Kitty Jones looked up from her atlas. She picked up her pen and scribbled a few notes:

Bali

Abu Dhabi

Ceylon

She looked up absentmindedly. It was late; the clock told her it was already morning. Kitty read her atlas by lamplight.

And image of Nathaniel came unbidden to her mind. With it came a sharp stabbing feeling in her chest. Kitty pushed them both away.

Her grey hair obscured her face as she immersed herself once more in the atlas. A thought arose, and she flipped through the volume until she came to the section about Egypt.

She could go there first, see the place where Ptolemaeus had lived. Where he had spent his life studying. Where he had opened the first Gate.

Where he had died, so young, younger even than-

Stop it!

Don't think about him.

Kitty's throat tightened, and she reached for her tea, long cold by now.

She took a long sip. Immediately she felt better. Kitty closed her eyes, blocking out the soft light of the lamp.

So peaceful...

Kitty opened her eyes, set down her tea, and closed the heavy atlas, which she placed carefully by her feet. She picked up a sketchbook.

Kitty had recently been teaching herself to draw. With the aid of art books and actual artists, who were all too happy to instruct her, considering she had helped to save their lives, Kitty's skills were improving rapidly.

She turned the pages slowly, and slower still, until she came to a portrait that she had come to think of as a raw wound. But one that healed with its pain.

Nathaniel.

His pale skin, short black hair -so black it shone- his sharp nose and precise features, his calculating eyes, they were all captured perfectly. It was by far her best work.

After all, she knew the subject so well.

The edges of the page were not stained with tears. The bleached grains of wood had heard no sniffle, no grief-stricken sob. Kitty did not cry easily.

Even so, the picture tore her apart.

She did not know why she had drawn it, or why she stared at it for long, long minutes in the darkest hours of the night. Perhaps so she would not forget his beautiful face...but no, that would never happen, with or without the drawing.

She would always remember Nathaniel.

How he had hunted her. How she had saved his life, and he had thought her dead because of it. How he had sought her out when he learned that she lived. How they had, together, saved England from a legion of demons. How he had died, so horribly, killing the strongest in that army.

Nathaniel had broken his promise.

Kitty closed the sketchbook.

She closed her eyes.

She dreamt of ghosts.

And when she woke, she did not remember her dreams.