“You shouldn’t be here,” Perenelle said to Veronica. “It’s too—”
“Too dangerous?” Veronica crossed her arms. “I don’t know why everyone insists on treating me like a child. I know you told me you’d let me know when it would be safe for me to have another art lesson, Mrs. Flamel, but I had Ethan drive me so I could check on my verdigris. It’s a good thing I came over.”
Veronica wasn’t someone who made things up. She wouldn’t have pretended to know anything about the secret society if she didn’t. She was pushing against her strict father’s rules, and I was certain Alessandro didn’t know she was here now, but that was different from outright lying.
“You can’t be serious about the Society.” Gwendolyn’s hand shook on her cane as she stepped towards Veronica. “The Brushstrokes and Brimstone Society doesn’t exist.”
“It does,” Veronica insisted. “It’s a secret society of women artists and scientists.” She reached into her backpack, searching for something.
“A secret organization of artists and scientists?” Gwendolyn asked in a reverent whisper.
“I don’t know its history or how long it’s been around,” Veronica said as she rummaged through her bag. “But today, I told my art class about the verdigris I’m making. After class, I found a note in my back page. A real old-school note, not a text.” She stood up holding a thick piece of paper in her hand, which she gave to me. “An invitation.”
Veronica, you might like to join the Brushstrokes and Brimstone Society of women artists and scientists.
Next meeting: When moonrise overlaps with night on the next full moon, OMSI.
“I don’t think it’s a joke,” Veronica said. “There’s no printer in Ms. Fairchild’s classroom, but the important part of the invitation is printed.”
The personalized first line of the invitation was handwritten and hastily scrawled, but the second line was a printout in a standard font. I read the invitation aloud.
“It’s real?” Gwendolyn whispered. “It can’t be real.”
“Someone must have created it,” I said. “You’re not the only one who saw the symbols and words hidden in The Red Queen painting.”
Gwendolyn let out a sound in between a gasp and a squeal. “I was invited to join,” she said. “A decade ago. I thought… I thought it was a cruel joke. Someone who remembered my paper and wanted to mock me because I was making so much progress in exposing the truth about misattributed works of art. I ignored the invitation.”
“OMSI?” Perenelle asked.
“The Oregon Museum of Science and Industry,” I said. Which was only about a mile from Hawthorne Bridge, where hooded figures were seen earlier this week.
“It’s for scientists as well as artists?” Perenelle asked.
Veronica shrugged. “The intersection of art and science, I guess. Like what you’re teaching me with making my own pigments. And how STEM became STEAM while I’ve been at school. Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math, but the ‘A’ for Arts was added since creative thinking is so important for those other fields. Ethan is in a class where they’re using creative ideas as much as engineering to build robots—Ethan! I totally forgot he and the guys are waiting in the car for me. Brix was hungry so we’re going to get some food. I should check my verdigris and go—”
“Yo, V.” Brixton stood in the doorway. “You said you’d just be a minute. Oh, hey, Zoe. Perenelle. Nicolas let me in. I, uh, I think I interrupted?”
“Go get your friends,” Perenelle said. “Nicolas baked a fresh loaf of bread with the spent grains leftover after brewing his beer. There’s plenty of bread and preserves for everyone.”
“Even a car filled with three teenage guys?” he asked.
Perenelle smiled. “Nicolas and I were capable of feeding Zoe’s brother. That young man ate more than any other person I’ve known. We’ll be fine.”
Brixton grinned before disappearing from view. His mischievous grin reminded me of Thomas, as did Perenelle’s accurate description of his appetite. Thomas had walked at least twenty miles a day, both running errands and exploring while I learned alchemy, coming home with a ravenous appetite. My brother had never been interested in being indoors, even at night. I was the one who followed the sunrise and sunset closely, and Thomas stayed up late at night watching the moon, following its cycles and telling me all about what he’d observed. Even though he didn’t enjoy formal studies, he was curious about the world around him and would have done great things if he hadn’t died far too young.
I had to remind myself I was in twenty-first century Portland, Oregon, in a situation that was quickly slipping out of my control.
I was inclined to trust Gwendolyn in spite of her faults, but I was biased. Dorian was right that we couldn’t be sure she wasn’t involved in the theft and murder in some way we didn’t yet comprehend. The kids were teenagers with drivers’ licenses, but they were still kids. They shouldn’t have been here. But I didn’t see how I could make them leave without piquing their curiosity and making them investigate behind my back. I had a feeling they were already doing so. Dorian’s information about late-night sightings of robed figures didn’t come from the newspapers and was most likely something one of the teenagers had found via social media. At least here, I could help them understand what was going on and make sure they didn’t act rashly.
“I didn’t mean for us to invite ourselves over like that, Mrs. Flamel,” Veronica said, her face turning crimson.
“Not to worry,” Perenelle said. “We need you to help us figure out this latest development.”
“You don’t have any idea who put the invitation in your bag?” Gwendolyn asked her.
Veronica shook her head. “We were painting today, looking at the ways different white paints are different from each other when you look closely, so everyone was up at the sink washing their brushes.”
“When moonrise overlaps with night on the next full moon,” I said. “That’s what the invitation said.”
“I don’t follow lunar cycles,” Veronica said, “and I didn’t look it up, since there’s no way my dad would let me follow a mysterious, anonymous invitation to a late-night meeting.”
“Today’s moon has already risen,” I said. “The overlap of night would be—”
“Sunset,” Gwendolyn finished.
“The society that doesn’t exist,” I said, “will be meeting in two hours.”