And If Thou Wilt, Forget

There was a new picture on Sasha’s desk.

That in and of itself wasn’t particularly unusual or noteworthy. None of the rest of them had pictures on their desks—Martin because he didn’t have anyone he wanted pictures of on his desk that he couldn’t see by just looking up (as he put it), Tim because it had been one of the rules Gertrude laid down during his first week as her assistant and he’d never bothered questioning it—but it wasn’t odd to have a picture on your desk. Nor was the subject particularly disturbing; it was just a man in an inoffensive beige polo shirt, khaki pants, and a brown belt, with perfectly tousled blond hair, blue eyes, and teeth so white he could star in a toothpaste advertisement without needing to have the sparkles added in post, stood in front of a plain white wall.

Nevertheless, Tim was disquieted. As much by the picture’s sudden appearance as by its subject.

“Morning, Tim, Sasha. Oh—hey, nice picture.” Martin set his bag down and gestured to the photograph. “Is that, um—Tom?”

Tom? Tim blinked as Sasha beamed up at Martin. “Yes! He gave me his picture yesterday, and I thought it might be nice to have it up at my desk.” She giggled—actually giggled, like a schoolgirl with her first crush. “I know it’s silly…”

“No! No, it’s—it’s nice,” Martin assured her. “Don’t you think it’s nice, Tim?”

“Yeah. Nice of him to give you the picture.” Tim eyed her and decided to take a shot in the dark. “Tom’s the new boyfriend, right?”

“Mm-hmm. We started dating while you and Jon were still out, but it’s finally got serious enough that we’re calling it that.”

“So tell us about him,” Tim invited. “Tell us all about him.”

“Like you’ve told us all about your partner?” Sasha said sweetly.

Okay, that was probably a fair cop, but ouch. Tim put a hand dramatically to his chest and put on his most exaggerated expression of offense. “You wound me, madam!”

“At least I told Martin his name,” Sasha pointed out.

“Martin knows my partner’s name, too,” Tim shot back. “It’s Gerry. He’s an artist. Landscapes, abstract art, the occasional portrait by commission, that kind of thing. He’s a genius in oils and damned good with a pen, too, his calligraphy is phenomenal. There, I shared, you can at least give us what Tom does for a living.”

Sasha and Martin both laughed, although to Tim’s ears, Martin’s sounded a bit brittle and forced. Sasha shook her head as she began setting up her laptop. “He works at Madame Tussauds. I like going to have lunch with him when I can.” She glanced up at Tim. “We should go on a double date some time.”

“There’s only one letter’s difference between ‘Tim’ and ‘Tom’. You’d end up going home with the wrong boyfriends,” Tim said as lightheartedly as he could. An alarm bell was ringing somewhere in his head, and he’d decided not to ignore it. “I’ll float it by the partner, but he’s kind of a homebody.”

“Maybe I’ll commission him to do my portrait. That might be a nice Christmas present for Tom.”

“You couldn’t afford him, baby.”

Sasha batted her eyelashes at him. “Doesn’t he do special rates for friends and family?”

“Yeah. He charges double,” Tim retorted. Sasha stuck her tongue out at him but, thankfully, dropped the subject.

Later that morning, though, when Sasha stepped out of the room for a few minutes, Tim glanced over his laptop at Martin. “When did she tell you about Tom?”

Martin blinked up at him, obviously startled. “Huh? Oh—last week sometime. Um, Thursday or Friday? The day after she took the extra-long lunch. She took a short one the next day and told me that she felt bad about holding us up the day before, but she’d had to wait a bit for Tom to be free so they could have lunch. Why?”

“Just wondered.” Tim glanced involuntarily at the picture for a brief second. It was obviously a professional photo, so it had probably been retouched to get rid of any flaws, but whoever had done it hadn’t been very good at their job, because it had gone past flawless and into Uncanny Valley territory.

Why was he thinking so hard about this, anyway? Sure, Sasha had a boyfriend he hadn’t known about, but they weren’t close, not like that. However much they’d started bonding, they weren’t bosom buddies or anything like that. And it probably wasn’t surprising that she’d told Martin first, either; Tim hadn’t been there when she got back from lunch. It was maybe a little odd that she hadn’t mentioned it when he came in, but she probably hadn’t thought about it. And there was no reason for Martin to have said anything, since it wasn’t his to tell; he’d probably figured Sasha had said something to him. It wasn’t like Sasha was an open book at the best of times; he could probably count the number of things he knew about her on one hand and still have fingers left over. She’d come down from Research, she’d been in Artifact Storage before that, and she’d known Gertrude Robinson at least to talk to. He knew where she lived only because he’d driven her home after she’d been attacked by Michael, knew how she liked her coffee only because she hadn’t complained about the cup he’d brought her that same night, knew that she liked dogs only because she’d fussed over Rowlf when he’d brought him the day Martin had started living in the Archives. He knew pretty much Martin’s entire life story, because Martin had desperately needed someone to talk to and bubbled like a fountain when he really got going, but he didn’t know any more about Sasha than he did about Jon, or than he had about Gertrude.

So why was that fact bothering him so much?

Tim turned it over and over in his head for most of the morning. Sasha went out to lunch—laughingly agreeing to Tim’s ostensibly teasing question about if she was planning to have lunch with her boyfriend—followed half an hour later by Martin, who was going to run down something for one of the statements he was researching before getting his own lunch. Jon was still locked in his office, which meant, effectively, Tim was on his own.

He pursed his lips and stared at his laptop. Then, possessed by something he didn’t understand, he changed the system’s language to Italian and started researching.

He started with the Institute’s files. Sasha had commented flippantly once that the Institute’s cybersecurity was pathetically easy to hack; she was right, but what she didn’t know was that that was deliberate. It gave people the opportunity to think they were getting big secrets and make them crave more, especially if they thought they were obtaining it without anyone knowing. Tim normally wouldn’t have bothered, but in this case, he figured it would give him a jumping off point. Doubtless Elias would make some kind of sideways comment to Jon about it that would increase his paranoia while driving a wedge further between them, or at least try to, but he needed to know.

Name, age, address…none of that was a surprise. She’d been in academia for ten years, with the Institute for six; before that she’d worked at the University of Birmingham, the same one she’d graduated from with a Second in Psychology. She got paid by direct deposit, the same as most of them, and she’d opted out of most of the benefits the Institute offered. According to the CV on file, she’d already been living in her current apartment when she’d come to work for the Institute. Her emergency contact was listed as one Vera Barrow of Dover.

Tim scribbled all the information he thought might come in handy in code on a bit of scrap paper, then closed the files and wiped the record of his having been in them, for all the good it would do. Then he logged into his secondary profile, opened the VPN, and started doing the really important research.

Having looked at Sasha’s files? That was only to be expected, especially since she’d probably looked at his at least once. It was what he did with that information that he didn’t want anyone to see.

He started with the university. Tim had never told Martin just how easy it was to verify someone’s university credentials. It wasn’t exactly public information, but it also wasn’t hard to get from a handful of keystrokes. Especially now, with all those websites that digitized yearbooks and the like. In a matter of minutes, he’d found not only the proof that she had attended University of Birmingham, but also the names of her previous schools. His eyebrows jumped into his hairline as he read the information: Sutton Coldfield Grammar School for Girls.

Okay. So not just educated, but well educated. There weren’t a lot of actual grammar schools left in the UK, and they weren’t easy to get into. Tim checked the time, then kept digging. A few judiciously-placed keywords later, and he managed to dredge up an archived message board from the nineties, where girls who had been accepted into the new class were sharing where they had come from. Sasha’s response was about twenty posts down the list and appeared to have sparked substantial discussion after she proudly announced she was a Blue Coat Girl and then had to explain what that was. The reaction from her classmates seemed equally divided between impressed with the academic credentials and disdainful of a school for “orphans and the poor”, even though Sasha protested that it wasn’t like that anymore and provided the exact figures for the term fees.

Tim didn’t know…okay, he did know why he was surprised. Sasha didn’t exactly give off “prep school student” vibes. He guessed it was because she’d gone to a grammar school and not a public school, but come on, even Jon hadn’t gone to prep school. Actually, with all the education she’d had, it was a bit of a surprise that she’d only achieved a Second. The reason for that might be a bit out of his ability to research, at least right now, but his best guess was that she’d just slacked off in university.

Her prep school records? That was easy. Schools like that loved talking about what their alumni were up to. Sure enough, Tim quickly found confirmation that Sasha had been at Birmingham Blue Coat School, beginning in the Nursery, and also found the name Vera Barrow on several lists of donors. He did not, however, see any donors with the surname of “James.”

He could work with that.

Armed with her date of birth and the fact that every school she’d attended had been in Birmingham, Tim’s next stop was to find her birth records. He had a hunch there wouldn’t be anything at any hospital, and he was right, but he did find a baptismal certification from Saint Peters Cathedral in Birmingham. And there was Vera Barrow’s name again, listed as a sponsor.

So. Sasha had a wealthy godmother. Whether she was a blood relative or not, she’d probably paid Sasha’s fees at her prep school and likely been a boost to her application to grammar school as well. It also hadn’t escaped Tim’s notice that, for all of her protests, she had never actually denied that she herself was poor or an orphan. It could have been a coincidence, but with all the other evidence piling up, he suspected at least one, if not both of those was true. The baptismal certificate did at least list her parents’ names, which gave him something to search off of.

Right before Martin got back, he found it. Six weeks after Sasha’s baptism, the church had performed a funeral for one Tatiana James, née Brandon; cause of death, according to the records he managed to dig up, was listed as blood poisoning. Weatherby James—seriously, who named their child Weatherby—had, from what Tim was able to find, never remarried and died around the time Sasha started sixth form, of cirrhosis of the liver resulting from alcoholism.

“Did you go to lunch already, Tim?” Martin asked.

Tim started up from his research and blinked at Martin. “Uh? No, Sasha’s not back yet and I haven’t seen Jon come out, so I didn’t want to leave the Archives unattended.”

“Sasha’s not back yet?” Martin frowned slightly. “She left before I did, and I’ve been gone almost two hours. Does Jon know?”

“I’ll let him know before I head out,” Tim assured him, and as he’d sort of suspected, he saw Martin’s shoulders slump, just slightly, with relief. “Do you want to go get some tea or something? I’ve got to finish this one thing up before I go, so if you need to do that, go ahead.”

“Yeah. Thanks, Tim.” Martin smiled and got up, giving Tim about three minutes to save his work and close up his laptop. He definitely didn’t want anyone looking at what he’d been doing while he was away from his desk.

That done, he went over to the Archivist’s office and opened the door without bothering to knock; none of them did anymore. “Hey, boss.”

Jon jumped like a cat encountering aluminum foil and hastily slammed the folder he was looking at shut. He couldn’t have been more obvious if he’d tried—Gerry was right, Jon was rubbish at secrecy and clandestine maneuvers—but Tim decided to let him have the illusion that he’d successfully covered up whatever he was doing, for the moment anyway. “Tim. What do you need?”

“Just letting you know I’m going to lunch,” Tim told him. “I know it’s late, but Martin just got back from lunch after checking up on the Callisto thing. Sasha’s still out at lunch, by the way, and she’s been gone since eleven.”

Jon glanced at his laptop and did a bit of a double-take when he noticed the time, but didn’t comment. “Right, yes, of course. Fine. Take the rest of the afternoon if you want it.”

“I’m waiting on some information back on—” Tim bit back the instinct to rattle off the case number. “The Canadian one, the one with the dive.”

Jon blinked up at him. “We don’t have the contacts to get that kind of information like we do here in the UK,” he said, as if repeating a lesson—or something he’d been telling himself.

“We don’t, but I do,” Tim said. “You’d be amazed what being nice to people every once in a while can get you. I’ll be back in an hour. Martin’s making tea, so he’ll be in with a cup for you in a minute. Please actually get something to eat so I don’t have to deal with the aftermath of another dead boss.”

Jon flinched, and okay, that may have been a bit harsh, but he simply said, “Fine.”

“I’ll let you get back to your nefarious plotting,” Tim said, and turned on his heel to leave the office.

Martin was coming back in with two cups of tea just as Tim returned to the office, and Tim gave him a nod and a smile. “I let him know about Sasha. Be back in an hour, okay?”

“Duly noted.” Martin saluted with one of the mugs of tea and headed over to Jon’s office.

Tim had actually brought lunch from home, so he didn’t go far, just out into the courtyard; going up to the canteen meant having to deal with other people, which he wasn’t in the mood for, and sitting outside sounded a lot more pleasant. He settled into a corner and unwrapped his sandwich, thinking over everything he’d learned so far.

What did it tell him? What was he trying to find out? Well, it told him that Sasha had a past, a verifiable one, although she was good enough with computers that she probably could have faked most if not all of that if she needed or wanted to. It made her a real person, who had existed before the Institute. And…it gave him a name he could check up on.

The question was why. Why was this so important? Why did he need to know anything about Sasha’s background? He never had checked up on it after Michael attacked—too many other things had taken precedence—so maybe he was looking for a Michael in her background. But there was something else…some other reason he had to look into it. He felt it, deep in his bones. Knowing Sasha’s past was…important. He didn’t know why, but every instinct was telling him to keep digging.

And, reluctantly, he felt he shouldn’t ignore it.

He pulled out his mobile phone, paused, and then hit a preprogrammed number. After two rings, Gerry answered. “Hi, Tim.”

“Enjoying the new phone?” Tim teased. Gerry laughed. “Listen, can I ask you a favor? It’s…I think it’s important. It feels important.”

“You can ask,” Gerry said lightly. In a more serious tone, he added, “I’ll do whatever I can.”

“I have a name and an address. If you can…go down and ask some questions, that’d be great. The problem is, it’s in Dover.”

Gerry hummed. “Hour and a half, right? If I start now, I might be able to get back in time to pick you up from work. What’s the address?”

Tim rattled off the details he’d pulled from Sasha’s file. “The name is Vera Barrow. She’s Sasha’s emergency contact, and I think her godmother. I just…want to know whatever I can about her background. Verify a few details maybe.”

“What have you got? Just so I have some touchstones.”

“Mother died when she was six weeks old, father drank himself to death sixteen years later. Attended Birmingham Blue Coat School and then Sutton Coldfield Grammar School for Girls before heading to University of Birmingham. Baptized C of E, which maybe isn’t the most important information in the world.”

Gerry laughed. “You never know. Her godmother might be appalled she isn’t attending services regularly. All right, I’ll go down and ask around. No promises, though. I’ll text you when I get there and when I’m on the way back.”

“Drive careful. Love you.”

“Love you, too.” Gerry ended the call without further discussion.

Tim sighed and settled back against the wall. He wasn’t sure how much research he would be able to do once Sasha got back, but at least it felt like he was doing something.

He should probably feel guilty about this. After all, essentially he was spying on one of his coworkers. But…it felt like what he needed to do. He might look into Martin’s background, too, and possibly Jon’s as well…although that would take some finesse…but he wanted to get a handle on Sasha first. Something told him it was the key to…well, to something. God alone knew what. Maybe he would figure it out at some point before he burned all his bridges trying to get those answers.

Sasha finally came back at about the time Tim finished his sandwich. She wasn’t even rushing, although, to her credit, she did make a small face when she saw Tim. “Hey. How upset is he?”

“He didn’t seem particularly upset,” Tim said, as neutrally as he could. “But then that was—” He checked his watch. “—thirty-seven minutes ago. He might be upset by now, I dunno.”

“Mm.” Sasha started for the door, then paused and looked back at Tim with her head tilted to one side. “How mad are you?”

Tim raised an eyebrow. “As the mist and snow.”

For a moment, he thought Sasha was going to press him on that, but instead she just shook her head and went inside. Tim sighed again.

How mad was he? Actually, that didn’t much matter. He worked for the Archives of the Magnus Institute and had for three years; he’d left sanity behind a long time ago. The question was, was looking into Sasha’s background just because she hadn’t told him about her picture perfect boyfriend an act of madness or something else altogether?

“Don’t suppose you’re willing to offer any insights,” he muttered, tipping his head back to stare up at the Institute.

Both the stones and the Ceaseless Watcher remained silent, which he decided to take as a blessing.

Gerry texted him about half an hour after he went back from lunch to let him know he had made it to Dover, then about forty-five minutes after that to say he was heading back. Tim replied for him to drive safe and meet at the embankment when he got back, then resumed working. It was actually a fairly peaceable, quiet afternoon, all things considered, and everyone seemed relaxed. Key word was seemed.

For once, nobody left right as the workday came to an end. Tim had been going back and forth for most of the afternoon with his contact—a fraternity brother of the husband of the research librarian from New York City who’d helped with the circus research—and was waiting on one last bit of information before he could put the statement to bed. He wasn’t sure why Martin and Sasha were still there, though, since it was obvious neither of them were working. Sasha was pretending to type, but Tim hadn’t seen her tap the space bar once in the last ten minutes, and Martin kept darting glances towards Jon’s office.

Well, that he could do something about. Tim partially folded his laptop closed so he could see Martin better. “Hey, Freckles, I’m still finishing up this file. I’ll make him leave when I do, okay? Go home. You’ve had a long day.”

Martin looked uncertain. “Are you sure? I-I mean, he’s been…” He flapped one hand helplessly.

“Yeah, I’m sure. I’ll drag his scrawny ass out of there myself if I have to,” Tim said, eliciting a small giggle from Martin. “Go on. Shoo. Sash, you good over there?”

“Fine.” Sasha smiled brightly up at Tim and closed her laptop. “I just had to finish one last thing, but I’m all done now. See you in the morning.” She was packed up and out the door even faster than Martin was.

Tim frowned after her, then up at Martin. “That seem odd to you?”

Martin shrugged. “After the last year and a half, Tim, I think my definition of ‘odd’ is a little skewed. I’ll see you in the morning. Um…call me if you can’t get him to leave, okay?”

“I will,” Tim assured him. “See you in the morning.”

The email he was waiting on came through about ten minutes later. Tim skimmed the information, nodding grimly at what he saw, then fired off an offer of beer if the guy was ever in London before sending the whole chain to the printer. It whined and complained as it laboriously spit out the pages. Tim shut it off after the last page was completed, packed up his laptop, gathered the rest of his notes, and went over to Jon’s office again.

This time, Jon didn’t jump quite as hard, and he also didn’t seem to be working on anything nefarious; he still looked startled to be interrupted, but at least he wasn’t trying to cover anything up. “Yes, Tim, what is it now?”

Tim dropped the folder full of notes onto Jon’s desk. “Everything I could get for you on that dive. A lot of it conflicts, but my contact highlighted a few points that match up, and he was also part of the team that did the autopsy on the John Doe they’re pretty sure was Julio Hernandez. I’ll go over it with you in the morning, but right now, it’s past closing.”

Jon waved a hand. “Right. Go home, Tim. I’ll—”

“You’ll also be leaving, right now,” Tim interrupted firmly. “Don’t test me, Jon. You’re here too much, this isn’t good for your health. Gertrude’s rule was never staying late more than three days a week, and she had me enforce that with her.” A lie, but Jon didn’t need to know that. “It’s your choice whether you leave under your own power or with my assistance. Or I can call Martin for backup. But either way, you are leaving.”

A number of emotions played across Jon’s face at once. Fear. Annoyance. Anger. Tough shit. “Fine,” he said through slightly gritted teeth. He closed up his laptop, packed his things, and stood, all while Tim stood with his arms crossed, waiting. He watched Jon lock his office, then the door to the courtyard, then the door leading into the main Institute, and they walked out the front door together.

Tim didn’t doubt for a minute that Jon would try to go back as soon as they parted ways, but at least he’d got him out of the Archives briefly. He sent Martin a text assuring him of such and headed to the embankment to meet Gerry.

They arrived at about the same time. Tim barely gave him a chance to slow down before he opened the door and slid into the passenger seat. “Hey. Have a good trip?”

“Certainly an interesting one.” Gerry leaned over and kissed Tim quickly. “I’ll tell you all about it when we get home.”

It had to wait a bit; Rowlf had been shut up for too long and desperately needed a walk, so Tim took him out while Gerry took a few minutes to decompress. When he came back in, he made sure there was food and water, then reached for a pot. “Here, I’ll make dinner, you talk. What did you find out?”

Gerry settled into one of the kitchen chairs and watched Tim begin his prep. “Well. I went down to Dover, to the address you gave me. First thing, it’s a nursing home, an expensive one. Miss Barrow has been living there for about fifteen years. She’s apparently Sasha’s great-aunt as well as having stood sponsor at her baptism.”

“Promising start.”

“Yeah, but it gets tricky from there on out. They’ve recently started talking about moving her to a memory facility.”

Tim sighed. “Ah.”

“Yeah.” Gerry shrugged apologetically. “The staff is worried about her. I said I was there to ask some questions about her goddaughter, and when I said Sasha’s name, the nurse told me to be sure not to ask to see the photo albums. Apparently she’s been insisting someone stole all her pictures, even though they’re all in exactly the same place they’ve always been. Everyone on the staff has seen all of them five times over.”

Tim hummed sympathetically. “Did you get a chance to talk to her, at least?”

“I did. She seemed pretty sharp, and I didn’t bring up the pictures. You were right. Her mum died right after she was born, some kind of complications from the birth. Her father didn’t handle losing his wife well and couldn’t hold a job, so Miss Barrow—who was his mother’s sister—paid for Sasha’s clothing and education and all that. Tried to instruct her in how to be a lady, too. I get the distinct impression she was trying to get Sasha to marry well and was not pleased that she went into academia instead.” Gerry paused. “She also said she hadn’t called in a while.”

“I’m going to have to figure out how to bring that up, I guess. Without letting on that I was snooping.” Tim rubbed a hand over his face. “I just wish I could figure out what it is that’s got me so worried. Everything seems perfectly normal, but…I dunno.”

“You know what I don’t get?” Gerry tipped his head to one side. “Out of everything you’ve found out, I have not seen one explanation for why Gertrude was so keen on her.”

“Yeah, I don’t know, either,” Tim admitted. “I think that might be a mystery we’ll never solve.” He reached for the pasta. “I think I answered all the questions about her I could possibly have come up with, short of tracking down some of her school chums and getting their memories of her. Maybe eventually I’ll figure out why it was so damned important to ask them.”