The delivery was supposed to arrive at nine.
By eleven, Neva had made two calls to the supplier and received two different answers — the first that the shipment was in transit, the second, forty minutes later, that there was a routing irregularity and someone was looking into it. That was the phrase used. Routing irregularity. She wrote it down and thanked the supplier and hung up.
She pulled the delivery record herself. The shipment had been rerouted forty-eight hours ago, before she had even known to watch for it. Not cancelled — redirected, through a legitimate alternate routing code that existed in the Pale Court supplier network for exactly this kind of administrative adjustment. Someone who knew the code. Someone who knew the schedule, the supplier name, the specific window.
She c
