SOREL WOKE TO THE GLARE of the moon high overhead. Adela was sound asleep next to her, curled up with her head under her blanket, but the space where Sam had been lying was empty. His blanket was still laid out on the ground, the peddler’s pack he’d been using as a pillow at its head, giving the eerie impression that he’d only just left.
“Check his bag” Agrat bat Machlat had said. For what?
Sorel stood up and glanced around, checking the shadows between the gravestones for any sign of him, but saw no movement. She crawled to the pack and opened it up. The bag he kept food in was on top—she put a piece of bread in her mouth as she moved it aside. Underneath that was a spare shirt with an unwashed, animal smell, as if he’d been sleeping in a lot of barns. She put that aside with a grimace.
The next thing her hand found was the dagger. Something about its weight warned her of danger even before she drew it out and found herself holding a curved blade like an eagle’s claw, sheathed in silver inlaid with black. It was ice-cold and nearly as long as her forearm, and when she slid it out of the sheath, it caught the moonlight and almost seemed to glow.
It was heavy, sharp, and expensive.
It did not look like something that belonged to a boy who slept in stables and study halls.
Sorel, barely breathing, slid the blade back into its sheath and tucked it into her vest. Reaching into the pack again, she felt the crinkle of paper. Pamphlets: a story by Ayzik Meyer Dik, a booklet of psalms, Hebrew words she didn’t recognize that looked like they were amulets. And a note in a stiff Yiddish handwriting she recognized when she held it up to the moonlight. A brief note: Find Israel. Bring him to me, or bring me the book. K.S.
Kalman Senderovich.
Her father.
Sam was working for her father.
And her father knew about the book.
She stuffed the papers hastily back into the pack and went to shake Adela by the shoulder. “Adela! Wake up. We have to go.”
“What is it?” Adela sat up, groggy. “It’s dark.”
“I think Sam is working for someone,” Sorel hissed. “I don’t trust him. We need to go to Kalman’s estate.”
Adela was already pulling her boots on. “Where is he?”
“I don’t know, but I don’t want to be here if he comes back with those city guards, or whoever it is.” She was trying to remember all the men’s faces, check them against people she’d seen doing work for her father, but it was no good. Certainly her father had worked with city guards. He was a leader of the Jewish community. She felt foolish for ignoring what had been right in front of her face.
They stuffed their blankets into their bag and climbed the cemetery wall into the woods. Sorel thought she knew the directions and set out into the trees with confidence. If they just followed the road, while staying off it, they’d get to her father’s house. Adela didn’t question the direction, keeping silent until they were well away from the cemetery.
“Why are we going to Kalman’s estate?” she asked, after a while.
“I think he knows something after all. I’m sorry for doubting you before. It just seemed …” she trailed off. She didn’t quite know how to put it. “I just thought if Isser was involved with so many criminals, why would it be someone who spends his whole life upholding the law?”
Adela snorted. “Alter, what do you think a criminal is, exactly? Are you imagining only Yoshke and Pavlikov? Kalman Senderovich doesn’t uphold the law.” She said it in Russian, for emphasis. “He’s been one of Isser’s best customers for books that aren’t approved by the censors.”
“What, really?”
“Everyone only follows the law when it’s convenient,” said Adela. “And that applies to no one more than a man who can get away with it.”
Sorel chewed over this as they picked their way between the trees, keeping the moon behind them. She wondered if any of her own books—the ones her father gave her so that she’d have a European, sophisticated education—had been smuggled through Isser’s hands.
She rubbed her thumb over the amulet Sam had given her, the one that was supposed to let her talk to a ghost. She had talked to him, hadn’t she? She’d gone to Agrat’s mansion.
Did we know each other? she asked him silently. Did you pick me for a reason?
It took awhile, as if he’d had to wake from a deep sleep, but she felt him stirring, felt the strange doubling in her vision as he blinked himself awake behind her eyes.
Did my father do this to you? she asked. Is this some kind of revenge?
Is what some kind of revenge? said Isser. Where are we? What are you doing?
“We’re going to Kalman’s estate,” she said, under her breath but aloud, so Adela could hear. “We’re going to see if he’s got that book you were killed for, and if he does have it, we’re going to—we’re going to find out where your body is.”
Adela looked around, eyes wide. “What did you say?”
“I’m talking to Isser,” said Sorel. “Where have you been, by the way? I’ve been trying to talk to you, and there wasn’t even a whisper of you all day, and then you’re in a demon’s house, acting cryptic?”
It was less disconcerting when Isser spoke this time than it had been the first time, during the card game. “Hi, Adela.”
Sorel was about to protest this non-answer when Adela turned and threw her arms around them. She was warm, her arms firmly muscular, her hair soft against Sorel’s neck. Isser wrapped their arms around her in return, and for a minute they just stood, holding each other, Sorel feeling like an alien in her own skin.
“I’m sorry,” Isser whispered.
“You should have told me,” said Adela. “You knew you were in danger; you should have told me.”
“I didn’t want to get you in trouble.”
“So you put yourself in trouble? Alone? Stupid!” She pulled out of the hug, pinched their cheek, and turned away, wrapping her arms around herself and starting to walk again in the direction they’d been heading. Sorel felt suddenly very cold and lonely. “What’s this about demons?”
“Agrat bat Machlat,” said Isser. “It’s her book we’re looking for. She’s the Angel of Death from the title. And I didn’t want to say too much in her house, because if we do find it, we’re not giving it back to her. And I don’t want her to know that, because she’ll kill us.”
“Why?” Sorel asked. “What does it say?”
Adela glanced back at them and made a face. “It’s very creepy when you change like that.”
“I don’t like it either,” they said together, and Isser went on, “It’s a contract with the rebbe, or with his ancestors anyway. It’s an agreement that she’ll guard the city from certain types of disasters and never step foot within it, but it’s also … I don’t know, it’s not only disasters. It’s more complicated than that. She says she’s an angel of changes. And I don’t think she’s lying about that, because Kalman Senderovich thought so, too.”
“Changes?” Adela repeated.
“Right. Like how a dead thing changes into fertile earth, I guess.”
“So Kalman,” said Sorel. “He does know about the book. You could have told me.”
I thought you’d be angry, said Isser silently.
“Well, I am angry!” She stamped her foot at him, and then felt singularly ridiculous when Adela glanced at them again. “What, did you think I’d run to him and turn you in? Turn myself in?”
If I thought that, I wouldn’t have come to you in the first place. His inner voice was sullen, and she could tell he didn’t like that Adela was watching them argue. I came to you because you were the right person. It’s not revenge. You were ready to run and you just didn’t know it.
Adela raised her eyebrows. Sorel deliberately looked the other way, holding up a hand for her to wait. “Did he kill you? Tell me. Did he kill you?”
I don’t know, I don’t know. His anguish flooded through her, her anger crumbling underneath it. I don’t want it to be him. But I lied to him, and he wouldn’t have liked it.
“Alter,” said Adela, reaching out and taking Sorel’s hand. “I need to ask you something.”
“What?” Sorel said, and was startled to find her voice was choked with tears. They were both crying—Sorel and Isser. Adela pulled them to a halt and made them sit on the cold ground, crouching beside them.
“Who are you?” she asked. “How do you know the way to Kalman’s estate?”
It was not the question Sorel had expected.
Adela squeezed their hand, harder. “I’m trusting you because of Isser. But I need to know what you’re hiding. Before we go any further.”
Sorel remembered the corpse’s face—her own drowned face—looking back at her. Agrat bat Machlat had provided the perfect cover for her escape. Would she give that up now? She didn’t want to. She didn’t want to go back.
But this was Adela. Did she really think Adela would share the secret?
The girl’s eyes were dark, intense, and unwavering. Her hand was strong, her grip just shy of too tight. She was following Sorel through the forest in the middle of the night, on their way to look for murder evidence.
“The truth,” said Sorel. “The truth is I’m—I was—I don’t know. I am or was Kalman’s daughter.”
Adela blinked. “The one who died?”
“It’s a trick. She had my face. The body in the mikveh. My own face! But it’s almost …”
She was about to say something incredible. Something she almost didn’t believe.
Isser nudged her, encouraging.
“It’s almost better,” Sorel said. “To think that no one will ever, ever guess that I’m still here.”
Adela was frowning, puzzled. “You’re Soreh bas Kalman?”
“I was. I don’t know if I still am. I don’t want to be.”
Adela relaxed her grip, sitting back on her haunches. She looked over Sorel’s face, a long, quiet inspection. Sorel wiped Isser’s tears from their face.
“I don’t want my father to be a murderer,” she said. “But I’m afraid that he is. And if he is, I have to know.”