The map they might now do something to her for.
“So? Interested in joining the hunt?” Pete was asking Nell now. His tone was playful, but there was a hint of suspicion threaded through it.
“She’s Dr. Young’s daughter. She would never stoop to play such a stupendously classless game, just as he wouldn’t either,” Claire said, with an air of finality. “Now, someone tell us a charming, respectable story about him.”
Nell tried to listen as Nozomi launched into a humorous anecdote, but all she could think about was her father’s leather portfolio, hidden among the wreckage of his silent office. The map inside that he had placed there in secret before he died. The map that so many people, and more importantly, the dangerous Cartographers, desperately wanted.
She raised her glass, before the rest of the guests noticed her discomfort.
“To Dr. Young,” Wolff said when he saw her gesture, and the rest of the circle copied.
Nell finally took the smallest of sips—delicate, musky heat tingled on her lips. Probably a month’s pay right there.
“Please excuse me,” she said, and turned to make her way through the crowd, eager to escape. A stream of condolences and raised glasses greeted her, and she returned each with a smile, but kept moving. She was looking for one person in particular.
“Francis,” she said.
Dr. Francis Bowden was standing in the corner near a bookcase, apart from the rest of the party—and seemed to have been talking to Humphrey, of all people, who had just disappeared across the room to refresh his drink. Francis looked up when she called to him, startled.
“Nell,” he finally replied. “How are you? These things can be a little overwhelming.”
“I’m fine, thank you,” she said, joining him in the corner. “You knew my father well?”
“We spoke at many of the same conferences these last few years,” he answered.
“I meant before. Long before. And me, too—isn’t that right?”
The shadows across Francis’s face deepened.
“I’m sorry, but it’s getting late, and—”
“Yesterday I went to Ramona Wu’s shop, and she gave me a package that was meant for my father,” Nell interrupted. “Your name was on it.” She pressed on as he withdrew even further. “Why would my father want an old insurance map of the library?”
Francis didn’t say anything for a long moment. He glanced around the room, with the same cautious look that Ramona had worn.
“You should stop looking into it,” he murmured.
“Ramona said that, too. Practically kicked me out of her shop,” she said. “Why? I don’t understand.”
“You should keep it that way. You’re already in over your head—and you’ve been careless.”
“Excuse me?”
“Two visits to the NYPL in two days. Research into General Drafting Corporation. The false interinstitution catalog entry you made. And that trip to Ramona’s.”
Nell stared at him, stunned. The bright, busy room suddenly felt cold, sinister. “Have you been . . . following me?”
“Only to warn you,” Francis said.
Nell fumbled for a response. She tried not to think of the black car that haunted the streets outside, always lurking. The hunger she’d seen in the board members’ eyes moments ago. The fear in Ramona’s, and now Francis’s.
“How was the Sanborn map supposed to help him?” she asked again, but Francis withdrew from her rapidly—he was looking not at her anymore, but just behind.