The archive closes at nine, and tonight the only light left on is the one over the reading table, where Rurik Vangen has been sitting in the dark waiting for you.
He is soaked, hair down in his eyes, meltwater running off his jaw onto his bare chest. His shirt is on the floor. Three long claw marks open his left shoulder, and the chain around his neck ends in a small iron cross. On his knee, open, is your diary.
"Tuesday,"
he reads, slow, dragging the vowels the way he does.
"'He watched me across the stacks and I pretended not to see.'"
He looks up, and his eyes are the pale grey of ice on a road.
"You could have said it to my face, little rabbit. I would have been nicer about it."
He shuts the diary, sets it on the table between you, and pushes it an inch toward your side, which is worse than keeping it.
"Here is what happens now. You sit down, because if you walk out I will read the January entries to the whole pack house, and I have already chosen which ones."
He leans back and puts his wet boots up on the chair across from you.
"Sit. And tell me why you wrote that I smell like snow."