Chapter 15: The Greenhouse

"That is not possible," Rhys said again, and his voice cracked on the last word.

On the screen, the corridor had gone empty. Elara pressed the phone to her ear. "Priya, where did they go?"

"A car outside the east entrance. A black one. No plates." Priya's breath came fast. "We're tracing it. Elara, I don't know what's happening, but if that was Augustin Calloway, then someone has been lying to this family for a year."

"Sixty seconds," Marguerite said hoarsely. She had gone to the iron door and was staring up the stairs. "Theo's men are in the cellar corridor. They'll come down."

Rhys turned from the screen. The shock was gone from his face. In its place stood the cold stillness Elara had met in the interrogation room, and she understood now what it cost him to wear it.

"The back stair," he said. "Aunt Marguerite, lead."

"Where are we going?"

He was silent for a heartbeat. "If my grandfather is alive," he said slowly, "and if he came to Paris, there is one place on this estate he would go."

He did not explain. He took Elara's hand.

It was a small thing, quick and almost clumsy, his fingers closing around hers as if he were afraid she might slip away in the dark. His palm was warm. She did not pull back.

The kitchen stair let out into a stone passage that smelled of onions and woodsmoke. Marguerite pulled open a servants' door, and they ran into rain.

The night hit Elara like cold water. Wind lashed the trees. Behind them, the manor loomed with every window lit, and from somewhere inside came the heavy tread of men searching.

"This way," Rhys said.

He led her across a wet lawn, then through a gate rusted open, down a gravel path overgrown with ivy. Rain soaked her hair, her coat, the stolen cobalt bottle pressed against her ribs. Behind them, a flashlight swept the grass.

"Down!"

He pulled her behind a hedge. They crouched together in the dark, his arm around her shoulders, the beam sliding over the leaves a foot from her face. She felt his heartbeat through his coat. He was breathing as hard as she was.

The light moved on.

"Now," he whispered.

They ran.

At the end of the path stood a glasshouse, vast and dark and half swallowed by vines, its iron frame rusted orange, its panes clouded with moss. Rhys shoved the door open with his shoulder.

Warm air rolled out to meet them. Damp earth. Green leaves. Jasmine, rich and heavy, and under it, faintly, bergamot.

Elara stopped on the threshold.

A single lamp burned at the center of the greenhouse, among wild tangled rows of iris and orange blossom and lavender gone to seed. Beside it, on a rusted iron bench, sat a small white-haired woman in a hospital gown and a man's gray coat, a chipped teacup balanced on her knee.

"There you are," said Odette. "You took your time."

Elara was across the glass floor before she knew she was moving. She dropped to her knees and caught the old woman's hands.

"You're all right. You're really all right."

"I am seventy-one years old, ma petite, and I have been kidnapped by a ghost. I have never felt better." Odette's eyes twinkled, then sobered. "Sit. Both of you. We do not have long."

Rhys stood in the doorway, rain running down his face. "Where is he?"

"Gone," Odette said. "He could not stay. Conrad's men are too close."

"That was my grandfather."

"Yes."

"He is alive."

"Barely." Odette's voice gentled. "He is very ill, Rhys. He has perhaps a few weeks. He has spent eleven months hiding in a place I will not name, waiting for the one person he believed could end this." Her eyes turned to Elara. "You."

Elara's mouth had gone dry. "What does he want from me?"

"To meet you. Tomorrow, at dawn, at the old Calloway chapel." Odette set down her cup. "He will tell you who killed your mother. He will tell you everything. But he has one condition."

"What?"

Odette did not look at her. She looked past Elara's shoulder at the tall, drenched man in the doorway.

"He says you must come alone," the old woman said quietly. "He says Rhys cannot be there."

The lamp flickered.

"Why?" Rhys's voice was very low.

"Because he says you are the only living witness to that night," said Odette. "And you do not yet know what you saw."