Calla’s POV
The clock on the study wall reads eleven-seventeen when I find it.
I wasn’t looking for it here, exactly — I was looking everywhere, the way you search when you’re running out of places to try, pulling books by their spines and shaking them open and sliding them back and telling myself Cara was smart enough to hide things in plain sight, in the last place anyone would think to look. Six nights of this. Six nights of the study going quiet around me at midnight, the rest of the house asleep, nothing but the sound of my own breathing and the occasional creak of the building settling into itself, each one making me freeze until I was certain it was nothing. Until I was certain.
I’ve gone through the desk twice. The filing cabinet in the corner, every drawer, every false bottom I
