Chapter 15 · The Girl in the Fire

The little girl on the ledger screen had Evelyn’s face.

Not exactly. The hair was shorter. Burned off at the ends. Her cheeks were black with soot, and one side of her dress had melted into shiny hard strips. But those were Evelyn’s eyes.

She stood in the middle of a burning hallway with her hand pressed to a wall of gold glass.

“Turn it off,” Evelyn said.

Nobody moved.

The recording kept playing across Mara’s worktable, blue light shaking over jars of dried teeth, loose spellwire, and the gun still sitting beside Mara’s elbow.

On the screen, smoke rolled past little Evelyn’s knees. She didn’t cry. She just stared at something outside the frame.

A man’s voice came through the old recording. Cracked. Panicked.

“Get her through. Now. Don’t let Silas find her.”

Then the image snapped white.

Evelyn slapped the ledger shut.

The hidden account screamed.

Not with a sound, exactly. More like a pressure spike behind her eyes. Symbols crawled over the black leather cover, bright red where her blood had touched it. Her palm was still open from the cut.