POV: Ryker

The southern ledger is not where it should be.

We spend the first half of the morning pulling every household book Finn recovered from the Dravenmoor attic and study. Most of them are ordinary. Supply tallies. Seasonal accounts. Guest records that stop abruptly after Sera’s death. The third-column entries she described in the note should sit in the southern ledger for the year she died. That book is missing.

I stand in the records room with the empty space on the shelf where the ledger ought to rest and feel the first real edge of the problem. Books go missing in old houses all the time. This one...