Chapter 45: Refusal Log

The new heart had learned to beat badly. It struck under the Waverly cellar in a wet, arrhythmic blow. The capped drain jumped in its concrete bed. Gray excavation bins answered from the walls, their lids rising a fraction before roots pulled them shut. Vivian had arranged the stolen dead by plot number. Sau-lin found the neatness insulting. A root held each of her wrists against the old cellar floor. Another entered under her left foot and divided through her bones, and its branches passed into the bins marked C-417, into fragments gathered from the cemetery, and down through the surviving brick of her shop. The floor above had once held her counter. She knew its position by the weight on her chest. The bone-payment ledger lay open beside the drain, its leather cover swollen with water. Thin roots explored the pages, lifting fibers wherever lampblack formed a name. They…