Chapter 18

“Thousands?” Ingrid felt her stomach drop. “You didn’t call us here to break bad news to us, did you?”

Eulalie snorted. “Hardly. The first thing I did was a deep dive into the auction itself. You see, they pride themselves on maintaining anonymity and all that, but their clientele is from a pretty select group. Just by using flight records, I’ve been able to assemble dossiers of the people who regularly attend. I also pulled files from the Order’s archives and matched them up.” Eulalie typed something into her computer. “That allowed me to eliminate people who I knew did not attend your auction.”

“The person who won did it over the phone,” said Tasia.

“Let a girl do her big reveal, okay?” The librarian laughed. “The whole point of telling you all of this was to say that I was able to tie most of these accounts to their real-world counterparts. Once we start pulling at those strings, the web of mystery begins to unravel.”

“While I can appreciate a good plot re