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A message revealed as the white veil lowered:
Your daughter’s book is at Antikvárium under the name Geza.
I stared.
The glass trembled in my hand.
It was a hallucination. It had to be. I was going mad, seeing messages in bottles—or on bottles, more accurately. The ink had been written on the inside of the glass, disguised by the opaque white of the liquid until it was just low enough to reveal the words.
Antikvárium.
Geza.
I felt the air leave my lungs like a tide receding after a storm.
They hadn’t forgotten her.
Someone was reaching out.
Someone wanted to help us.
I set the bottle down gently, as though it might explode, and for the first time in seven days, I felt something spark behind the dread.
Thoughts of the mysterious book sat like a ghost in my chest—it held no weight, no shape, just a presence, haunting, hopeful. I dreamed of the tome, though my mind’s eye had no idea how it should look. I woke and sipped another glass of milk. All my hopes hung on what it might contain.
When I stepped out of my house, buttoning my coat to the throat, my usual driver glanced up from his newspaper and gave a grunt.
“Ready?” he asked in Russian-accented Hungarian.
“Yes, but I need to make a stop on our way to the lab.”
His eyes narrowed.
“Dr. Farkas, we have instructions. Home and the lab, those are your destinations.”
“I know,” I said, keeping my voice calm. “But this should not take long. I ordered a volume—months ago, before everything . . . changed—and just remembered it might have come in. It is a treatise on high-frequency resistance fields that I believe may help with my work.”
The soldier snorted. “You don’t have enough books at the compound?”
“It is a specific edition,” I replied, using the same tone I’d developed when explaining quantum phase shift to first-year students. “Books with advanced technical specifications are rare. This one covers many of the latest theories.”
He blinked and said nothing for a moment.
Then, with a shrug that suggested annoyance more than suspicion, he jerked his head toward the car. “Five minutes.”
We drove through streets still crusted with half-melted snow and soot. When we reached the bookshop on Károlyi Mihály, my driver put the car in park but didn’t step out.
“It’s too fucking cold,” he muttered. “I stay here. Five minutes, or I come in.”
I nodded, masking the relief that bloomed behind my ribs.
“If they have tea, I will bring you some.”
He grunted again but didn’t look up as I climbed out.
Warm air greeted me as I entered to the tinkling of the bell above the door. The shop’s shelves were tall and narrow, bending under the weight of a million forgotten thoughts. A single bulb buzzed weakly above the counter.
The bookseller glanced up.