Chapter 30: Chosen

Ptolemy had reassigned himself to the returns desk sometime between Thursday and Friday, with the particular conviction of an animal that has decided an argument is over.

Evander did not move him. It seemed unnecessary to press the point.

The shop had been closed for five days — Marta's note to the door said family emergency, which was the kind of lie that contains no specific untruth and had been his suggestion. He'd spent the first two of those days at safe house three, the third in a rented room off Caldwell Street that Seren had arranged with the same operational thoroughness she applied to everything, and the fourth and fifth in his own flat, which smelled of cold tea and accumulated mail and Ptolemy's particular brand of disapproval. He had slept in it badly and then adequately and then, on the second night, for six hours without interruption, which felt like an event of some significance.