Chapter 17: Søren's Written Testimony

Priya was not in the unmapped library.

She was not in the dormitory common room, or the east corridor, or the alcove off the main staircase where Callum had twice observed her sitting with her back to the wall and her notebook open on her knees. He checked all three locations in the remaining twelve minutes of his free period, moving through the castle's daytime geometry with the quick efficiency of someone who had been learning its patterns for six weeks, and found instead: a scarf she had left on the common room windowsill, a pencil rolling slowly back and forth on the alcove's stone floor as if just set down, and the sense, building by the second, that the castle was in an unusually cooperative mood today, offering him empty spaces where he wanted people.

He found her at last in the small passage between the dining hall and the kitchens, standing absolutely still with her notebook closed against her chest and her eyes fixed on something in the middle distance that appeared to be the wall.