells, of paper and wax and a faint sweetness from the cedar of the cabinet bodies.
Lazlo stepped in behind her. He did not look at the gold-coin wall. She was walking toward the East Europe cabinet with her mind on her own carelessness about Nadia Costin and the yearsshe had let slip without checking her file. She slid the long top drawer open and walked her fingers down the tabs. Countries, then towns, then names. Hungary. Poland. Romania. The Romanian tabs, alphabetical. Bucharest, Cluj-Napoca, Sibiu. The Sibiu names, alphabetical. Banescu. Costin.
Costin, Nadia.
She drew out the file.
It was thin. It was thinner than the file should have been for a hunter of Nadia's tenure. Rhoda made a small unhappy sound at her own carelessness, at the hand on the bottom of the page that was her own hand, at the year on the bottom of the page, from when she was much younger. She had been a poor friend, and the file was the evidence. Three pages.
Lazlo was at her shoulder. "Take all the time you wish, my dear," he said. "This is a very interesting room."
Rhoda opened the file on top of the cabinet. The first page was Nadia's intake. Date of swearing-in, her sponsor, the names of her parents. Rhoda's finger moved down it slowly. She had logged her own hand at the bottom. The ink had darkened with time the way ink in this room always darkened.
The second page was Nadia's field assignments, a list Rhoda had not read in years. Bucharest. Sibiu. Bra?ov. Sibiu again. The shape of a hunter's working life laid out in towns.
The third page was Nadia's familiar registry.
Rhoda's finger went down it. The cat's name was Duchess. Himalayan. Silver-cream coat, dark mask, blue-water eyes. Long plume tail. Female. Bonded to Nadia Costin, Sibiu.
No transfer logged.
Rhoda's finger stopped.
She did not breathe. She had touched the head of a long-haired Himalayan three days ago, on her own threshold, in her own front hall.It's lovely to have you here, sweetheart. Make yourself at home.She had said that. She had said it to a cat shehad been told was Lazlo's. All those years on Nadia's line. No transfer logged. The cat that had sat at Lazlo Varga's ankle on the rug of her own parlor for three days was Nadia Costin's familiar. And Nadia Costin had been dead in Sibiu since the Duchess arrived.
