The worst of it was that now I was caught up in a deadly marathon, running for my life, desperate to stay one step ahead of all the monsters behind me, and there was no finish line in sight.

NINE

S peaking of the better loved for bitterly lost, I had one day left to clean out her apartment. By midnight all of Alina’s belongings had to be out, or the landlord had the right to set them to the curb. I’d packed the boxes up weeks ago. I just needed to drag them to the door, call a cab, and pay a little extra to have the cabbie help me load and transport them to the bookstore, where I could wrap them and ship them home.

I couldn’t believe I’d so completely lost track of time, but I’d had monsters to fight, a police interrogation to deal with, a graveyard to search, my dad to send home, a mobster’s brother’s death to avert, a new job to learn, and an illegal auction to attend.

It was a wonder I got anything done, really.

And so Sunday afternoon, August 31, the last day of Alina’s lease, the day she should have been packed and waiting for a cab to take her to the airport and, finally, home to me and Georgia, and endless summer beach parties on the cusp of fall, found me propping a dripping umbrella at the top of her stairs and wiping my shoes on the rug outside her door. I stood there a few minutes, shuffling aimlessly, taking deep breaths, digging for my compact to remove the speck from my eye that was making them water.

Alina’s apartment was above a pub in the Temple Bar District, not far from Trinity, where she’d been studying, at least for the first few months that she’d been here, when she’d still been going to class, before she’d begun looking stressed and losing weight and behaving secretively.

I could understand how I’d forgotten about cleaning out her apartment, but now that I was standing outside it, I couldn’t believe I’d forgotten about her journal. Alina was a diary addict. She couldn’t live without one. She’d been keeping one ever since she was a little girl. She’d never missed a day. I know; I used to snoop and read them and torment her with secrets she’d chosen to confide to some stupid book over me.

During her tenure abroad, she’d confided the biggest secrets of her life to a stupid book over me, and I needed that book. Unless someone had beaten me to it and destroyed it, somewhere in Dublin was a record of everything that had happened to her since the day she’d set foot in this country. Alina was neurotically detailed. In those pages would be an account of all she’d seen and felt, where she’d gone and what she’d learned, how she’d discovered what she and I were, how the Lord Master had tricked her into falling for him, and—I hoped—a solid lead on the location of the Sinsar Dubh: who had it, who was transporting it, and for what mysterious reason. “I know what it is now,” she’d said in her final, frantic phone message, “and I know where—” The call had ended abruptly.

I was certain Alina had been about to say she knew where it was. I hoped she’d written it down in her journal and hidden the journal somewhere she thought I, and only I, would figure out how to find it. I’d been finding them all our lives. Surely she’d left me a clue for how to find the most important one.

I slid the key into the door, jiggled the handle trying to turn it—the lock was sticky—pushed open the door, and gaped at the girl standing inside, glaring at me and wielding a baseball bat.

“Hand it over,” she demanded, holding out a hand and nodding at the key. “I heard you out there and I already called the police. How’d you get a key to my place?”

I pocketed my key. “Who are you?”

“I live here. Who are you?”

“You don’t live here. My sister lives here. At least she does until midnight today.”

“No way. I signed a lease three days ago and paid up front. You have a problem with that, talk to the landlord.”

“Did you really call the police?”

She assessed me coolly. “No. But I will if I have to.”

That was a relief. I hadn’t seen Inspector Jayne yet today and was savoring the respite. All I needed was for him to show up and arrest me for breaking and entering, or some other trumped-up charge. I glanced past her. “Where’s my sister’s stuff?” I demanded. All my carefully packed boxes were gone. There was no fingerprint dust on the floor, no broken glass scattered about, no sliced and diced furniture, no shredded drapes. All of it was gone. The apartment was spotless and had been tastefully redecorated.

“How should I know? The place was empty when I moved in.”