That night, she did not go to the warehouse. She went instead to a small, dusty bookshop in Bloomsbury, run by a man named Ezra Pastern, who dealt in the sort of antiquities that had “complicated histories.” Ezra was eighty-three, half-blind, and entirely without scruples.
“Why are you telling me this?” she asked.
“And in return?”
His letter arrived on a Tuesday, handwritten on legal paper:
“I want you to have already forged one six months ago, which I know you have, because you show it to me every time I visit, hoping I’ll ask.” whitney st john cambro
Ezra peered at her over his spectacles. “You want me to forge a codex in one night?”
“I’m afraid that’s not possible,” Whitney said, pouring tea. “Client confidentiality.” That night, she did not go to the warehouse
The next morning, the Accountant came.
