“What?! How did you—we should tell someone, probably, Tim knows her better than I do—“ 

"--via evil spirit, I mean, not in a more conventional fashion. I tried to talk her out of it."

He hands Martin the statement.

“And you didn’t stop—“ Martin sighs and grabs the statement to read; he relaxes some as he reads. “Are we sure that this Michael isn’t... you know, actually helpful? Or at least not going to kill her? I mean, she talked to him—to it—at the coffee shop just fine.”

"...have you ever read a non-digitizable statement in which something like this ends well."

“...no. But that, uh, doesn’t say great things about whether we should be trusting the Watchful Thing either.”

"Yeah, well, we're stuck with the Watchful Thing. Sasha could just leave Michael alone."

“...Can she? If it is following her, I’m... I guess Nathan Watts ignored the anglerfish and that went fine, and, and Joshua Gillespie with the coffin. But Robert Kelly, he ran away, right, and it didn’t make a difference. I don’t—I don’t know. I don’t think that Sasha is, is trying to die.”

"I think talking to it is much higher-risk than not doing that! --She invited me along. I'm not going."

“You’re not? —I mean, that’s a good thing, to be clear, and hopefully Sasha won’t go either, it just, uh. Surprised me. Since you read the Jane Prentiss statement, you seemed—“ He waves his arm a little. “I dunno. I would’ve thought you’d be jumping at the chance to talk to something like that. Not that I’m not grateful that I’m not talking you out of it right now! I am. Grateful, I mean.”

"Well, if she survives, I'll get a statement, which is almost as good. And if she dies, then I probably would have died too. The only time it would really benefit me is if Sasha dies and I don't, which doesn't seem terribly likely, and also if it happens I might wind up with PTSD which... I'd rather not have. And Michael wants to be friends, which suggests that he thinks he'll be able to move at least Sasha and probably me from being servants of the Watchful Thing to being his servant, and I would really much rather be the servant of the single spirit that seems to be involved in the fewest murders of any spirit I'm aware of. --I'm going to be curious but I don't think that means I have to be stupid."

“...What do you think Michael’s the spirit of? Or—a servant of, or whatever. I’m... glad that you’re not going to be stupid. Genuinely glad. Probably it was—obvious to you—but it’s, nice to hear.”

Lev stands on his tiptoes and kisses Martin's cheek. "You're welcome. I am trying. Haven't texted Jane Prentiss even a little bit."

Martin bends down to hug him. “Do you think I should tell Tim? Or I guess I could try to talk to Sasha myself instead? Or... I don’t know.”

"I don't know Tim but I'm worried if he knows he might want to come along. You might be, uh. Better than I am at persuading people who aren't you."

“I really doubt that Tim will want to come. —Or, I guess he might, but only if he wasn’t able to convince Sasha not to go? He was trapped in his flat for two weeks, I really doubt he wants more interaction with the s—with, uh, magic. But he might want to go to keep an eye on Sasha if he can’t make her stay. I can try to convince Sasha?”

"You can if you want. And you won't decide to go. --I am curious about reading her statement."

“I’m not going to decide to go! I’ll... try to convince her, I guess, but maybe I’ll fail and you’ll get another statement.” He hands Sasha’s statement back to Lev. 

Lev kisses Martin's cheek, says "you should do that," observes that he wants to kiss Martin on the lips, decides that now is really not the time to deal with this, and goes off to check the Archives for non-digitizables.

He finds one!

It's a letter from Albrecht von Closen, addressed to Jonah Magnus, dated March 31st, 1816. Albrecht was visiting his nephew, Wilhelm, in the Schwartzwald (the Black Forest) for the winter. Albrecht went on walks frequently; on one of these walks, he found a very old graveyard. In the center of the graveyard was a mausoleum with the name "Johann von Württemberg". It was a strange place for a graveyard, being far from the nearest town, but he didn't think much of it. The next day, he went to visit the graveyard again, and encountered a short man, who asked him if he was planning to explore the mausoleum. He warned Albrecht von Closen that the crypt was a dangerous place. Albrecht responded with confusion, asking what he had to fear from the dead, and the stranger laughed and said “No, sir, you have nothing to fear from the dead.” Albrecht von Closen was unsettled by this but pressed onwards into the mausoleum. He enters a room whose walls are covered in bookshelves. The books on them were wet and rotten, but the shelves, made of marble, were fine, and periodically along them were carved open eyes, which caused a strange fear in him. Before leaving, he noticed in the corner of the room a gold coin (engraved with the message “JW, 1279, Fur die Stille”) and a book in Arabic. He took them to study and left. That night, he learned from one of the servants that there are ghost stories told by the children who live nearby, claiming that those who go into the mausoleum disappear. Three days later, the man from the cemetery started to attack him. His eyes were missing, just empty sockets, but he still gave the strong impression that he was staring at Albrecht, before he disappeared suddenly. 

If Lev does any genealogy research, he might notice that Wilhelm von Closen is the great-grandfather of Mary Keay.

.......it feels like he has a dozen pieces of a jigsaw puzzle and he knows if he just looked at it the right way they would all fit together but right now it is just a jumble of pieces that don't look at all like the picture on the box. 

He writes eyes on a piece of paper and underlines it and surrounds it with question marks. 

Martin will come back in eventually! "No luck. She wasn't happy with me trying, either."

"Well, it was worth a try. --I'm also worried about her coming back alive but mind-controlled. Like Father Burroughs."

"Shouldn't we be worried about that already? Since she already talked to him once? Or is it only if she starts acting weird, because, yeah, if any of us start acting weird then something's probably up."

"If he's already controlling her, why does he want her to visit the graveyard? --Guess he could want us to visit."

Shrug. “I guess we’ll see. Or... we won’t, I guess. You really think she’s going to die? Or—or end up like Father Burroughs, I guess.”