The Persian cat that has been napping in the armchair slides grumpily off and goes to investigate the case of the disappearing pencil, as though that was its intention all along.
“I should go back up,” Eleanor says, handing Sweet Sorrows back to Dorian. “I forgot to tell you, there’s someone up on one of the precipices. I saw him through my telescope. He’s just sitting there, reading. I’ll stop for him when the sea level reaches that point. I don’t know how he’d get out otherwise, he only has one hand. If the waves get worse hold on to something.”
Dorian thinks he should throw himself into the waves and let the Starless Sea take him but he suspects Eleanor would rescue him again if he did.
Eleanor gives Dorian’s shoulder a somewhat awkward pat and then she returns to the deck, leaving him alone with Zachary.
Dorian brushes a curl from Zachary’s forehead. He doesn’t look dead. Dorian doesn’t know if it would help if he did.
Dorian sits silently, listening to the crash of the waves against the ship, the howl of the wind and the beating of wings circling through the caverns, and his heart beating in his ears which sounds as though it has an echo because it does and then Dorian realizes where the echoed heartbeat is coming from.
He takes the box from his pack and holds it in his hands.
What is the difference, Dorian asks himself, between Fate’s heart and a heart belonging to Fate?
A heart kept by Fate until it is needed.
Dorian looks down at Zachary’s body and then back at the box.
He thinks about what he believes.
When Dorian opens the box the heart inside beats faster, its moment arrived at last.
excerpt from the Secret Diary of Katrina Hawkins
Someone left a note on my car.
It’s parked in a shopping-mall parking lot outside of Toronto and someone left a note on it. Literally fewer than ten people in the world even know I’m in this country right now and I’ve checked for tracking devices and I should absolutely not be findable or note-able. I didn’t plan on stopping at this mall, I don’t even know what city I’m in, Mississomething.
* * *
—
The note says Come and See with an address below it.
It’s written on a piece of stationery with “Regards from the Keating Foundation” embossed across the top.
The back has a little drawing of an owl wearing a crown.
* * *
—
I plugged the address into my GPS. It’s not that far away.
Dammit.
* * *
—
The address is a vacant building. It might have been a school or a library, maybe. Just enough broken windows to cement the whole “abandoned” look. There aren’t any signs. The front door is boarded up but there aren’t any for sales or no trespassings or beware of dogs. There aren’t even any signs to say what it was, only a number above the door so I know I’m in the right place.
I’ve been parked here for twenty minutes trying to figure out if I should go in or not. The grounds are all overgrown, like no one’s been here in years. No one’s even driven by.
There’s some graffiti but not a lot. Mostly initials and abstract swirls. Maybe Canadian graffiti is more polite.
If I’m going to go in I should do it before it gets too dark. I should probably bring a flashlight.