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No Signs, Jay decided. If he wanted to establish himself as a neutral figure, he had to start out that way. He might need to use a Sign to get information from the Library sooner or later, but that could wait until he had at least two of them.

So he’d just sleep a normal sleep, and try to dream something else.

But that could wait. He still had a little time before bed. Thus decided, he put the treasure chest containing the awful figurine in a desk drawer and re-locked it, then turned back to Grace’s computer, sorting the files by date.

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I have to be cautious about this.

Jay thought it reluctantly, but he did think it. Yes, Louis was attractive, mask and all, and under normal circumstances, going out for a dinner date—and maybe more—with a cute boy sounded great. They’d only met that morning, but they’d hit it off pretty well, and… well, why not?

But under the circumstances, Jay wasn’t sure he could take things at face value (as it were). Without spending more time getting to know Louis, he had no way of knowing his intentions. Was it even possible to separate Louis from the fact that he was the bearer of the Pallid Mask, the messenger of the King in Yellow? That, before they’d even met, Louis had left him a message about the Yellow Sign?

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Jay jerked his gaze back to Hannah from the door, almost distracted by the cold tension that had been between her and Louis. “Ah, that’s… by Mother, do you mean…?”

“I am a Child of Keziah,” Hannah said, with another sharp-toothed but, he thought, friendly smile. “So, you know. Mother.”

“Right, sorry if that was obtuse,” he said, smiling back. He decided to let go of whatever was going on between the two of them; the book had said that Keziah’s sign was invoked to oppose the other Elder Gods, so it made sense that Hannah would be a bit cool when major players in other cults showed up. Louis might have said some pretty reassuring things to Jay personally, but ultimately, this was really none of his business. “I haven’t received a lot of direct names of, uh, groups or anything.”

She laughed. “You can say cult; it’s totally true.” Her hands were working briskly, taking things out of the bin and sorting them into piles. “‘The Children of Keziah’, for me. If anyone else doesn’t give their association out, they’re just trying to be sketchy and mysterious. I mean, I get it, this whole thing sort of loans itself to sketchy mysteriousness.”

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All right, Jay decided. The most important thing here was the people. He was still pretty much a stranger, and had to rely on other people for information. So getting to meet Hannah today was important. He could look at the keys later tonight, and think about signs tomorrow—at least by doing this, it would mean he’d met all four of the people most closely associated with the four signs on the door, and meant he had access to as unbiased a view of all these things as possible, as a result. Anyway, his goal had been to be like Aunt Grace—to not associate himself with any one cult overly much, and he imagined not ignoring any of the four she clearly was involved with was part of that.

Besides, eldritch things aside, he’d always heard that small towns would notice if you’d snubbed someone. Even if most of the others had in some way come to him, if there were four main cults and he left someone out, it’d just be rude.

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Jay turned his hand over under Camden’s, taking it and giving it a squeeze. “Thank you,” he said sincerely. “You’re right, I think. I’m letting myself get kind of overwhelmed and that’s no good. I’ll try to remember to put some time in to relax and make things normal again.”

Camden flushed, glancing aside at him. “Okay. Good.”

“And I want to take you up on your offer,” Jay said, more gently. Camden seemed a little unused to compliments or affection, and he didn’t want to overwhelm the other man, or make him think Jay was coming onto him when he wasn’t. Finding a balance of appreciation without embarrassing him seemed tricky. He squeezed again, then pulled his hand back. “But I don’t even know enough to do that.”