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Lee’s.”
    Jac shivered at hearing the name of the man who had died here almost two years ago.
    “And I don’t like coincidences,” Marcher said.
    In the midst of pouring herself more coffee, Jac looked up quickly, and a drop spilled onto the desk. She reached for a cloth—there was always a stack of them nearby in the workshop. L’Etoiles sprayed their creations on cloth to test them, not on the cheaper paper strips so many perfumers used.
    The coffee leeched into white cotton, staining it.
    “Robbie didn’t believe in coincidences either,” Jac mused as she wiped up the rest of the spill. “He always told me—”
    The now familiar threat of tears stung her eyes, and she felt her throat constrict. Crying, especially in front of Marcher, was not an option.
    The detective sat farther forward in his chair and put his hand on her arm. “Jac, my concern now is for you.”
    “I don’t understand.”
    “One of the most powerful crime syndicates in the world lost one of its members because of your brother, and the episode didn’t just involve Robbie but—”
    “It involved me too,” Jac interrupted. Even though she’d had help from her ex-lover Griffin North, Jac had been the one to save her brother by exposing the spies.
    She and Marcher were both silent for a moment.
    “I don’t want to scare you, but we need to take precautions,” he said finally.
    “Except you are scaring me.” Some part of her was surprised she could feel enough to be scared.
    “It’s unlikely you are a target, but until we know more about your brother’s death, I’d like to have someone watching the house and discreetly following you when you go out. Logic tells me that if there was a vendetta, it was with Robbie—” Marcher stopped talking. He was looking out into the courtyard and frowning. Jac followed his glance.
    “Ah, you see our ghost,” she said.
    “I doubt that. But I did think I saw a man out there.”
    “No, it’s just the shadow of a very old tree to the right of that hedge. Robbie and I used to call it our ghost. In certain light, it appears to be a man.”
    Marcher got up, walked to the window and peered out.
    The wind was blowing. Branches swaying. Some dried, dead leaves scurried across the paths.
    The gardens had been planted by the first L’Etoile, who had bought the property in the 1770s. Several generations had grown flowers here that perfumed the air with scents not smelled anywhere else in Paris: rare hybrid roses that had bloomed only here for the last two hundred years.
    Jac scanned the barren bushes now. In two months they would be heavy with the deep blood-red roses that her mother had always said smelled like sex.
    It was just a trick of light, a play of shadow. It wasn’t a ghost out in the garden. That was only what she and Robbie had called the odd phenomenon.
    Except today it really did look like one.
    His curiosity satisfied, Marcher returned to the settee.
    “I like to err on the side of being too careful. Organized crime groups do not lose their soldiers lightly. Especially one of François Lee’s standing. If this was retribution, I want to know the score is now settled.”
    “So what is your plan?” She turned away from the optical illusion in the courtyard and looked at Marcher.
    “I am going to continue to work the case and find out what happened to your brother. And make sure that whatever it was, it doesn’t happen to you.”

Chapter 5
    MARCH 11, 1573
    BARBIZON, FRANCE
    The place where you have willingly worked all of your life takes on very different dimensions and sensibilities when you are imprisoned there. For seven days I was locked inside my mentor’s laboratory, under arrest pending a trial.
    Brother Serapino had told me over and over that he longed for death the way a thirsty man yearns for water. That the pain was too much to bear. It is horrible to see a loved one suffering. I thought that I too would find relief once he was gone, knowing that he was no longer in