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ChapterThirty-Eight
A knock wakes me up.
I look around groggily, wondering where I am.
Then it all rushes back, including the fact that I’m at Honey’s place.
“Sis, you will want to hear me out,” Honey shouts. “Chop, chop.”
I get up, stumble to the door, and open it. “What?”
Honey steps back. “On second thought, you can brush your teeth first.”
She’s offended by my smell? Oh, the irony. Now that I’m not so overwhelmed, I can detect all manner of unpleasantness—like kitty litter, Honey’s leather jacket, her antiperspirant, and a faint hint of Fabio’s yucky cologne.
Still, fair is fair, so I brush my teeth with a spare toothbrush and splash some water on my face. Feeling a bit more human, I check to make sure that my paper cut—that horrific injury from last night—is healed enough to spare Honey’s fragile mental state.
Yep. No sign of blood.
Of course, when I come out of the bedroom, I almost trip on the damned cat. He hisses at me and waltzes into the bedroom. In this, he reminds me of Woofer, who also likes to wait for someone with opposable thumbs to open doors for His Majesty.
“So,” I say when I locate Honey in the kitchen. “What’s the emergency?”
“This.” She waves the paper Black Swan gave me. “I have reason to suspect this isn’t a real document—or at least, not one as old as it seems.”
I sit down into a chair, hard. “How do you know?”
She pushes a small plate with an éclair toward me. “Not sure if you know this, but I’m an expert on paper.”
I bite into the éclair, but the stress hormones coursing through my veins make it taste like a fat-free, sugar-free granola bar. “You mean that literally, right? Because it sounds like you’re saying you’re not really an expert, but on paper, you are.”
She frowns. “Do you want to hear this or not?”
“Sorry. Shutting up.” I shove the rest of the tasteless éclair into my mouth, belatedly recalling the trouble Honey got into for forging coupons. Her expertise on paper must stem from that side of her life.
“Anyway, as I was trying to say, last night I was looking at this certificate, and I realized it looked much too old for the date it was issued. At first, I thought that maybe Russian paper is crappier and therefore ages extra fast, but after some testing, I’m convinced this is a fresh piece of printing paper that’s been stained by coffee.”
I snatch the paper from her hands, yank out my nose filters, and take a deep sniff.
Fuck.
She’s right.
Underneath the repulsive aroma of Black Swan’s perfume, there’s tthe faint floral and woodsy tang of good-quality coffee.
I swallow the part of éclair stuck in my throat. “You think the certificate is fake?”
“Why else age it like that?”
I bite my lip. “Could it be real, but someone spilled coffee on it at some point over the years?”
“No. This was done with highly diluted coffee, or else the paper would look ancient.”
There’s a tingle in my chest, like swan feathers brushing against my heart. “Then why would he admit it?”
Honey cocks her head. “Did he, though? We don’t know exactly what he meant when he said, ‘I can explain.’”
Skunk. She’s right. I should’ve let him speak.
