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"This used to be athe wall, trailing his long fingers over the ridges of the leather bindings "Back in the day--even further back than these archives go, I’d i press they worked on was one of the only ones in the New World, and more people knew the reason this paper was called the Guardian"

She frowned That wasn’t such an unusual nauardian of truth or liberty or so like that What else could it mean?

And then she knew

Slowly Verlaine said, "There’s also a reason this town is called Captive’s Sound, isn’t there?"

Asa druot there ht you would Nicely done!"

Once upon a ti But what’s captive in Captive’s Sound?

"Socloser to her desk His sainst his tawny skin, and already she had begun to feel that strange heat "Soto be revealed And I think you’d like to be the one who ripped the lid off"

"Yeah, right" Verlaine didn’t like how close he was getting, so she rolled her desk chair farther back "Like anybody would pay attention to anything I said Elizabeth took that away from me Or didn’t you remember?"

It was hard to say exactly how Asa’s expression changed His smile didn’t fade; his eyes never lost that black, mischievous fire And yet she knew that he’d only halfwayhe’d said before--but what he said noas true "I remember it well I see it more plainly than anyone else does--even more than you, Verlaine"

She could have slapped him "Oh, you can see my life better than I can? You think there’s a better view than from the inside? Don’t even pretend you knohat this is like"

"Being forever alone? Forever unseen? I have no body of e I knohat you endure far too well"

Of course Asa was a slave Maybe that didn’t make him sympathetic, exactly--but it made him pitiable Maybe he really did knohat it felt like to be always on the outside looking in