Quin was holding was a copy—a copy she’d made back in Hong Kong weeks ago, before they came to London. Her mother, Fiona, had been with them on Traveler during the crash, and then in the hospital. Fiona had returned to Hong Kong a few days prior, and the first thing she’d done upon arriving was send the copied journal to Quin. She’d even bound the pages in leather, turning them into a new journal in their own right, an accurate copy of Catherine’s original in size and shape.
Quin flipped through it, with Shinobu watching over her shoulder.
“Some of it is so old, I can’t read it well, but the parts I can read are about the different Seeker families.”
“Families besides ours?”
“Yes, but our own families too,” she answered.
While Quin and Shinobu were growing up on the Scottish estate, they’d understood—theoretically—that there had once been many other Seeker families. But they’d only ever met members of their own two houses—Quin’s, the house with a ram for its emblem, and Shinobu’s, the house of the eagle. They knew that John came from another Seeker house. But John’s family had already fallen apart and mostly disappeared before his generation, and she and Shinobu hadn’t given his ancestors, or anyone else’s, much thought. Quin’s father, Briac, had even removed the insignia of other houses from the estate.
Other Seeker families had felt like distant history. They were part of the old tales Shinobu’s father had told them as kids, about Seekers who had unseated terrible kings, hunted killers, driven criminals out of medieval lands, and been the force of much good in history. If…, Quin thought angrily, any of that was true. They’d grown up believing that Seekers were noble, but Briac had changed their world. He’d used their ancient tools and once-honorable abilities to turn Seekers into little more than hired assassins, collecting money and trading on power, and Quin couldn’t help but wonder: How long has it been like this?
“We know Catherine and John belonged to the house of the fox,” she said, turning pages until she reached one with a simple, elegant drawing of a fox at the top. Beneath this picture were paragraphs in small, neat, girlish writing, which continued for several pages. “These notes are about older members of the house of the fox,” Quin explained, running her finger down a list of names and dates and locations. “Catherine was writing about her grandparents and ancestors. She’s trying to account for where everyone was, and where they all went.”
“ ‘She.’ You mean John’s mother, Catherine?” Shinobu asked.
Quin nodded. “This is her writing. See?”
She flipped to the very beginning of the journal. Beneath the front cover, on an otherwise blank page, was a small inscription in the same hand:
Catherine Renart, a traveler
“A traveler?”
“That’s what she says. Her handwriting is everywhere in the journal. Though there’s also writing from a lot of other people in the earlier entries.”
“So…you get this book a few hours ago, and the first thing you check is John’s family?” he asked, his head bumping softly into hers on the pillow to take the sting out of his words.
She rolled her eyes and poked him gently with her elbow. “It’s because I’m still in love with him. Obviously.”
“I knew it,” he whispered.
He pulled her closer. Quin thought about closing the book, but Shinobu was looking at it intently, and she wanted him to see it while his mind was sharp, before he drifted off again.
“I read about John’s family first because his mother took the best notes on her own house,” she explained, trying to ignore, for the moment, each place where her leg and arm and shoulder were touching Shinobu’s. “But it looks as though Catherine was trying to keep track of all the Seeker families for a long while. She wanted to know where they’d all gone.”
“And where did they go?” Shinobu asked.
“That’s still the question.” Quin fanned through the journal. “When I’ve read all of this, maybe we’ll get some answers.”
“Quin.”
Shinobu struggled to sit up a bit, then gave up and lay back on the bed. He took her hand again and looked at her seriously.
“Quin, what are you doing?” he asked.
She glanced down at the journal, closed it. “I thought we should follow—”
“We aren’t Seeker apprentices anymore,” he told her. “We’ve gotten away from your father and from John. When I get out of the hospital, we don’t have to be anything. We could go somewhere together and just be.”