With that, Lydia swiveled her chair and took the lid off the box. As she began to rifle through its contents, Harper noticed the scar on Lydia’s shoulder, red, beveled flesh protruding from around the strap of her tank top. Lydia had told her it was a werewolf bite, and Harper wondered about the price of being the paranormal world’s memory keeper.

“That’s actually what I wanted to talk to you about,” Lydia said. She pulled out a green file, worn around the edges with a cracked spine. “Marcy asked me about Audra.”

“Yes, she told me that you were related to her. She was your great-grandmother, right?”

Lydia nodded. “She was my grandmother’s mother. And my grandma never married, and my mom never married, so it made tracing the lineage a bit easier from Panning to Panning.”

“She wouldn’t happen to still be alive, would she?” Harper asked hopefully.

“No, unfortunately, she’s not,” Lydia said. “She wouldn’t be that old, though. I think…” She tilted her head as she did the math. “Audra would be in her eighties, but she passed away about fifteen years ago, and she’d already been in a sorry shape before. Very early onset dementia.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Harper said.

“It’s a side effect of the profession, I think.” Lydia sighed. “I didn’t know her that well, which is why it’s taken me a bit longer to break her code.” She pulled papers out of the file, then she looked up at Harper. “Did Marcy explain to you about the code?”

“She said that Audra kept her journals coded,” Harper said, and Lydia looked back down at the pages.

From where Harper sat, she didn’t have the best angle to see them, but they appeared to be old pages from notebooks, yellowed a bit, but mostly okay. The words were written in very small cursive that she couldn’t read at all.

“She did. If things weren’t important, she’d write them in regular English, but if she needed to keep something especially private, she’d write in a code that only she could read,” Lydia elaborated.

“Nana’s code was a variation of Audra’s, so that helps,” Lydia said. “There’s no one linear code that we go by, again, to make it hard for strangers to break. My own expands on Nana’s, but Audra’s code has a mind of its own, just like her.

“This file right here”—Lydia rested her hand on the green folder—“this is all of Audra’s notes for the summer that Thalia came looking for her. So what I wanted to show is in here, and in fact—”

Lydia cut herself off and reached into the folder, digging around for something, and she pulled out two small black-and-white photos.

“I thought you might find this interesting.” Lydia reached across the desk and handed one of the photos to her.

It showed three people. A woman, probably in her early thirties, with her light hair pulled up in a tight bun. While she was attractive, there was a hardness to her smile, and an almost devious glint in her eyes. Like she was hiding something.

In front of her stood a young girl, no more than nine or ten. Her long hair was in two braids, and she wore overalls. Her smile was bright, and it actually looked just like Lydia’s.

The third woman, standing with her hand on the child’s shoulder, Harper recognized instantly. It was the same radiant blonde she’d seen in all the pictures she found at Bernie’s house.

“That’s Thalia,” Harper said, tapping the photo.

“I know. The other two people are Audra and my grandma,” Lydia explained.

Harper flipped it over, finding an inscription on the back that said just as much—Audra, Delia, and then simply the letter T. She turned it back over, searching the black-and-white photo for clues.

“Where was this taken?” Harper asked.

“I’m not sure,” Lydia said. “I don’t recognize the background, and I haven’t found anything in Audra’s notes.”

The picture was taken at fairly close range, so she couldn’t see much behind them. There appeared to be a flowerpot beside Thalia, overflowing with large roses. A building was behind them, but Harper couldn’t see anything of it, really, other than the peak of the roof.

“What’s the other picture of?” Harper asked as she handed the picture back to Lydia.

“It’s a nephilim that Audra helped that summer, too.” Lydia held it up for her, but Harper didn’t look that closely at it, only noticing that it was a black-and-white shot of a handsome young man.

“So Audra definitely helped Thalia,” Harper said.

“She did. From what I understand, she initially tried to free Thalia from being a muse … it’s not really a curse, but it wasn’t exactly a blessing, either. I don’t know what you’d call it.” Lydia wagged her head. “Anyway, Audra tried to help her but couldn’t.”

“You’ve been able to decipher that?” Harper asked.

“No, that part she just wrote out in regular English in her notes,” Lydia said. “She didn’t have anything to hide about trying to help someone. But then Audra went on to say that she needed to help Thalia find someone who needed her privacy respected.”

“And you think that’s Diana?” Harper asked.

“I think so.” Lydia nodded. “I don’t think that either Thalia or Audra knew exactly where Diana was, but working together, they found her.”