All through her shift at her aunt's perfumery, Indy is unfocused—at least on the things she is intended to be focusing on. Several times, Honey Sweet's bell dings above the front entrance, but Indy doesn't even look up, the sound an extraneous event in a world outside of this one: this one within the pages of Elizabeth Dobbs's notebook, the one captured in loops of pen ink in various fading hues.

Aunt Jocelyn notices, tapping Indy's shoulder gently with a rolled coupon catalogue and ordering her to tug her head back down from the clouds, but otherwise, besides a surreptitious tap at Aunt Jocelyn's phone that might be a message to Indy's mother, she goes without reprimanding.

She sits behind the counter with the journal open on her lap, reading the pages she's already read a million times, letting the old paper soak in vanilla, cardamom, sandalwood. She rests her finger in the crease of the book's binding. The most recent message left there is one she has read already: the address, the warehouse in the woods for which she almost ended up in prison. Indy's mind wanders towards Jude for just a second. Then she corrects herself.

At the clink of bottles landing on the counter, Indy hastily stashes the journal in the dark of the underhand cupboard, and jumps to her feet, scanner gun at the ready. "My bad, ma'am," she says to the customer, a petite, watery-eyed woman with blond hair gone silver scraped back into a high-bun. Narrow wire-frame glasses hang from a circle of beads around her throat, her wan face sun-speckled. There is a certain familiarity to her somehow, like she's a minor celebrity Indy's seen before on a daytime television program.

"I don't mind," says the woman, in a voice so small Indy finds herself subconsciously leaning forward. "You're a student, aren't you? And working, too. How do you have time for it all?"

Indy forces a chuckle as she wraps the tender glass bottles in paper and shuffles them into a miniature plastic bag. "It's not so bad, honestly. I'm only here weekends. Besides, I like keeping busy. It keeps my brain occupied."

The smile on the woman's face wavers as she fumbles with her wallet. "My niece was the same way."

"Yeah? What did she study?"

"She went missing just before college."

Indy slows. The receipt printer whirs, dispensing a long strip of white paper, still warm, with a pink stripe along the edge. Indy's hand hovers over it, unable, afraid, to move. "I'm very sorry to hear that, ma'am. I hope she's rescued soon."

"It was thirty years ago," the woman says, and oddly enough, her smile returns to her face, watery eyes slightly crinkling, crow's feet pinching close. "If I saw her now she'd be old, like me. I'd hardly recognize her."

She waves a hand by way of thanks, and turns to leave. Five minutes after the echo of the bell has stopped and Indy has replaced the roll of receipt paper in the printer, Aunt Jocelyn pauses in front of the counter on her way to stock the sale rack. She drops to the floor momentarily and when she comes up, she's holding a flimsy state ID card.

"Did someone drop this?" she asks, tossing it with a gentle click onto the counter. "See if she has a number with us we can call."

"Sure," Indy says, and picks up the ID card. Sure enough, it's the woman's, though the face looking at her from the little square picture printed on the plastic is younger, fuller, more jovial.

Her name is Amelia. Amelia Dobbs.

After she finds Amelia, it's not long before Indy meets Lydia.

Despite the lack of a body Indy finds Lydia has been carefully buried. In the archived local newspapers in Proudley's library, there is hardly any mention of her disappearance, besides the fact she was raised by her single mother, Elizabeth, who was devastated and had issued a reward for any information anyone could provide. So it's through Amelia that Indy finds Elizabeth was not the first strange statistic to rock the small community of Erskine: a mystery tucked away safe and sound and silent inside of another one. For the first time Indy wonders, briefly, if she has bitten off more than she can chew.

Late night when he discovers she's still hammering away in the library, Percy appears with bright, nearly phosphorescent bottles of energy drinks and a tray of sandwich cookies. In the back of her head Indy knows she should consume neither of these things at this hour—she'll never sleep tonight if she does—but it only takes a moment for her to realize she probably won't be sleeping anyway.

He takes the seat next to hers. He's in pajama pants, plaid in shades of purple and white, their old high school's colors, and a sweatshirt with a black puffer vest over it all. He looks faintly ruffled, unshaven. Peaceful, too, though this Indy knows is an act.

"So?" he asks. The library's nearly empty, which has eliminated the need to whisper. Their only company, after all, is the sea of books, the banker's lamps dotting each desktop like marble green sentries. Only one other student is huddled in the far corner, fat white headphones clamped over their ears. "What's this major revelation?"

"It's not much, yet," Indy says, barely looking up from her computer, the glare reflected in the glass of her reading glasses. "But it could be. Percy, I think Elizabeth had a daughter."

"Had?" Percy frowns. "You mean...she's not here now? We can't go talk to her?"

Indy shakes her head slowly, pivoting the computer on the desk so Percy can see the article pulled up on her laptop screen. The text is small and the information is vague, so she says, "Her name was Lydia Rice; she kept her father's name which is probably why we haven't found anything related to her yet. She lived with Dobbs in that house we, um—checked out—until she was seventeen."

"And then?"

"She dropped off the map. Disappeared without a trace. Left home one day to go to a friend's house and never came back."

Percy's response is automatic. He pushes the computer back towards her. "The friend, then. They must have done something."

"I don't think she ever even made it to the friend's house, Percy. According to this article, her friend said they hadn't even planned to hang out at all, so she wasn't shocked when Lydia didn't show up."

"Shit." Percy leans his elbows on the desk, his hands against his mouth. "That's awful. Do you think she lied?"

"Lydia?" Indy asks. "Like, you think she knew where she was going? That she ran away?"

Percy shrugs.

"I don't know," Indy says. She slides the journal out of her backpack, resting flat on the table in front of her. For the millionth time that day she flips through the pages. For the millionth time that day they stare back at her blankly; she rests her eyes and she can almost hear the droning monotony of a dead phone line in her ears. "That doesn't feel right. None of this feels right. How could we not have known something like this? How could none of the papers have mentioned it?"

She watches him ease his forearms off the table and sink back into his seat until the front legs lift off the floor. He looks straight ahead, studying nothing at all it seems, until he turns his head and says, "You're a media student, aren't you? You know the answer to that question, Indy."

Indy's body temperature drops. The tips of her fingers are numb. "Someone didn't want anyone to know, or at least wanted to distract. Someone with power."

Percy clicks his tongue, mimicking a firing gun with his fingers. "Bingo."

"Do you mean bullseye?"

"Bingo."

"Yeah, okay. Sure."

"So what are you going to do, Indy?" Percy asks. "Even if we do manage to get that paper trail from Pine—what if we get it and it still doesn't matter? They'll just manipulate the story again. What then?"

Part of Indy wants to snap, to turn and demand to know why it is that he must always sow doubt where she is trying to nurture hope. The larger part of Indy, however, who knew how to write Percy's name before she learned to write her own, for whom he has been a constant presence since they were three years old, at least, knows that wouldn't be fair to ask. This is the only way Percy knows to care. The worst case scenario is the only language he speaks.

She wants to, but she can't blame him for that. Too often, he's been right, like she's afraid he will be this time, too.

"It's different this time," Indy says, hoping she sounds surer than she really is. "Times have changed. It'll work this time; it'll matter."

Percy pushes a long exhale from his mouth and takes a sandwich cookie from the tray, twisting it open. "I hope so."

"Psychopath," Indy says.

His eyebrows raise. "What now?"

"Don't demolish the cookie before you eat it. You take it apart and you can't enjoy it as it's meant to be enjoyed," Indy says. She snatches a cookie from the tray and bites into it whole, just to demonstrate. "It's a package deal, see? Don't destroy the package."

The look on Percy's face is ponderous, like he's going to respond to that, and with likely such an effective argument that Indy will have no choice to forfeit. Instead, he gives her a pointed glare before licking the cookie clean.

"You're awful," Indy says.

"You love me."

"For some reason."

Against the wood, Indy's phone vibrates, a short hum. She reaches for it without thinking—Sylvia is known to request oddly specific midnight snacks from the vending machines right about now—so she finds herself jarred when the name she reads on the screen belongs to Jude.

hey

it's been a while

can we talk?

"Who is it?"

Indy tries to wipe the surprise from her face. "Sterling," she lies, swiftly, before she can stop to question why she's lying in the first place. "I should probably head back to my dorm and call him. See you in class?"

Indy types quickly, sending back:

depends

what about?

Percy has already gathered his things in record speed. "I'll walk you back, then. It's late and it'd suck if you got mugged."

"What do you mean?" Indy smirks. "I could fight them off."

"Sure you could."

He's not going to take no for an answer, so Indy doesn't attempt it. "Okay. I'm taking the cookies with me, though."

When her phone dings again, she notices Percy's brow twitch, just slightly.

Indy glances at the screen as the library doors slam shut behind them.

everything, probably? Jude says. idk. I just don't wanna disappear anymore.