As they left the old collection room, Thalia looked back at the words carved into the cabinet.
If the ring appears again, she will return for these things.
She had taken a photograph, but seeing the words on her phone was different from seeing them carved into the wood.
They had been hidden beneath the box for years, waiting there until tonight.
The security guard was still in the corridor.
He told Ivan that someone had brought up the footage in the surveillance room and they could watch it now.
Ivan nodded, then told Thalia to rest in the records room.
“I’m coming too,” she said.
“Your leg has only just recovered, and you’ve been through enough tonight.”
“I’m only watching a recording.
I don’t have to run anywhere.”
Ivan looked at her for a moment, then handed her the document bag.
“Stay close, then.”
Thalia took it and turned to find Acheron standing beside her.
He had said little since they left the collection room, though his eyes kept returning to her ring.
“Are you still thinking about the consciousness in there?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“Can you tell who left it?”
“Not now.
It was weak to begin with.
Opening the door and pushing the box down used up nearly all the power it had left.”
Thalia glanced at her ring.
“So it recognized me?”
“It recognized the ring.”
That fitted the words on the cabinet.
Perhaps the consciousness hadn’t known who would come.
It had simply waited for the ring to appear again.
But the carving had said she.
Thalia wanted to ask more, but Ivan had gone ahead and was calling them over.
She put the question aside for now.
The surveillance room was on the other side of the museum.
The staff member on duty brought up the camera covering the corridor outside the old collection room and set it to the time before they returned.
The display in the corner read 12:43 a.m.
Thalia recognized the corridor.
Only a few lights near the back entrance were on.
The area outside the collection room was dim, but the door was clearly visible.
“Watch from here,” the staff member said.
Ivan stood in front of the screen.
Thalia and Acheron moved closer.
There was no one in the picture.
About two minutes later, the collection room door handle moved.
The motion was so slight that Thalia might have missed it if she hadn’t known to look.
“Pause it,” Ivan said.
The staff member stopped the recording, took it back a few seconds and replayed it slowly.
The handle turned, then stopped.
A short while later, it turned again, and the door opened a crack.
The camera showed the whole door and the stretch of corridor in front of it.
No one was there.
Thalia leaned towards the screen.
“The lights didn’t come on before the door opened.”
The corridor had motion-activated lights.
When they had walked down it later, each light had switched on as they approached.
In the recording, the area in front of the door remained dim.
There was no sign that anyone had come near it.
The staff member stared at the screen.
“That door is usually locked.
I checked the access log.
No one used a card to enter tonight.”
“Is there a camera inside?” Ivan asked.
“It was turned off when the room went out of use.
We only have this view.”
Ivan asked him to keep playing.
A few minutes later, the three of them appeared on the screen.
Acheron was carrying Thalia, who was asleep, while Ivan walked beside them.
Seeing herself in his arms reminded Thalia how embarrassed she had felt when she woke.
She quietly moved a step to the side.
Acheron glanced at her but said nothing.
Ivan was still watching the footage and didn’t notice.
On the screen, they stopped outside the room before Acheron pushed the door open.
Everything happened as they remembered.
The staff member paused the recording.
“I’ll preserve the footage according to procedure.
I’ll also have to report this when the director comes in tomorrow.”
“Of course,” Ivan said.
“Please keep everyone out of the old collection room tonight.
Some records inside need to be checked again.”
The staff member agreed and searched through the earlier footage for them.
From the time the museum closed until their return, no one else had appeared outside the room.
After watching for a while, Thalia no longer wondered whether someone had been hiding in the museum and pushed the box down.
She wondered why the consciousness had waited until tonight.
By the time they returned to the records room, it was after one in the morning.
Ivan placed the registration form and map in separate protective sleeves, then wrote down the relevant time from the surveillance footage.
Thalia sat nearby, enlarging the photograph of the hand-drawn map and comparing it with the modern maps they had found around Eremon Manor.
The path to the old tomb was absent from the modern map.
The woods northwest of the manor appeared as one continuous area, with no path marked through it.
“It may have grown over years ago,” Ivan said, looking at her screen.
“We’ll check the old land records after daylight.”
Thalia nodded but kept her phone in her hand.
She opened the photograph of the carving and stared at the words she will return.
When Ivan finished putting the documents away, he noticed she was still looking at it.
He pulled out a chair beside her.
“You’re wondering whether Adrian knew you would come?”
“Yes.” Thalia handed him the phone.
“If he carved this, he was remarkably certain.”
“We don’t know that he did.”
“I know.
But someone knew about the ring years ago.”
Ivan didn’t dismiss the thought.
He studied the photograph for a moment before speaking.
“Tomorrow, we’ll start with E.M.
Adrian went out of his way to put those initials on the form.
That person might know how the box came to be here.”
Thalia took back her phone.
“Do you think Mrs.
Bennett would know who it is?”
“We can ask her.
Not at this hour, though.”
Mrs.
Bennett had given them permission to investigate Adrian’s belongings, but calling her after one in the morning would only worry her.
Thalia saved the initials and the old telephone number in her phone to ask about during the day.
Acheron had been standing by the table, listening to them.
When Thalia put her phone away, he spoke.
“We should leave for tonight.”
Thalia looked up at him.
“You think I need to rest too?”
“You fell asleep in the car.”
“Because it was quiet in there.”
“It’s quiet here.”
Thalia opened her mouth, then found she had no good answer.
Ivan closed the document bag beside her, clearly in agreement with Acheron for once.
“We’re going home.
The rest can wait until tomorrow.”
Thalia got up.
Her right leg was much steadier now.
Acheron glanced at it but made no move to help her.
At the records room door, she stopped and looked back.
“What about you?”
Acheron met her eyes.
“Are you going back to Blackthorn Manor?”
“I have a few things to deal with first.”
“About the metal plaque?”
“Yes.”
Thalia remembered the red beam pointing into the woods and frowned slightly.
“You’re not going to that connection point alone, are you?”
“Not tonight.”
She studied him for a moment.
“You’d better keep your word.”
Acheron didn’t seem bothered by her tone.
He gave a quiet acknowledgment.
Ivan was waiting outside the room.
He heard their exchange, and his expression grew complicated again, but he didn’t hurry Thalia.
Once she joined him, they walked together towards the back entrance.
As they passed the old collection room, Thalia slowed.
The door had been locked again, and a security guard stood nearby.
It looked like any other unused storeroom in the museum.
No one passing it would guess that a sentence had been hidden inside for so many years.
The ring was quiet on her hand.
It no longer felt warm.
Thalia looked away and caught up with Ivan.
Tomorrow, she would ask Mrs.
Bennett who Adrian had meant by E.M.