Chapter 7: The Transylvanian Contract

The vellum had survived four centuries in a cedar box that had not survived three of them, a fact Dorian considered, when he considered it at all, to be among the smaller ironies of a life constructed almost entirely from them. He had transferred the fragment — for it was only a fragment, the remainder having been disposed of by the other party in ways he preferred not to speculate upon — to an archival sleeve in 1971, when such sleeves became available at a stationer's in Clerkenwell that no longer existed. The archival sleeve was itself now aging in ways the vellum was not. He had noted this without drawing conclusions.

He did not take it out often.

He was taking it out now.