Since Nicolas had gone to sleep before seven that evening, I hoped he’d rested enough for us to be waking him up at three o’clock in the morning. I knew that Perenelle would have wanted me to wake her, and I was right. She insisted we come right over.
Max drove, since I didn’t trust myself to drive at this time of night. At three in the morning, I barely trusted myself to walk and talk at the same time. Dorian accompanied us on our drive across town, hidden safely away from the prying eyes of any night owls or cameras.
As we approached the Flamels’ house, the moonlight danced off the leaves of the topiary bushes shaped into the alchemical symbols of a serpent eating its own tail and a phoenix rising from the earth.
Nicolas looked refreshed when he opened the grand wooden front door for his weary guests.
In this secluded spot, Dorian didn’t need to transform to stone to be carried into the house in secrecy, so he walked beside me and Max.
“I’m sorry for your dreadful ordeal,” Nicolas said. “After finding the Brother and Sister portrait after 300 years, only to lose it once more—”
“We’re not giving up getting it back,” said Max. “The police are looking into the theft.”
“Les flics are not taking this horrible turn of events seriously at all.” Dorian paced around the stacks of books in the Flamels’ living room. “Are we not a group of accomplished detectives ourselves?”
Max gave the gargoyle a doubtful look.
Dorian jabbed his clawed index finger into the air. “It is time for me to put my little gray cells to use! It is up to us to solve the dastardly crime!”
Dorian, being carved of gray limestone, had latched onto the notion that he possessed “little gray cells” far more literally than Agatha Christie’s famous detective Hercule Poirot. The Belgian detective Poirot used the phrase to refer to his brain function as he solved baffling cases. Because Dorian had helped me solve several puzzling crimes here in Portland as well as in Paris, the idea of his own little gray cells had gone to his head.
I didn’t mind his ego. I was just happy he was thriving. When I first met Dorian, he had sought me out to help him decipher an ancient book of alchemy called Non Degenera Alchemia, which was partly responsible for bringing him to life from stone. After 150 years of life, Dorian had been slowly reverting to stone. He was in danger of being trapped in stone while conscious, for eternity. He believed the secret to saving his life lay within the pages of the strange book written in Latin and filled with woodcut illustrations of birds with twisted necks, bees circling counterclockwise, and knots of toads. Dorian was partly correct. We discovered Non Degenera Alchemia’s connection to monstrous backward alchemy and were able to sever the ties to its power, but the book was now lost. It was only through Dorian’s personal discovery of the Elixir of Life that he was alive today.
Max held up his hands in defeat. “For once, I agree with you. This painting means a lot to Zoe, and a low value property crime isn’t going to get many resources elsewhere.”
Dorian narrowed his eyes. “You do not wish to leave this to your former colleagues?”
“I drove us here at three in the morning, didn’t I? This isn’t the time to leave things to the authorities. We need to figure out what’s going on with this painting. It was of no interest to anyone for hundreds of years, yet all of a sudden, a whole year after Nicolas bought it for Zoe, it’s attracting unwanted attention. I want to know why.”
“Nothing happened immediately after I purchased the painting,” said Nicolas. “Something else must have triggered this new chain of events. What is it that the thief is truly after?”
“Hang on,” I said, looking around. “Where’s Perenelle?”
“She was most distressed when you called,” said Nicolas. “She retreated into her art and alchemy studio, but she promised to return shortly.”
“This is too important for her not to be here.” I left the group and walked to Perenelle’s sanctuary. The door was shut, so I gave a soft knock before entering.
The high-ceilinged room was dark. Perenelle stood at the windows that stretched from floor to ceiling, facing the moonlight.
“I’m so sorry,” she said, not turning to face me.
“It’s just a painting,” I said. “Nobody got hurt. Besides, I’m not giving up getting it back.”
She turned, and the remnants of tears on her cheeks caught the faint light of the moonlight.
I crossed the room quickly. “I get it. It means a lot to me as well. Thomas—”
“It’s not just Thomas,” she whispered. “There’s a great deal of knowledge in the painting.”
“I know. A piece of the story of alchemy. For those who want to learn. But after your ‘Hayden’ years with Rudolf II, your paintings haven’t gotten the attention they deserve.”
She grasped my hands. “It’s so much more than that, Zoe.”
For a moment, I could have sworn that her eyes blazed with a sulfurous dark red, but the illusion was gone in the blink of an eye. A trick of the light or not, the furious intensity of her gaze was unmistakable.
“What aren’t you saying?” I asked.
“I’m worried about why a thief cares so much about this painting. There are others that have information about alchemy—ones that have so much more. Some that are in museums, for all the world to see, if they wish. Yet this one? It has barely a whisper of alchemy. It was all about you and our dearest Thomas. Well, mostly.”
I broke away from her. “There’s something else about it?”
Perenelle walked back to the window. I hadn’t turned on the light when I entered the room, but my eyes had adjusted, so I could now see more of what she was looking at. The waxing gibbous moon, only a few days from being full, illuminated a section of her pigment garden.
“I knew I’d never part with this painting,” she said. “Not if it was within my control. That’s why I put it there.”
“The notebook,” I said, my mind flashing back to the notebook in the painting that I’d never remembered from life. Because I’d never seen it when she painted in secrecy.
She spun around, and this time there was a quicksilver sparkle in her eye and a broad smile spread across her lips. “You spotted it. My notebook.”
“That’s why someone wants the painting. You used alchemical paint to hide your notebook on the shelves in the painting.”
“Nobody else knows,” she insisted.
I hesitated before asking my next question, almost dreading the answer. “What exactly did you write in that little book?”
“That’s what doesn’t make sense.” Perenelle picked up one of her sable brushes. Though the brush was only a few months old, the birch wood handle was dented and stained. Well loved. “It’s similar to a ledger, I suppose. Details about my paintings, and the dates they were created, so I could keep a record of what I created. It doesn’t contain the secrets of alchemy. No shortcuts, since those don’t exist. My paints on the canvases themselves have far more information about the secrets of alchemy.”
“But nobody else knows that,” I said. “If the thief knows who you really are, they might think it holds the secrets of making gold and of eternal life.”
Secrets people had killed for. What would happen when the thief didn’t find what they were after?
A sharp rap sounded at the door to the studio. Max burst inside, not waiting for an answer.
“Your phone,” said Max. “Someone just called you.”
“In the middle of the night?”
“That’s why you’d better see who it was.” He handed me the phone. “It only rang once.”
I looked at the missed call. “Professor Graves’s cell phone.”
Dorian peeked around Max. “Elderly people are known for waking up quite early.”
“Four o’clock is too early for her to call,” I said. “That must have been why she hung up, after she realized the time.”
But when I dialed Gwen’s number to return the call, it went straight to voicemail. As I tried again, Perenelle explained to Nicolas, Max, and Dorian that a journal with notes about her paintings was hidden in the Brother and Sister painting.
I shook my head at my third failed attempt to reach Gwen.
“Something’s wrong,” said Max.
“Or maybe she simply turned off her phone to get some sleep.” But I didn’t believe my words as soon as I’d spoken them. “I know what we can do. Gwen told me the hotel where she’s staying. Let’s swing by and find out why she called.”
If the art thief had followed me back to my house from my meeting with Gwendolyn Graves, that meant they knew who she was, too.