“I’VE NEVER HEARD OF that Stony you talked to. If he’s just sort of midlevel in Northport, what made you think he’d know anything about Fyres?”
“That’s one of the things I can’t tell you.”
“Oh. There are a lot of things like that, aren’t there?”
“I told you there would be, Cawti.”
“Yes, I know. I’ve never known Vlad to use disguises before.”
“Neither had I. It was probably something he picked up while traveling.”
“What about the old woman? How was she taking all of this?”
“I suspect it bothered her a great deal, but she never let on. In fact, the whole time she had an attitude like none of it had anything to do with her.”
“I can’t blame her, I guess. It would be strange.”
“Yes.”
“It’s funny, you’re summarizing for me Vlad’s report to you about his conversations with others, which is three steps removed from the actual conversations, but I can still almost hear him talking.”
“You miss him, don’t you?”
“I—”
“He misses you, Cawti.”
“Let’s not start on that, all right?”
“If you wish.”
“It’s complicated, Kiera. It’s difficult. I don’t know any of the answers. Yes, I miss him. But we couldn’t live together.”
“He’s changed, you know.”
“Are you trying to get us back together, Kiera?”
“I don’t know. I think at least he should know about—”
“Let’s not talk about it.”
“All right. Maybe I should summarize even more.”
“No, you’re doing fine.”
“I have to say, though, that I don’t have a very good memory for conversations, so a lot of this I’m reconstructing and making up. But you get the gist of it.”
“I do indeed. You must have had a few words for him when he got back to the house. I know I would have.”
“Oh, yes.”