When we got into town, I was pleased to see that the whole place had been decked out for the holidays. There were wreaths on all the lampposts, every store had put up their decorations, and the trees lining Center Street were covered with lights. It was a shame it was daytime, so I couldn’t see what they looked like when they were on.

Darius parked next to the Center Street playground. As soon as we stepped out of the SUV, someone called his name.

I turned and saw a stocky woman with dark hair wearing a uniform.

“Glad you could join us today.” She glared at the vampire.

“Good afternoon, Deputy,” Darius said.

Oh. The deputy. I was looking at the sole representative of law and order for the whole town of Quicholt—well, normal law and order, anyway—so I looked at her with a little more respect.

She jerked her head toward me. “Who’s this?”

“Deputy Crook, this is Miss Emerra Cole.”

Trust the count to use a title.

“Emerra,” he went on, “this is Deputy Jaylen Crook.”

I stepped forward and put out my hand. “Hi.”

As we shook, Darius said, “Emerra, also lives up at the Noctis Mansion.”

“I haven’t seen you around before,” the deputy said.

“It’s a combination of I don’t get out much and I’m still a little new here,” I said.

I watched as her suspicious eyes moved over me then, inevitably, came to rest for a fraction of a second too long on my head.

“Your hair,” she noted.

I adopted what I hoped was a dignified air. “I woke up this morning and just couldn’t do a thing with it.”

“Huh.” She turned from me to Darius. “What’s she doing here?”

Oop. That was my cue. “Oh, he was just my ride. I have something to do, so I’ll make myself scarce. It was nice to meet you.”

She nodded but didn’t say anything.

I said, “And I’ll text you later, Darius.”

“You know the way?” he called to my retreating back.

I already had my phone out to look up the address, so all I did was raise it above my head and wave it around. The count might not have been a complete fossil when it came to technology, but he was old enough it wasn’t his first thought.

As I walked down the street, I had to battle the temptation to go exploring all the shops and side streets. I hoped there’d be time for that later, but Iset had warned me that the museum closed early, so I went there first.

The museum turned out to be in an old Victorian mansion.

Really, what was it with this town and old Victorian mansions?

On the other hand, it was more reasonably sized than the one I lived in, and turning it into a nonprofit museum was probably a good way to deal with property taxes.

I hopped up the front stairs and checked the vinyl on the door’s glass. The name was there, along with a list of hours.

I caught myself looking for a doorbell to ring and laughed.

“Because you always knock before going into a museum, Emerra,” I whispered.

It still felt weird to just open the door and go in, so I compromised with my conscience by calling out while I did it.

“Hello?”

The door pushed through a small set of wind-chimes as I opened it further. The bright notes jangled through the front hall. It did have a front hall, but my guess about the relative size of the house was correct—it wasn’t going to match the near-castle proportions of Jacky’s home.

I finished coming in and shut the door behind me. Without even thinking, I took off my boots. They had snow and mud on them, and Igor was enough of a mother to me that I wasn’t going to risk his disapproval. Even if he wasn’t there.

A woman came in while I was putting them on the boot tray by the door.

“Oh, thank goodness.”

Her voice sounded relatively young. Since I had been expecting an ancient Grumposaurus rex, that wasn’t saying much, but I was surprised when I stood up and found myself facing a lovely woman who could have been anywhere from fifty to sixty years old.

She had cropped white hair and thick-rimmed round glasses that looked much too fashionable for a dinosaur to wear. Actually, everything about her looked too fashionable to belong in a historical society, and she radiated power, even though she was only standing there.

She smiled. It didn’t turn the ends of her mouth up, but it did make her cheeks stand out.

“Thank you for thinking to remove your shoes,” she said. “It’s impossible to get mud out of these wood floors.”

“I know,” I said with a grin. “Is this the Westcott—”

“Yes, yes. The Westcott Historical Museum. You’ve come to the right place. Have you been here before?”

“Uh, no. No, I have not.”

She gave me a firm handshake. “Well, I’m always glad to see someone new in here.” She motioned toward what was probably the sitting room. I followed her. “Where are you from? Are you visiting someone, or are you here for the town?”

My brain must have stalled in the presence of such a dynamo. “Um…”

She looked over her shoulder. “You’re not here just to see us, are you? No. That’d be too much to ask.”

“I’m from here.”

She stopped and turned. “You’re a resident?”

“Yeah.”

She took off her glasses and looked me over. “Forgive me for assuming, but I think I would have remembered someone like you. Have we met?”

I also felt confident I would have remembered her, so I assured her we had not.

She replaced her glasses. “Well, I’m Stella Baker. I have the honor of looking after the museum.”

We continued into the sitting room. The edges of the room were crowded with glass display cases, and the walls were hung with antique swords, pistols, old fashioned paintings, and a framed copy of the mansion’s floor plans. In the middle of the room was a set of armchairs.

“Have you been here long?” I asked.

“Oh, no,” she said. “A few months, that’s all.” She sat down in one chair and waved me toward the other. “I hope you weren’t expecting to find Mr. Ulfric?”

“Was he the last curator?”

“He was. He’d been in for over fifty years, so compared to that, you can imagine, I’m seen as quite the neophyte.”

“I take it he was a bit of a dinosaur?”

“Oh, yes. And like all the other dinosaurs, he’s now extinct.” She paused. “I suppose I should have waited to find out if you knew him before saying something like that.”

“Tell me, Ms. Baker, how do you feel about computers?”

“I love them. Any sane human would. I’ve fought the board, won my first battle, and now we have internet in the museum.” She jerked her fist in triumph. “Can you believe I had to fight for that?”

I grinned. “I think you’ll do fine here.”

“Well, thank you. I’m sorry, I didn’t catch your name.”

“Emerra.”

“Emerra. What a beautiful name. So, what can I do for you? Are you here to browse the museum, or are you doing a project?”

“I’m here to learn about the Krusen Patroonship.”

She put a hand to her chest and gazed up at the ceiling for a moment, then returned her eyes to me. “You have to stop. You’re making this day too good.”

“I take it you’ve heard of it?”

“Heard of it? Emerra, I have lived and breathed it. That’s how I found out about this position. I was researching the original six patents, so of course I had to call here whenever I needed information about Krusen. That’s how I heard Mr. Ulfric had died.”

“Wow, small world.”

“The coincidence becomes much less miraculous when you consider the fact that anyone wanting original source material on Krusen has to call or come here. If it wasn’t me, it would have been someone else.”

“Can you tell me about it?”

“Certainly. How much do you know?”

“Um. Nothing.”

She smiled again. “Then how much time do you have?”

“Can we start with the basics?”

Baker let out a short sigh. “Well, it would be a shame to scare you away. Let’s see…” She took a second to gather her thoughts. “Do you know about the patroonships?”

I shook my head.

“Back in 1629, the Dutch West India Company decided they wanted to move into their territory up here, so they created the Charter of Freedoms and Exemptions which allowed them to offer land and manorial rights to any investors willing to try to create a settlement.”

I interrupted: “Manorial rights?”

The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

“Ah, yes. You’ve heard of manor houses? In Britain? Those huge houses where the lord and lady live, where they oversee the area.”

I nodded.

“It helps to think of it like that. The patroons—the investors—would have been something like a mayor or a governor, only much more powerful. They gathered taxes, created the courts, and appointed all the officials. In return for this power, they had to foot the bill for establishing the settlement and find a way to con fifty families into moving there within four years.”

“And Krusen was one of these patroonships?”

“The last one of the original six. The strange one.”

“Strange how?”

“Strange in many ways. They were the furthest north, the furthest out, and not on any major body of water. Frankly, they were outside their territory, and they never should have been here.”

“Where was the settlement?”

She opened her hands wide. “Here.”

“Wait—here, here?”

“Well, honesty forces me to admit that our best guess puts it roughly twelve miles away from town, but I think that’s quibbling.”

“Why did they settle here?”

“That’s what I was researching. My pet theory is that it was a strategic choice—an attempt to expand the territory of the New Netherlands by testing to see who, if anyone, would object.” She took off her glasses and tapped them on her knee. “Krusen was an interesting man. He had money, ideals, and strong opinions about how he wanted his town to run. There’s no doubt he shaped that settlement more than most leaders would have been able to.”

And to relax I bet he liked to play Nine Men’s Morris.

As Baker put her glasses back on, I said, “Do you have any documents from the settlement?”

“Oh, yes. Quite a few. That’s one of the things Krusen had opinions about. He wanted everything documented and recorded. He believed his settlement would be a marvelous success, and he wanted others to be able to imitate his methods. He hired both a personal secretary and a public secretary for the town. Not all of the documents survived, of course—”

“What about a list of names?”

She cocked her head.

“A list of the people who lived in the town?” I clarified.

“Ah! We have several of those. Would you like to see them?”

“Can I?”

She stood up and motioned for me to follow her.

My heart fluttered with excitement as she led me up the stairs. Our first stop was a bathroom. When she opened the door, she kicked the door stop into place so it wouldn’t close behind us. We washed our hands all the way up to our elbows, then we grabbed our own towel from a pile to dry them.

“Try not to touch anything on the way in,” she said.

I followed her over to the next room. The door had been altered to swing either way. She backed through it and held it open for me with her foot.

The room was full of high windows that let in the sunlight. It might have once been a parlor or a music room (or an excessively generous bedroom), but whatever furniture had been in there, it had been removed to make room for the bookshelves and file cabinets. There were rows and rows of them, all precisely arranged and labeled.

Stella said, “I’ll give Mr. Ulfric this—the man was organized.”

She had me wait by one of two desks while she went back through the narrow walkways. She returned with a box and laid it on the desk. It opened like a book.

Before that moment, all the precautions—washing our hands, not touching anything—had seemed needlessly dramatic. Then I saw the documents. They were faded, their worn edges were browning, and they looked frail enough to fall apart with a breath.

I said, while trying not to breathe too much, “Should…uh…we be wearing gloves?”

“No,” Baker said. “Gloves carry a shocking amount of dirt, and you’re more likely to rip the pages. Gloves are for photographs, but they didn’t have photographs back then.”

She carefully lifted paper after paper and laid them gently into the other side of the box. Then she stopped, stood back, and motioned for me to look closer.

I stepped in and leaned over the list. I was so drunk from its age and beauty that it took me a minute to realize something.

“I can’t read this,” I muttered.

“That’s normal,” Baker said from behind me. “Seventeenth century script is hard to read when it’s in your own language—never mind Dutch.”

I turned to her. “Can you read it?”

“Most of it. The fact they’re names helps. I don’t actually read Dutch from any century.” She pointed to the top of the page. “Here’s our hero, Patroon Krusen. Underneath him is a list of the men he appointed as elders.”

I thought I spotted a capital M. Could that be Mulder?

“Where’s Dominie?” I whispered.

“The dominie’s name is under theirs. He was too young to be appointed as an elder.” She moved her finger. “Evert Arts.”

“I thought his name was Dominie.”

“No, that was his position. He was a minister of the Dutch Reformed Church. Krusen personally sent for him to come over.”

I looked at where she pointed. Under the nearly indecipherable name, I saw four letters followed by a dash.

A wash of feelings rushed over me, as if I’d been dropped into a pool of awe and sadness. My hand went up to my mouth, but I caught myself before I touched my lips.

“That’s…” Words failed me. I pointed.

“Yes,” Baker mused, “Little Anna.”

I could barely think. That might explain why my next words were “You know her?”

“I do. There isn’t much left of her.”

My breath caught. Someone must have locked up my chest in an attempt to contain whatever chimeric monstrosity of emotion my heart was burping out. Since I wouldn’t be able to explain the reason why her words had such an effect on me, all I could do was try to hide my reaction.

I managed to say, “Tell me about her.”

“Well, we know she was a young child, an orphan, and there must have been some question about her parentage.”

“What makes you say that?”

“The dash.” Baker picked up a plastic bookmark with a rounded end that had been lying on the desk. She used the tip to point to the long line that stood in for Anna’s last name. “At first people assumed she was Arts’ wife. Her name was often coupled with his, and Krusen was careful to keep family names together, but everywhere else, you can see, the last names were included, even with wives and children. Then someone drew a connection between this Anna, and the Anna mentioned in one of Krusen’s letters.”

“What did it say?”

Baker shrugged. “I’ve forgotten most of it, but the most relevant line was ‘Little Anna, whom you might remember, has found a home’—I’m sorry, are you all right?”

“Yeah,” I choked out. “This is just pretty amazing.”

“History will do that to you.”

I caught a glimpse of her knowing smile before she turned back to the document and carefully flipped it over to get to the next one.

“But I believe the real breakthrough came when someone was examining the last census.” She flipped another paper, then pointed with the bookmark. “There are two names at the bottom. They only appear this once, and they aren’t associated with any family.”

I didn’t even have to look, but I obediently bowed my head. “Jacob and Jan.”

“I’m impressed you can read that, Emerra. Yes, Jacob and Jan, followed by a dash, then an odd note about their ages. Six and four. Two very young boys who appear suddenly at the end of a list. They’re too old to have been born there, so it’s likely they’re orphans from somewhere else. If the father’s last name is unknown, the first name is followed by a line to prevent someone from accidentally writing in that space. Taking all that into consideration, it seems more likely that Anna was an orphan that lived with the dominie.”

“Can I take a picture of this?”

“Of course! Take as many pictures as you want. You’re welcome to handle the documents, as long as you’re careful. Please don’t get them out of order, and don’t remove the tags. And if you want any help managing a particularly obnoxious or damaged document, you can call me, and I’ll help.” She motioned to one of the tiny rows between the shelves. “I was working down there when I heard you come in. I hate to leave the documents out for too long, so if you don’t mind?”

I shook my head.

“Call me if you need me.”

And I was left alone with the last evidence of my beautiful little friends.

I took all the pictures I could, taking extra care to zoom in on the names that meant so much to me. When I was done photographing that box, I asked if there were any other documents about the Krusen Patroonship—any, in particular, that dealt with the three children.

Stella Baker gave me a long, quiet look. I tried to formulate a lie about why I would care, but to my relief, I didn’t need it.

“There’s at least the letter,” she said. “Let me go get that box.”

She brought it over and helped me put away the other documents so I would have room for the new batch.

As she opened the new box, she said, “These contain all the letters to and from Krusen.”

Once again, she confidently, carefully, started flipping through the papers.

“You seem to know exactly where it all is,” I said.

“Lived and breathed it, Emerra. I lived and breathed it for months.”

“Did you write a book?”

“I did. You have to if you’re a historian. We read old documents, drink coffee, and write new books which eventually become old documents. Thus, the cycle continues.”

“You weren’t always a curator?”

“Oh, no. This is my retirement.”

“Stella Baker.”

She stopped and looked up.

“You’re really cool.”

She blushed. “You’re flattering me.” Then she went back to flipping through her old documents.

“This is it,” she said standing up. “I know you can’t read it, but if you photograph it, you can usually find help deciphering it online.” She used the bookmark to indicate a particular place. “There she is. Little Anna.”

“Can you leave that there while I take the shot?”

“That’s a wise idea.”

As I was taking pictures, we heard the sound of footsteps coming from the hall. Baker left to go see who it was.

I tried to return my attention to the letters, but the woman who had come in had a loud, hysterical voice that made it impossible.

“He fired me!”

I heard the murmur of Bakers more moderate tones—and it still amazes me I would ever call her bold voice moderate.

The stranger said, “I don’t know! He came in this morning, and he simply fired us! Yes, both of us! Stella, what on earth am I going to do?”

More murmuring.

“I don’t care. What’s happening to this town? I don’t understand!”

I had been attempting, and completely failing, to politely ignore the poor woman’s ranting, but with that line, I abandoned all my manners and the documents. I was instantly Madam Spy. I snuck over and put my ear by the slit of the swinging door.

Baker said, “What do you mean?”

“You should have seen him! He was all twitchy and limping. He could barely stand.”

“Was he hurt?”

“He stared at us! He stared at us and said he was fine! And his face.”

“What was wrong with his face?”

The woman’s voice sounded strangled. “I don’t know. He was never handsome, but I’d never seen him like that.”

Baker must have been struggling to understand—I know I was. “Because he was angry?”

“No,” the woman sniffed. “I’ve seen him angry. He wasn’t angry. If I didn’t know better—Stella, I’d swear it wasn’t him!”

“But it was him?”

There was a short silence. I don’t know what her answer was, but I thought I could hear some weeping.

Baker spoke in a bracing manner, “Come on, Sky. This is—well, I don’t know what this is. Things have been…strange recently. Worrying. Maybe Bhaird is doing this because he’s afraid.”

“Both of us have put up with him for over ten years! Now he’s afraid we’re a bunch of ax murderers?”

“We’re all afraid, Sky. Give him some space. Do you have a little set by? Good. That’ll buy you some time to come out of your shock and decide what to do next.”

“This is my home! I don’t want to leave my home!”

“Maybe you won’t have to. You might be able to find another place around here.”

“With who? Who else could afford a private cook?”

There was a long pause. “I don’t know, but it’s a big wide world out there. There are bound to be lots of options. And all of them, all of them, will be better considered after we sit down and have a cup of something.”

“Not coffee. I can’t. I’m still shaking. I was so scared.”

“Scared?”

“I don’t know. But not coffee.”

“I have some peppermint tea.”

“That”—there was another sniff—“that sounds good. Ohhh, I’ve made a fool of myself.”

And the world’s coolest curator reinforced her position by saying, “Not at all. I don’t blame you for feeling this way. No one would.”

When I heard them going down the stairs, I returned to the letters.

A nebulous something churned around in my head. I wish I could say I was thoughtful—I certainly felt thoughtful—but I don’t know if it counted. I didn’t have any thoughts. There was nothing but confusion and a growing sense of unease.

I had barely finished photographing the letters when Baker returned.

“Do you need anything else?” she asked.

I closed the box and turned to her. “What happened to everyone?”

“Everyone? That’s a rather big question. But if you’re asking what happened to the town, that’s still a mystery.”

“A mystery?”

“There’s a reason we call it the strange one. The list with the two boys was the last census taken. One year later, the town was gone.”

“And you don’t know what happened?”

Baker crossed her arms. “Well, we’re fairly sure the town wasn’t completely wiped out since the names of Krusen residents began appearing in other nearby town documents. The most likely theory is that it was abandoned after trouble with the indigenous people, but even that seems unlikely to me.”

“Why?”

“Because something like that would have been written down. Someone would have warned the surrounding settlements.”

“Didn’t Krusen take any notes? I mean, if he was such a paperwork nut, wouldn’t he have written down what happened?”

Baker nodded slowly. “Which is why I always wondered if something happened to him, and that’s why the town fell apart.”

“Um…?”

“One day, all the writing stopped. No more letters. No more lists. No more notes. We have fragments all the way up through December of that year, then—nothing.”

I shivered. “You think he died?”

“Something happened to that town, and it was bad enough to cause it to fall apart. If Krusen had been alive and well, I think we would have records.”

“Do you have any idea what happened to Dominie and Anna?”

“Anna, no. We’ve only found her in those four references. But the dominie…”

She pulled out the other box, the one I had been looking through before. At the very bottom of the pile was a piece of paper with a mash of writing along the top, followed by a list.

“This is one of the last documents. It might be the very last document from the town, but it was a running list, so it’s hard to gauge when the last note was made.”

“A running list of what?”

“The winter casualties for that year.”

Almost breathless, I muttered, “Did they always do that?”

“No, but we have good reason to believe it was an unusually hard winter. Evert Arts wrote this himself.”

My body jerked. A sudden sense of possessiveness made me want to snatch the paper. This was his writing. Something Dominie had touched. I wanted to take it and give it to Anna.

Fortunately, Baker had been looking at the document. She hadn’t seen my rather obvious reaction.

She continued, “He wrote that he’s taken it on himself to keep a record of everyone who was lost that winter in case they need it to supplement the official records.”

“Why would he need to do that?”

“It might have something to do with the fact that the very first name he recorded was the public secretary’s.” She pointed down to the bottom of the list. “And then there’s this. It might be hard for you to tell, but this isn’t his handwriting. Someone else found this list and added to it.”

“What does it say?”

“Dominie Evert Arts. Missing, presumed dead.”