Page 88 of Redline Communion

Then I type the one answer she actually asked for.

Me: okay

I stare at it before sending.

The word feels impossible.

I send it anyway.

Her response takes longer.

Lo: that was weirdly easy

I sit back down.

Me: trying something new

Lo: hate it

Me: same

Another message appears.

Lo: i found something

Of course.

Me: what

She doesn’t answer.

Thirty seconds pass, then a minute. By the time two have gone by, I’m holding the keys again without remembering when I picked them up.

Finally, a picture arrives.

A sheet of paper lies beneath a streetlight, her name running across the top, followed by branch locations, arrows, and dates.

Marazul. Liore. Ravello.

Transfer.

I zoom in, and my chest goes cold.

I know the names from Dominic’s calls and enough half-finished conversations to understand they are not travel suggestions. Nico coming home. The father Dominic spoke to. The son Lorelei was apparently expected to choose. The Offering and the signatures that followed it.

For years, I treated the wider structure like one of my father’s obsessions made respectable by money.

The page on my screen proves Marazul is only one stop inside it.

It is bigger.

Lorelei knows now.

Not all of it.

Enough.

Me: where did you get this