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it to anyone. Forget this ever happened.”
    I was looking into my hands, not at him. Pencil smears darkened the tips of my fingers. It all made sense now, why he was so smart and knew so many things. All of those legends and histories—I’d assumed he’d heard the stories from other people, but who around here could have told him? Anger melted the lump in my throat.
    “If I have to forget you can read, then you forget you read those words,” I said. “Forget you smelled smoke. I’m not sharing secrets if you won’t.”
    Drey looked tired, more tired than I’d ever seen him. He hesitated, studying the postcard he’d given me years ago that now bore an ominous but cryptic message, as though wondering if my secret was worth trading for.
    It apparently wasn’t, because he left the room, taking my view of the mountain with him.
    That didn’t make me angry—I was already angry enough. Besides, I didn’t need the copied message anymore, now that I knew what it said. Not that I knew what I was going to do about it.
    All I did know was that she—the Word of Life—had asked for help. She was the only one who’d spotted me with a trash bag in that courtyard. No one else had been in there; I’d been on the lookout, seeing as I’d been sneaking around. And she was the only one who could think I was stupid enough to help her, probably from the way I’d gawked at her.
    The message had to be from her. For me.
    But why the hell would she need my help? What could I even do? I was impotent, and she was one of the most powerful people on the planet.
    Maybe she had been looking at the sky with longing. But why? Perhaps that place was somehow a cage for her, even though she was powerful. Or, rather, because she was powerful. Maybe she had to pose for so many TV clips and posters that she didn’t have any time for anything else. Maybe the other Words, like Death, were using her.
    Or maybe my imagination was running away with me again. Maybe she was the one using me. But I had to find out.
    Drey had always told me that anger makes a man lose his head, and he was probably right. Because I was going to try to help her. Even if I was a sucker, at least I would be doing something . Whatever it was. The only plan I could think of was to hang out under her balcony until she either turned up or dropped another clue on my head.
    The object in my other pocket weighed me down again, and I slid the laminated card out. I leaned back on the cot, resting my sweaty shoulders against the cool concrete wall, studying it, even though the typewritten letters made no more sense to me than the Word’s secret message had.
    Dr. Swanson had said that it granted me higher clearance. Maybe I could use this card to get into the Athenaeum outside of my scheduled hours. But anything I did outside of my usual work routine would draw unwanted attention. If I used the card to get in, I couldn’t just drive around in the truck, losing myself in the streets until I could sneak back to the courtyard; the security guards would expect me to report to them or go straight to Dr. Swanson, who would expect the same thing if they let him know I was there—which was likely. Then they would be looking for me.
    Deciding to go back to the Athenaeum wasn’t difficult. Waiting until my next shift the following morning was the hard part. I sat on my cot, staring at the cracks in the wall now that my postcard-view of the outside world was gone. Maybe, I thought with relief, she only wanted something little from me, like smuggling something in for her—maybe she couldn’t get Captain Crunch in the Athenaeum. I sure had plenty of that to give her. Because what else could I do?
    Realistically, I knew it had to be something more than that. Maybe much more, and I didn’t know how far I was willing to go. I didn’t want to lose my job—or worse. Picturing the Word of Death and his lethal touch made me swallow butterflies, and not normal-sized ones, but monster butterflies