Chapter 4. The Inspection (1)

Lynn woke at seven in the morning to the smell of pancakes and the sound of her own kitchen being managed without her consent.She lay under the covers for a full ten seconds, doing the thing she now did every morning, which was reminding herself that the last week had actually happened. The gold light. The vampire. The death list with her name on it. The temporary truce that she had agreed to at five in the morning on three hours of sleep and one lukewarm pancake, which felt, in retrospect, like a terrible way to sign a treaty.Then she smelled the pancakes again, and malice lost to hunger, the way it always did.She found Kael at the stove in the bat apron, exactly where she'd left him in her dream, except her dream had not included the fact that he was doing laundry. Her laundry. The hamper by the washer had been sorted into lights and darks with the grim efficiency of a war council."Do not," Lynn said, leaning in the doorway, "say a word.""I wasn't going to say anything.""You sorted my socks.""Your socks were a humanitarian crisis." He flipped a pancake. "You own seven pairs of the exact same gray one. At some point a person chooses sock madness, and that point was years ago."Lynn sat down at the counter and pulled Aurora's folded page out of her jacket pocket, where it had been folded so many times it was starting to go soft at the creases. She smoothed it flat beside a plate that he had already set for her, because of course he had."Eat first," Kael said."Answer first."He set a second plate down across from her and sat, which meant she was trapped across a breakfast table with the enemy, except the enemy had poured her maple syrup the way she liked it, which was too much."Did you know my sister?" Lynn said. "Really know her. Not the black rose. The other thing. The man in her diary who told her the truth four days before they took her."Kael's hand stilled on the syrup bottle for exactly one beat. Then he set it down."Your sister," he said, "was a very bright girl.""That's not an answer.""It's the answer you're getting over pancakes.""Why? Because if you say yes, I'll remember you were there and you couldn't save her, and you'd rather I be mad at you about rent than about her?"He looked up. His red eyes were steady, and for once there was no deflection behind them, no invoice, no deadpan wall."Because," he said, "some things are heavier than pancakes, and I won't say them across a breakfast table at seven in the morning while you're holding a napkin. You'd throw the napkin. You'd feel better. I'd lose my leverage. Eat."Lynn stared at him. He stared back.She ate a pancake. It was, infuriatingly, perfect."Fine," she said, around blueberry. "But I'm keeping count.""You've been keeping count since the invoice. I'm aware."

The buzzer for the front door went at nine, and Lynn was halfway to it before she remembered she lived in a building with a landlord who had keys and opinions, and she had no idea who would buzz 3B from the lobby. She'd lived here three weeks and exactly one person besides Zoey had ever come looking for her, and that had been a Girl Scout who rang the wrong unit.She looked through the peephole instead.It was Sister Agnes.Lynn's hand went to her mouth on its own. She hadn't seen the nun since she'd left St. Agnes's for the university two years ago, and there she was on her intercom screen, gray-haired, round-faced, wearing the modern version of the habit that the Sisters had adopted, a navy cardigan over a plain dress, holding a wicker basket like she'd brought cookies and not a death sentence.Lynn buzzed her in. Then she turned to Kael, who had not moved from the counter, and mouthed: hide.He raised an eyebrow.She mouthed it again, sharper: HIDE."Tenant girl," he said, in the calm tone of a man about to be insufferable, "this is my building. She's standing in my lobby. If anyone is hiding, it's you."But he relented, because the universe was in a generous mood for once, and he drifted toward the kitchen doorway with the unhurried movement of smoke, and Lynn realized with a lurch that he had not actually walked through it. He had just... stopped being in the doorway and started being in the shadow of the hallway. She wasn't going to ask. She was not going to ask about that.She opened the door."Lynn," Sister Agnes said, and her voice was warm and tired, and exactly the voice Lynn had grown up being scolded into silence by. "Look at you. You've grown pale. They're feeding you at this school?""Sister." Lynn stepped aside. "Come in. Please."The nun set the basket on the counter, took in the apartment with the slow look of a woman who had raised twenty orphan girls and could smell a lie in the wallpaper. Her eyes flicked to the second plate. To the two forks. To the coffee mug that was still warm and clearly not hers."Big breakfast," she said."I'm a growing girl.""You're twenty. You've been twenty for months. You were a growing girl at twelve. Now you're a liar with a full plate." Sister Agnes sat down, folded her hands, and Lynn felt the whole weight of St. Agnes's settle into her living room. "The Primate has taken an interest in your progress, child."The words landed like a stone in still water."He has," Lynn said."The awakening at Powell Street was felt on every candle in the Chapel. You lit them all, in one night, from a city block away." The nun's voice was gentle. It was always gentle. That was the worst part. "The Primate wants you to come to the vestry. The Rite of Readiness. The Assessment. It's what we prepared you for.