Chapter 20: Noon

Elara ran.

She did not decide to. Her legs simply took her out of the broken chapel and across the wet lawn, mist tearing around her ankles, Rhys's coat flapping at her heels. Behind her she heard him shout orders in a voice she had not known he possessed. Priya's men, arriving in a roar of engines, spilling from black cars at the lych-gate. Paramedics pounding toward the chapel with a stretcher.

"Take my grandfather first," Rhys said. "Then him."

"Sir, the other man is the shooter—"

"He is my father. Guard him. Do not let him out of your sight."

Then his footsteps were beside her, pounding the grass, and the smoke thickened with every stride.

The glasshouse was burning.

Flames licked up its iron ribs. Glass cracked and burst in the heat, raining down in glittering shards. Through the shattered panes Elara could see the iris beds going up like paper, the orange blossom blackening, the lamp on the iron bench toppled and still burning.

And the smell.

Kerosene. Sweet. Wrong. Burnt sugar and old plastic.

The same note. Always the same.

"Odette!"

A figure staggered out of the smoke. Marguerite, her gray robe scorched at the hem, her silver hair loose and wild, clutching her ribs and coughing so hard she could barely stand. Rhys caught her before she fell.

"Where is she?" Elara cried. "Where is Odette?"

"They took her." Marguerite's voice was a raw rasp. "Eight men. They came through the back gate while I was at the well. I couldn't stop them, I tried—" She broke off, coughing. "They poured something on the benches and lit it. They carried her out like a sack. East gate. A black car."

Elara was already running.

She heard Rhys swear behind her. She did not stop. The east gate was a quarter mile through the orchard, and she had no plan, no weapon, nothing but a stolen bottle of poison in her coat and a sound like a scream somewhere in her chest.

A car horn blared.

A battered gray sedan tore across the lawn and skidded to a stop in front of her, spraying turf. The window rolled down.

Tobias Lang looked out at her with a bandage wound around his forehead and a bruise the color of an eggplant spreading across his jaw.

"Get in," he said. "I am told I was unconscious. I would like to correct the record."

Elara laughed. It broke halfway into a sob.

She was in the back seat before Rhys had finished crossing the grass.

The sedan flew down the estate road.

Oak trees blurred past. Tobias took the turns with the same eerie calm he had shown on the Paris streets, one hand on the wheel and the other on a phone pressed to his ear, murmuring clipped instructions. In the passenger seat, Rhys had unfolded a tablet and was pulling up satellite maps with fingers that did not shake.

"There," he said. "The east gate road. They have three minutes on us."

"We can catch them," Tobias said.

"Do it."

The black car was a speck on the road ahead. Then it was a shape. Then Elara saw its brake lights flare red, and the car slowed, and a rear door swung open.

Something small and white tumbled out onto the tarmac.

"Stop!" Elara screamed.

Tobias slammed on the brakes. Elara was out of the car before it stopped rolling.

Odette lay on her side in the road, her thin white hair spread across the wet asphalt, her hospital gown soaked, one hand still clutched around the empty enamel box. Elara dropped beside her and gathered her up.

"Odette. Odette, look at me."

The old woman's eyes fluttered open. She was breathing. She was bruised and shaking, but she was breathing.

"Ma petite," she rasped. "I told them I would not tell them where you were. They did not like it."

"You're safe. You're safe now."

"No." Odette's fingers closed around Elara's sleeve, hard. "They did not take me for the bottle, Elara. They took me to give you a message."

Elara's phone rang in her pocket.

She stared at the screen. The name glowed like a wound.

Julian.

She answered. She did not speak.

"Ellie," said the warm, familiar voice, and there was a smile in it. "Noon today. Hart Maison. The old laboratory. You bring the bottle, and you come alone, and I give you back everything I took from you." A pause. "Every page. Every formula. Your name. Isn't that what you wanted?"

"I want you to burn."

"Then you'll have to come and watch." The line clicked dead.

Elara lowered the phone.

Rhys's own phone buzzed. He glanced at it, and the blood left his face.

"What?" Elara said.

"Priya. Theo has called an emergency board vote." His voice was flat. "To declare me unfit. It begins at noon."

They stared at each other across the gray, rain-washed road.

Two places.

One hour.

And behind them, in the far-off morning, black smoke was still rising from the Calloway estate.