Page 5 of The Deadliest Candidate

“Shameless gossipmonger.”

On her way homethat night, Fern stopped by the third floor of her apartment building and knocked on her neighbour’s door. Mrs Jørgensen, who was a retired engineer who spent most of her time now restoring antique clocks, opened the door with a beaming smile.

“Fernekær!“ she said in her familiar voice, warm and rough and woody. “You’re back. A day late—so unlike you. You want tea? I have butter biscuits—your favourite.”

Fern laughed and shook her head. “Not this time, Mrs Jørgensen. I need a showerand a good night’s sleep.” She followed Mrs Jørgensen into her apartment, the red wallpaper of the hallway almost completely hidden behind a row of standing clocks of all shapes and wood types. “Thank you so much for looking after Inkwell; I hope he behaved himself.”

“He’s my lucky charm,” said Mrs Jørgensen. “He always behaves himself.”

The knots of shredded packing paper peeking out from under the couch and the tipped-over cups on the low table of cherry wood told a different story. Inkwell himself, balanced on top of a grandfather clock, watched her with inquisitive green eyes, as though seeing her for the first time. Fern looked up at him.

“Inkwell,” she said.

The black cat tipped his head to the side. His tail unfurled from around his body, swiped lazily back and forth. He stood, stretched, and hopped down, landing on the floor in silence.

He did not let Fern hold him, he never did, not since the day she found him curled up in the dark, dusty corner of a monastery ruin in France back when she was a student. But he did bump his skull against her ankle as Fern bid Mrs Jørgensen goodbye and followed obediently when she left.

Home at last, Fern breathed a sigh of relief.

The familiar smell of her apartment, magnolia and cinnamon, greeted her like a friend. She turned on her lamps, kicked off her shoes and finally released her hair from its knot at the back of her head. She dropped her hairpins into their trinket dish, where they fell with a satisfying metallic tinkle.

Dark gold strands of her hair fell on her shoulder, a dull ache radiating in her scalp. She groaned; she needed a hot bath, sooner rather than later.

Fern placed her coat and blazer on their hangers by the door and lifted the bronze flap of her letterbox. She glanced inside. It was more out of habit than anything else; her mail was usually sent to her office in Vestersted Library, where she spent most of her time.

Except that for once, the letterbox wasn’t empty.

Fern’s heart jolted like a startled hare in her chest. She turned and looked at Inkwell, who leapt up onto the console table by the door, watching her with some interest. With a trembling hand, Fern reached into the letterbox, revealing its content.

A cream envelope with her name and address written in elegant, slanted cursive. Fern flipped the envelope. A seal of gold wax imprinted with an image of an eye with a candle in its pupil. No sender name, no address.

It needed neither; Fern knew exactly where the letter was from.

Chapter three

The Resignation

The letter sat, unopened,on top of Fern’s narrow fireplace for a week.

It seemed to watch Fern in the mornings when she took her breakfast in the small nook of her kitchen, sitting by the open window and watching the lively house sparrows pick at the dirt in her flowerbeds.

It watched her as she stood at her hallway mirror, securing her hair with pins and picking specks of lint off her coat sleeves. It watched her in the late evenings when she sat on the soft rug in the middle of her living room, a plate of butter biscuits by her elbow and books spread out in front of her, scribbling notes and references into the pages of her overworn notebooks.

Every day before she left for work, Fern turned to look at the envelope, the clean cream square of it like a small gateway cut into the fabric of her life. Should she pass through that gateway, she would have to leave Vestersted behind and with it her office, her librarians, Oscar. New Copenhagen, her little apartment, Mrs Jørgensen andgrandfather clocks.

Every night, when the moon rose high above Øresund and the nights were silent and pensive, Fern twirled her pen between her fingers and watched the envelope.

She reminded herself of everything it meant. Years of work in the Northwest Union’s best libraries, dozens upon dozens of essays and research papers, recommendations from some of the most respected scholars in the world. She’d worked her way all the way up, and now, she finally had the chance of reaching the pinnacle.

She reminded herself, too, of everything it meant, deep down. What she had lost, so long ago. A narrow cot and soundless weeping. Ornate halls and books and Gateways. Her breath caught in her chest; she held it prisoner there and looked upon the envelope, the glowing white invitation.

How could she not give everything up for it when it was everything she had ever wanted?

So she thought, and yet her nights were restless, her sleep disturbed. She watched the letter for a week, and for a week, it watched her back.

Inkwell, once, in the glowing amber dusk of a Thursday evening, had jumped up onto the mantelpiece and bared his teeth at the envelope. He did not touch it, and otherwise did not return to the mantelpiece while the envelope remained there.

Was it a sign? Fern did not believe in signs. She believed in reading and observing and studying; she believed in facts and figures and records. She believed in what she knew: that she was ready for this, that it was the right thing for her, the destination the path of her life had always led to.

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