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In 2008, when someone finally entered a second date of death beside my mother's name, I was four years old. Three weeks later, I arrived at Marion's house.

The photograph in my rucksack came back to me then: my mother laughing on a cold beach, her face turned toward the sun, her hair blown away from her eyes.

Someone had been standing behind the camera.

Who had taken the picture?

A strained, choking sound came from behind me, and I turned sharply.

Ronan was on his knees.

The brand beneath his collar had gone white with heat, bright enough to cast light across his face. Both hands were clamped around his throat, and although his mouth was open, he didn't seem able to draw a breath.

Before I could reach him, his body gave way.

I caught him as he fell and went down with him, pulling his head into my lap. My hands shook as I tore open his collar. The skin around the brand was already blistering, red and swollen around the edges.

There was nothing nearby I could use to cool it, so I pressed my palms carefully against his throat and began to hum.

It was the same low, steady sound I had used for the bear in the ravine and for the man in the Pit. I still didn't understand what it did or why it sometimes seemed to work, and I had no idea whether it could help Ronan now. I only knew that I couldn't stop.

Little by little, the light beneath my hands began to fade. White softened into orange, then into a dull red, until the glow finally disappeared altogether.

Ronan's throat moved beneath my palms.

He pulled in one ragged breath, then another.

I couldn't tell whether the humming had helped him or whether the brand had simply finished doing whatever it had been meant to do. At that moment, the difference didn't matter.

His eyes opened slowly.

For several seconds, he only looked up at me. Then one trembling hand lifted from the floor and came to rest against my cheek.

"Wren," he whispered.

I went still.

For three months, I had been Miss Hale to him. Now, half-conscious on the Archive floor, with burns rising around his throat, he had finally used my name.

I covered his hand with mine and held it there.

"Shh," I said. "Don’t say anything."

His thumb moved weakly against my cheek.

"I wish I could help you somehow."

"You already did," I told him.

I looked at the burns around his throat, then at the open boxes on the table. He had brought me here. He had shown me the records. Whatever hold they had over him, he had given me the truth knowing exactly what it might cost him.

For the first time since I had opened the file, my thoughts stopped racing.

"I’m going to figure it all out."

20

Chapter 20