at her balcony. Yes, the word balcony might be a little bit of a stretch, but she doesn’t care. A cup of steaming green tea in one hand and a crisply fresh croissant in the other, she has both feet on the ledge outside her floor-to-ceiling windows and is thereby officially outside, as she leans a hip against the iron railing and watches the busy people of Toulouse getting on and off buses on their way to work. Jeanne d’Arc still sits proudly atop her horse, her back to the teeming bus station, while the flower vendor at her feet does brisk business, especially with the roses and the lilies if Emeline isn’t mistaken.
She doesn’t need to be at the police station for another hour and a half. Her alarm was set to ring at eight, but at seven it was already clear she wouldn’t be getting any more sleep that night.
Not that she was tired—she’d slept like a baby. Having both sweet and inappropriate dreams about her neighbor.
She’d never been one for lazing around in bed, so she got dressed and popped down to the boulangerie occupying the ground floor of her building and bought a croissant.
It might be the best decision she’s made since she came to Toulouse.
Now, as she people-watches from her balcony, wondering at the crispness of the businessmen’s shirts despite the summer heat and admiring the patience of the nannies taking their charges to the outdoor market on the boulevards, she ponders what to do next on the case.
There’s Klein’s murder, the men who were following him and who might now be looking for Madame Villemur, and the mystery of why he kept his niece’s grave a secret from the rest of the Humbert family.
There’s Madame Villemur, and the fact that there is still no news from Commander Diome or anyone else at the station, giving any indication they even know the woman exists, let alone telling Emeline what to do with her.
There’s the IGPN looking into her and Malik, for reasons about as clear as mud.
She leans over the railing as she takes another bite of her croissant, hoping nobody on the sidewalk below her will find themselves with crumbs in their hair. The pastry is still warm from the oven and so crammed with butter it’s practically melting in her mouth. She could get used to this.
As she licks her fingers clean, her eyes fall to her bracelet. It has already become second nature to her to put it on first thing in the morning and to keep it on all day. When she’d been compelled to take it off and drop it in Amina’s guest room last night, she’d first been annoyed at being manipulated like that. Who do these ghosts think they are to tell her to drop them off like she’s a taxi service?
Then she’d been relieved they’d found a solution to talking to Amina’s ghost without her needing to be in the room. So she did what they wanted, all the while toying with the idea of leaving them there for the night to teach them a lesson.
And finally, while in the middle of eating the best apricot pie she’d ever had, she realized she missed the damned thing. Or possibly the ghosts attached to it. So she didn’t leave it. She even felt happy to have it back on her wrist.
Now that she’s alone, not in a rush, and with the morning sun peeking out above the buildings so similar to her own at the other end of the bus station illuminating the bracelet, she sees it’s showing some wear. In fact, in some spots, she can see the bones through gaps in the string.
That won’t do.
Finishing off her tea, she goes to retrieve the box where she’d found strings the first time and settles at the kitchen counter to redo her handiwork.
It doesn’t even freak her out that she’s working on human bones anymore. They’ve simply become physical representations of the presence she feels around her.
She cuts the bones free of the original string and throws the tattered threads in the trash. Then she picks up one of the bones. “So, which one are you? Clothilde or Robert?”
She doesn’t hear anything, doesn’t see anything. Can’t really put words to what she feels. But she knows the answer to the question. “Clothilde, then.” She searches through the mess of strings, some thin, some thick, some long, some short. “What color should we give you, Clothilde? Yellow, like that god-awful dress they buried you in?”
Emeline barks out a laugh at the indignation she suddenly feels. “Just kidding, Clothilde.” She pulls out a string with a promising length and color. “How about red, like those Converse I brought to your grave?”
Emeline nods to herself. “Yes, that should work.”
She hums tunelessly as she works, making sure this time the bone will be completely hidden from view, and not in danger of falling out, no matter what she gets up to. When it’s done, she ties it to her wrist. “I like it.”
She picks up the second bone. “How about you, Robert? What color do you want? Don’t care?” She pulls out a solid dark blue string looking like it can weather anything. “That usually means something that blends in, and not, say, fluorescent yellow. Let’s go with police blue, shall we?”
Emeline takes satisfaction in the gratitude coming through as she works. When she ties the blue bracelet on her wrist, making sure it crosses over the red one so they hold each other in place, she realizes that without directly thinking about it, she has come to a conclusion on the question of where to go next.
All the stuff that is clearly going on behind the scenes at the station is important. Very much so.
But they’re not Emeline’s responsibility.
She will try to get to the bottom of those issues, but it’s not something she can attack head-on and without first gathering a lot more information. She’ll keep her eyes and ears open and make sure Malik does the same.
In the meantime, she will focus on Lucien Klein and all the mysteries surrounding this man. He had been hiding from, or running away from, dangerous and threatening people for over thirty years.
Surely he must have left some clues behind which might bring Emeline closer to finding his killers, and Clothilde’s family some much-needed closure?
Decision made, Emeline sends off a message to Malik. She asks him to get an address for Klein—Nadine should be able to come through on that one—and to meet her in front of her building when he’s ready.
She doesn’t want to meet at the station, for fear they might get sucked into whatever is going on there like they were yesterday morning. If she gets called in by Commander Diome, she’ll go, of course, but so long as she doesn’t have to, she’ll stay away.
At one point, while she waits for Malik, she hears the sounds of Amina leaving her apartment next door. Emeline toys with the idea of going out to say hello, under the pretext of checking in on Madame Villemur, but she hesitates for too long, and when she opens her front door, the elevator is already closing behind Amina.
Not five minutes later, Malik knocks on the door, a huge smile on his face. “I ran into your neighbor downstairs,” he says. “Apparently, Madame Villemur is staying another day or two? She told me you had dinner with them last night? Lucky you.”
“Yeah,” Emeline replies, confused by the myriad of emotions swirling around in her chest.
She shakes out of it as best she can. This isn’t the time or place to start getting jealous of her partner because he had the chance to say good morning to her neighbor. This isn’t the time to focus on her neighbor, period.
“Did you get Klein’s address? Clearance to go have a look around?”
Malik pats his shirt pocket, where a sheet of paper pokes out. “I have everything you need, as long as you have a car.”
Emeline groans. “Not somewhere in the city we can get to with public transport?”
“Nope!” Malik’s grin is now resigned. “We can probably look forward to an hour or so in traffic to get there since we’re well into rush hour by now.”
“Great.” Emeline grabs her phone and makes sure her service gun is safely attached at her hip, then pulls on the new bracelets to check they won’t fall off. She pushes Malik out the door ahead of her. “I’ll let you drive.”