fifty-two

Mina scowled, but she followed us into the room where Perenelle was watching over Nicolas. The top of his head was swathed in gauze, but even the bandages couldn’t get his wayward hair under control. The gray and brown strands stood on end in every direction. His eyes were as intelligent and alive as ever. I think that was what pushed me over the edge. The tears I’d been holding back flowed down my cheeks.

“Don’t cry, my dear,” Nicolas said, beckoning me to his bedside. “I will stay in bed. For now.”

I laughed through the tears. Nicolas was his old self. “I’m sorry I never knew you were trapped in the painting.”

“The wonders I have seen from walls, my dear Zoe,” Nicolas said.

“Walls?” Mina said, checking Nicolas’s temperature.

“Perhaps you should have your family reunion later,” Tobias suggested with a sharp glance.

“You wish us not to speak freely in front of the doctor?” Perenelle asked.

“Let’s focus on getting you well,” I said.

“I assumed alchemical paint was now used widely in the world,” Perenelle said, “and in ways that far exceeded my own methods.”

“Why would you think that?” I asked, “since you didn’t have a chance to pass along your knowledge.”

“From our confines inside the painting, I saw very clearly that people spent many hours looking at paintings that moved.”

Tobias laughed. “Television. They were watching TV, not alchemical paintings.”

“I don’t believe you’re all suffering from a mass delusion,” Mina said. “You told me you’d explain everything once they were stable. They’re stable. Start explaining.”

Tobias caught my eye and shrugged. “Your call.”

“You saved their lives,” I said to Mina. “I still need to ask for your discretion.”

Mina nodded. “You’re all patients, as far as I’m concerned. I’ll treat you with the same confidentiality I give all my patients.”

“What do you know of alchemy?”

Mina stared at me in silence for a few moments. At first I thought she was going to laugh or accuse me of putting her on to avoid telling her the truth.

“Your hair and scars,” she murmured. “Their clothing. When were you all born?”

“Speaking for myself,” Nicolas said, “1340.”

“Do you need to sit down?” Perenelle asked.

“Grandmother spoke of people like you,” Mina whispered. “When I grew older, I thought it was a fairy tale.”

Tobias handed Mina a flask. “I thought it might come in handy.”

Mina took a hearty swig.

“I don’t mean to be rude,” Perenelle said, “and I can’t speak for Nicolas, but now that I’m feeling more myself … I’m famished. I feel as though I haven’t eaten in weeks.”

“Centuries, my dear,” Nicolas said. “You didn’t paint any bread or wine into the painting.”

Mina took another long swig from Tobias’s flask. “You can’t take them to a restaurant,” she said. “I’ll go get food. Um … What do you like to eat?”

“No, I’ll go,” Tobias said, snatching the flask back.

“How will you know where to go around here? It’s the middle of the night.”

“You can come too, but I’m driving,” Tobias said.

While we waited for Tobias and Mina, Perenelle explained to me what Edward had done to her in Prague, and how the painting known as The Alchemist that had unknowingly hidden Nicolas and Perenelle for centuries had a circuitous route to Portland.

“But what of my letter?” Nicolas asked. “How did it find its way to you after so long?”

“He left it at your old house in Paris,” I said, “hidden behind a brick with an alchemical carving that wasn’t part of the original design. I hadn’t visited Paris in decades, and that house in centuries.”

“He meant well after all,” Perenelle whispered.

Perenelle also told us of her memories of a charming Edward Kelley, a brilliant man who could have been a great scholar if he hadn’t cared more about pride and money. He wished to impress great leaders, and went to great lengths to do it, even though as a genius he could have used much easier schemes to gain wealth for himself and his family.

“It’s terrible,” Perenelle said, “that as he grew older with the years alchemy allowed him, instead of growing wiser, he became filled with hatred and vengeance.”

“Do you wish you hadn’t saved Edward all those years ago?” I asked.

She shook her head and gave me a motherly look—a combination of admonishment and love. “Everyone deserves that chance. You were rather reckless in your youth as well. Though I’m sorry for what he became, I would be no better than Edward if I’d left him to die when I could have prevented it. My own humanity would have left me. Speaking of humanity … I smell food.”

Tobias and Mina strode through the door with an armful of takeout containers.

“Slim pickings at this time of night,” Mina said, “but there’s a twenty-four-hour supermarket nearby.”

“And fresh bread for the new day had just been dropped off.” Tobias opened a paper bag and I caught the scents of sour yeast and earthy walnuts. I hadn’t realized how hungry and tired I was until that moment.

We ate in silence for a few minutes. I thought of Ward, driven by greed, pride, and also a quest for vengeance because he’d been forced to watch his own child die. But since Ward wasn’t an artist, he couldn’t be our forger. Even if he had taught himself to paint while Perenelle and Nicolas were trapped in the painting, his hands remained too crippled for him to pull off even a forgery. And why would he have killed Logan Magnus?

I checked my phone. There was no word from Max. Where was he? What was happening with Ward and Detective Vega? I shoved the phone back into my bag.

“I’ve never seen you look at your phone so much,” Tobias said. “The police have got it covered now. Max has got better things to do than give you updates.”

“What did you think of Ward?” I asked.

“He’s a charmer,” Tobias said. “One of those people who draws out all of your own secrets but doesn’t tell you a damn thing about themselves, and you don’t realize it until it’s too late.”

Were we too late now?