CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

SIMONE

It was hard to remember now, but Simone had been thrilled she’d been offered the apprenticeship at the Pirripin brothers’ atelier menuiserie off rue Tourneux. The French school system had no use for her once she became a teenager, and she’d worked hard to grasp a new purpose; long hours at the drafting table after vocational classes ended for the day, her hands stained from cyanotype paper and her pencil wearing a groove into the side of her finger, followed by work at the jigsaw and miter saw until sawdust filled her lungs. But she’d wanted it so badly. The vocational schools had taught her, had put her hands to use, when France itself would not. She ached to shape wood into something else altogether, leave her fingerprint in the slate-roofed palaces on the Champs-Élysées or in the mosques of her fragmented memories of Algiers.

She’d wanted something, like she feared she might never want something again.

But the atelier was nothing like what she’d expected. Jean-Pierre had no intention of giving his secrets away, and his brother, Jean-Claude, no interest in advancing the career of an “invader,” or so he said. She became little more than their errand runner, sorting lumber, haggling with vendors, organizing the desk drawers bursting with crumpled receipts that were the atelier’s recordkeeping system.

So when they came to her with a new project—a project all her own, to manage unsupervised!—she was already looking for the catch.

She found it as soon as she reached the client’s address.

“I want you to understand something, mademoiselle,” Monsieur Gaturin drawled, steering Simone through room after room of saccharine opulence with an iron grip on her shoulder. “The bones, yes, the bones of Château à Pont Allemagne are flawless. I don’t want you injecting your foreign . . . sensibilities . . . into this storied estate.”

Simone could already spot several flaws in the “bones” of the monstrous mansion that, unaddressed, would lead to complete foundational collapse, but Monsieur Gaturin left her no opening to speak.

“I told those damned brothers this is to be a cosmetic repair only, to restore the carvings to their former glory and save us from this regrettable water damage. You, however, do not appear up to the task.”

“I have completed all the requisite exams, monsieur.” Simone’s grip on her satchel tightened as she felt her old anger rising. Blistering the air around her. “But if you would rather let your home crumble around you—”

His nostrils flared like a cobra readying its strike. “Do you dare to speak back to me?”

“Papa. Are you tormenting the help again?”

Simone looked up to find the most stunning girl she’d ever seen standing in the peeling, crooked doorway. Not beautiful—not in the way of Château à Pont Allemagne, with its gold leaf and wooden parquet and elegant plaster—but stunning. Her aquiline nose stretched long on a long face and longer neck. Her arms floated, ethereal, at her sides, their pale creamy color framed by breezy teal sleeves. Her lips were brushed a pale rose that nevertheless looked riotous against her bone-white face. And the way her green eyes turned on Simone—

She was a Gorgon, Simone was sure of it. One look from those eyes and Simone felt made of stone.

“Do you see this?” Monsieur Gaturin cried, gesturing at Simone like he’d been delivered another man’s suit. “They sent me a bloody Arab. A girl. Not even a woman, a girl, and they think somehow she can salvage the dining hall—”

“You’re hardly in a position to judge someone’s carpentry skills, Father.” Simone slipped forward silently—she might as well have been floating. “And if you have such a strong dislike of Arabs, then maybe you should stop voting in favor of continued annexation.”

“That’s quite enough, Evangeline. This is not your concern.” Evangeline—alhamdulillah, but the syllables even tasted good as Simone tested them on her tongue.

“The dining hall wouldn’t need salvaging in the first place if your tasteless guests hadn’t left the bathwater running while you occupied yourselves with—”

“Enough. And you dare to wonder why the Villiers’ son fled from you the first chance he got.”

“No, Papa. I don’t wonder at all.” Evangeline lifted her chin. “I only regret he didn’t do it quicker.”

Monsieur Gaturin’s hand twitched at his side; Simone knew all too well the gesture of a man just barely restraining himself from delivering a blow. She leaned forward on the balls of her feet, ready to stop him forcibly if necessary. Damn whatever these rich people thought of her.

Evangeline paused in front of Simone and examined her in a way that felt both formal and gloriously, painfully intimate at once. “You are a carpenter with the Pirripin brothers? You can fix the damaged paneling and carvings?”

Simone nodded and matched her defiant gaze.

“Then you are quite welcome here.” Evangeline turned on her delicate heel and, with a viper’s strength, snatched her father’s arm and steered him from the dining hall. “Don’t you have better things to do, Papa? A meeting with the German ambassador or something?”

Simone wondered if Evangeline herself might not be better suited to that task.

With a smile, Evangeline turned back around, and Simone’s heart stuttered at the sight of her.

“Please,” Evangeline said softly. “Don’t let me keep you from your work.”

After sketching up her proposed alterations and presenting them to Evangeline for approval, Simone began her work at Château à Pont Allemagne. But it wasn’t easy. She worked slowly, painstakingly, her desperation to do right by Evangeline stifling her progress, sending her elbow skidding every time she tried to carve the perfect cornice piece. She’d spend long hours at the Pirripin atelier, long after the brothers had left for the night, repairing the pieces she’d botched.

And Evangeline was always at the château—nearly always. She’d sip tea while studying for her entrance examination to the faculté des lettres, sometimes narrating her notes to herself. Or she would play piano—Saint-Saëns or Ravel or Chopin, her delicate fingers too small to hit the big chords, but what she lacked in technical prowess she more than made up for in emotional sway. More than once, Simone had to remind herself to breathe, her heart was so full inside her throat as Chopin’s mournful journey pulled her along and laid her soul bare.

Once, Evangeline spread out a blanket next to Simone’s drop cloth and unpacked a picnic. A veritable feast, even though she claimed it was nothing, really, just a little something she’d picked up on her way home. Cheese and bread and succulent roasted quail, which Evangeline assured her was every bit as good as the cured jambon she kept for herself.

Simone never said much during their afternoons together, but she didn’t need to. She worked with her hands like she was untangling all the knots she didn’t know had been present for so long inside her soul. Evangeline filled the vast, chilly mansion with her carefree chatter, and it warmed them both.

Simone sorted her own life out in her head while Evangeline talked, doling out bits of herself like delicate confections. Her fear of spiders, her disastrous experiment with ballet. Her desultory habit of picking the pockets of her father’s dinner guests, lifting pocket watches, opera receipts, once even a letter from a mistress that would have caused quite an international incident if she’d revealed it. She drew—and drew well, judging by the charcoal sketches of herself that Simone found one afternoon, even though Evangeline laughed it off later.

But mostly Simone learned of Evangeline’s dream of becoming a diplomat. Like her father. A civil servant of great esteem. And then, a prized wife to someone much like herself, and yet this mystery man was sure to take precedence, her work only a slim shadow of whatever glowing accolades he’d gain.

This last bit, Evangeline disclosed with her face partially hidden behind the knees she’d drawn up under her chin. But Evangeline wouldn’t admit to being afraid. She wanted—needed—to be too strong for that.

Slowly, inevitably, Simone’s work drew to a close. She’d been dreading it; she dreamed about her afternoons with Evangeline, who never complained when plaster dust drifted down on her head or when Simone’s finger slipped and she cursed in Arabic. She found herself working slower just to postpone the inevitable.

Fortunately, Evangeline rescued her in this, too.

“It’s too gorgeous a day to spend inside,” she declared as Simone finished installing a new panel casing. “I simply must go for a walk. You’ll join me, right?”

“Your father doesn’t pay me to walk.”

Evangeline leaned closer, conspiratorial. “My father is detained in a lengthy parliamentary debate on how we should respond to the annexation of Poland, and it’s expected to last well into the evening. So he’s in no position to judge how either one of us spends our time.”

Simone’s breath fluttered. She’d been taking care with how she dressed, but she was still a girl from the immigrant neighborhood of Goutte d’Or, after all, scraping and scratching and clawing for work. Evangeline had braided her white-gold hair and coiled it on top of her head; in the sunlight streaming through the room, it gleamed like a halo. Her delicately draped sundress further canonized her. And Simone, well—she wore trousers and a tunic and boys’ leather shoes; wood shavings lurked in every crease of her clothes. Despite her best efforts, tufts of her fluffy hair had drifted free from the cap she’d pulled snug on her head. She had no business walking around Trocadéro—with Evangeline besides.

Evangeline gave her an assessing look, as if reading her mind. “Let’s brush that dust off you. Maybe I could style your hair?”

Simone’s breath rushed out of her. “I’d love that.”

Evangeline winked and beckoned her into the closest powder room.

She twisted up the sides of Simone’s hair, then joined them with the rest to sweep it into a carefree bun like showgirls wore. There wasn’t much to be done about her clothing—she was too tall and broad-shouldered for anything of Evangeline’s, not that she dared ask—but Evangeline wiped a smudge of grease from her nose and declared her perfect.

Perfect.

Simone clutched the word close to her chest, like it might fly away.

They stepped out onto the promenade, and Evangeline immediately slipped her arm through Simone’s, smiling and staring straight ahead. Simone became painfully aware of her own gait, the way she bobbed and jerked, and tried to even out her paces so she wasn’t yanking the smaller girl around. She couldn’t think of anything clever or insightful to say, but the silence between them carried its own cool melody. Slowly, as they moved further from Château à Pont Allemagne, Evangeline began to relax and pointed out whatever shiny bits caught her attention: an old woman with an oversize hat, a pair of dogs wearing bow ties, a willow tree whose branches shimmered like a waterfall.

It was a beautiful Paris that Evangeline lived in, impossibly far from Simone’s 18th arrondissement, and the more Simone took it in, the less comfortable she felt.

“So what is it you wish to do after your apprenticeship?” Evangeline asked as they neared the campus of the Dauphine. “Will you become an architect, or . . . ?”

The glass bubble in Simone’s chest shattered, and the illusion broke. She was only pretending here. She had no business with Evangeline on her arm. She had no business on this clean, quiet street, pretending she belonged here, when every person she passed surely knew otherwise.

“I’m not going to university.”

Evangeline blinked a few times, then cocked her head.

“You understand I’m Algerian, yes? My family, we—we live in Goutte d’Or. Surely you know that life can never be for me.”

Evangeline bit her lower lip. “I’m sorry. I wasn’t trying to—”

“It’s—it’s been very lovely, living in your world for a few months.” Tears prickled at the corners of Simone’s eyes. “But this isn’t my world. It never will be.”

Evangeline’s throat bobbed. “I like my world better with you in it.”

Simone’s mouth inched open, but she had no words. She wasn’t used to working with people. They didn’t obey geometry and lathes and planes. “You hardly know me.” Simone’s temper, always simmering beneath the surface, was threatening to boil. “I’m a novelty to you, a funny glimpse beyond these landscaped boulevards—”

Evangeline dropped her arm out of Simone’s and whirled to face her. “I know you are meticulous but impatient. You’ll do any task a countless number of times to get it right, but you resent it, you resent that you can’t shape things just the way you like. I know you swallow down insults and slights but they sit inside you like stones, refusing to dissolve. I can’t imagine what kind of weight that must be inside you all day.”

Simone crossed her arms over her chest, feeling very exposed. She should have known Monsieur Gaturin’s daughter was more than just a pretty objet d’art. She was crafty, shrewd, calculating—and it made Simone love her all the more.

It also made her fear the day Evangeline might turn those weapons against her.

“I think you like your work, but you don’t feel respected for it. And it frustrates you. It poisons the whole process. I’m sorry they treat you that way—you deserve better.” Evangeline’s fingers darted out to tap against her cheek. “I wish I could give you better.”

Simone turned her head away from Evangeline’s touch, even though she craved it. “I don’t need your pity.”

“I’m not offering it. I just wanted you to know you aren’t some . . . passing amusement.” Her smile was lopsided—not at all the polished smile she wore around her father. Simone wondered if she was glimpsing Evangeline’s real smile for the first time.

“Look.” Evangeline pointed down the street to an archway made of bone. “The catacombs are open.”

Simone blinked a few times. Trying to follow Evangeline’s thoughts wasn’t so much chasing a train as winding through a labyrinth. She wanted to go back, back to the moment when Evangeline touched her face. Wanted to linger there a while longer and forget all the reasons she shouldn’t.

“I like to get lost in the catacombs when I need to think. They’re comforting.” Evangeline held out her hand to Simone. “Want to see?”

Simone nodded and took her hand.

Evangeline led her into the caverns, dark and moist as a mouth. They passed various tour groups who’d no doubt come there to appreciate the same. Skulls leered all around them, but the hollow eye sockets felt welcoming, somehow. No judgment, no eyes to see the humiliating infatuation she was sure burned bright crimson on her cheeks. She’d been to the catacombs once when her father still lived with them; he acted like they were something gruesome to put the fear of God into misbehaving children, to warn them that they ought to respect their parents, for death, and judgment, was always lurking around the corner. That it lived in their bones, just beneath their own skin.

Whether that constant reminder of mortality was what Evangeline liked about them, though, Simone didn’t know. She tried to see them through Evangeline’s eyes now as they crept, soft as cats, down a winding central corridor. More than bones, Simone now saw architecture. Structure. More than impermanence, she saw eternity, the power of enduring in a shifting world.

And she saw this magnificent girl she was hopelessly in love with. She saw a glimpse of something she never dared dream could be hers.

“I think they’re beautiful,” Evangeline said at last. Simone didn’t know how far down they’d gone, but they’d lost all other sounds of living things; the tour groups they’d passed were many turns behind. “I wish I could put my bones here someday. It’s a form of immortality, isn’t it?”

“I’m sure you and your father will have gaudy monuments towering over Père Lachaise for all eternity.”

Evangeline rolled her eyes, then slowed to a stop when they reached a metal gate blocking off one path. “What do you suppose is behind this?”

Simone pretended to think long and hard before answering, “Bones?”

Evangeline giggled and squeezed her hand. “You’re hopeless. Come on. Help me with this lock.”

“What?” Simone whisper-hissed, but Evangeline was already tugging at it.

“If they’ve locked it off, it must be because there’s something good on the other side.” In an instant, she produced a hairpin from her bun. “Watch. I used to practice this on Papa’s desk drawers.”

Simone bit back another disbelieving cry. All she could do was watch while Evangeline worked the pin in the gate’s lock and toss anxious glances over her shoulder. Maybe for Evangeline this was all fun and games, but Simone knew the way the gendarmes and Goutte d’Or informants looked at her and her family—they’d never get the harmless chuckle a politician’s angelic-faced daughter always would.

Evangeline must have sensed something of this in Simone’s silence, because once the lock popped, she glanced at Simone shyly—guiltily. “I’m sorry. You probably think I’m a dreadful brat.”

She could be a dreadful brat, but that wasn’t the point. “I envy the freedom you have, that’s all.”

Evangeline looked away, blinking rapidly as she eased the lock and chain loose from around the gate’s bars. “I didn’t choose to be who I am.”

“Neither did I,” Simone said, more tartly than she intended. There was that temper, boiling over again.

Evangeline sniffed—were those tears gathering at her lower lashes? Simone’s stomach dropped out from under her. This wasn’t at all how she’d wanted this excursion to go. Not that she had any illusions how it might go, only that she didn’t want this—

The gate screeched open, and they stepped through.

“I know as fates go, mine could be far, far worse. But that doesn’t mean I want it. I don’t want to be his heir. Some pawn my father can shove into whatever marriage looks most convenient at the time. I want—”

“Hey! What are you doing—”

They both froze as a shout ricocheted across the bones.

Then, once more Evangeline seized her wrist, and they ran.

Finally, Simone had the advantage, thanks to her trousers and sturdy shoes. Evangeline’s Oxfords kept sliding out from under her as she skidded across the winding path; a stray bone spur snagged her stockings with a horrible rip that cascaded down the fabric. The footsteps drew nearer. Evangeline pulled her down a side corridor, darting underneath a workers’ oilcloth spread across an archway of femurs and skulls. They were plunged into darkness in the narrow gap. Evangeline clasped a hand over Simone’s mouth as they faced each other in the alcove, and Simone could feel their hearts pounding together frantically as they tried not to breathe.

The footsteps drew closer. Closer. And then with a heavy grunt, went back the way they came.

They sagged down, Evangeline squeezing her forearms tight. Simone couldn’t bear to let go. Evangeline’s warmth was intoxicating, a strong perfume she couldn’t stop breathing in. All she wanted was to drown and drown.

Finally, she drew a ragged breath. “What . . . What is it, then . . .” The boil threatened to overtake her. “What is it you really want?”

In the dim lighting, Evangeline almost glowed, her face drawing closer. She pushed a loose strand of Simone’s hair back from her face, eyes luminous.

Simone didn’t dare breathe. She couldn’t startle whatever delicate thing lived between them. She wasn’t ready to give it up. Not yet.

“I want you.”

Evangeline cupped Simone’s hand on her face and drank her in with her lips. Simone was so startled at first she almost pushed back, and Evangeline faltered—but Simone surged forward then, and more than made up for her misstep. Their arms were warring as they reached for each other, but their lips were in harmony, working together like they’d been made to do this all along. Evangeline tasted sweet and a little salty, creamy like the wedges of Brie she brought home. And the gentle sighs she breathed against Simone’s cheeks were as soft as any of her gauzy dresses. Simone wanted to grip them, feel that fragile fabric in her hands. Her knee slid between Evangeline’s thighs, and Evangeline tightened around it with a moan.

“I want you,” Evangeline murmured when she gasped for breath. “I want you, I want you.”

“You already have me,” Simone said. She found the tender space beneath Evangeline’s ear and kissed it. “Since the day we met. But—aren’t you afraid?”

Evangeline leaned back from her, eyes wide and gleaming in the electric light that trickled around the corners of the oilcloth. The concern scrawled so plainly on her delicate features fractured Simone’s heart.

“I’m always afraid.” Evangeline’s voice wavered like it might break. “But isn’t it better than being afraid alone?”

Simone pushed away the memories and shoved through the thick oak branches that slapped her with wet leaves like tongues. Every step, she waited for the whistle and sting of death. But nothing came. Whoever was watching them either didn’t realize they’d been spotted—unlikely—or was waiting for them to act first.

Rifle hoisted, she scanned the forest’s edge across the road below them and waited for something to budge.

There—a flash of gold, then green and gray. Someone was crouching on a tree branch. The branches were stubbornly dense with brown and orange leaves, but Simone made out a slight figure doing their best to hide.

Simone locked the bullet in her rifle chamber, relishing the sharp crack it made that echoed across the ridge.

“Don’t shoot!” The figure’s arms rose. “We’re on your side!”

Simone had heard that before. Thanks to the pose, she could approximate the location of the figure’s chest, their head—

She stumbled backward, rifle slipping from her shoulder. She was going mad. That had to be it. For a moment, she saw a flash of gold and rosebud lips—for a moment, she saw Evangeline—

The figure dropped down from the trees with a crunch of dead branches. Of course it wasn’t. Simone cursed herself. First the agent on the radio, now this. She was losing her edge, and it was going to get her killed.

The figure—the young woman who did, at least, have blond hair twisted up around her skull in braids—approached the side of the road.

“We don’t mean you harm,” she said in slow, deliberate German. “But you should know I have two more companions you haven’t spotted.”

Against her better judgment, Simone turned around. Sure enough, Phillip and Rebeka stood with their arms raised, a German man and woman pressing the muzzles of hunting rifles to their backs.

“Fine.” Simone dropped her rifle. “What do you want with us?”

“We’re supposed to meet Resistance contacts sent from Hallenberg,” the man said.

Simone groaned and bent to pick up her rifle. When the first girl glowered at her, she slung it on her back and held her empty hands out. “You idiots. Suppose I weren’t with the Resistance? Now you’ve just told me that there’s a cell in Hallenberg and one in Wewelsburg, which is where I presume you’re from.”

The cocky smile faded from the man’s face. “But you’re—I mean, obviously you’re not Nazis—”

“They said there would be only two of you.” The blond girl made her way up the escarpment to join them. “The guard and the radio operator.”

Rebeka bit her lower lip. “I don’t want trouble. I can go—”

“Go where?” the man asked. “Don’t you know what Wewelsburg is?”

“I know that we’re supposed to be vetting you and your little social club of Germans who are playing at Resistance now that it’s far too late,” Simone said. She stood up straighter, scanning their faces. “You’re doing an abysmal job of proving yourselves so far.”

The man narrowed his eyes, but none of them mustered a clever retort to that.

The blond girl, the one Simone had first spotted in the trees, stepped into the midst of Simone, Phillip, and Rebeka in some strange sort of negotiation. “I’m Ilse. These are my colleagues, Mitzi and Jürgen.” Mitzi and Jürgen stared back with tight jaws. “Please forgive our harshness. It’s been very difficult for us to watch the world unraveling around us. Even in our little town.”

“I can’t imagine,” Rebeka said in a tone that was pure venom.

“You misunderstand me. There’s something terrible happening at Wewelsburg Castle,” Ilse said. “Something that has to be stopped.”

Simone and Rebeka exchanged a look. That horrible ceremony Rebeka had seen when she stepped into the shadows. Those bloody demons were going to follow them everywhere.

“We’ll need to set up your radio system first so we can get word out about what’s happening,” Simone said. “But then, if you’re willing . . .”

Simone felt a tug deep in her gut as Ilse’s gaze landed on her. She stared back, challenging, and hoped Ilse didn’t know it for the pitiful bluff it was. “I’m sure it’s nothing we can’t handle.”

Ilse laughed like shattering glass. “We’ll see about that.”