“My dad used to be more careful than this,” she said softly.
“Your dad used to have you.”
Kat ate her corned beef sandwich. She drank some lemonade.
She was aware, faintly, of Hale watching her, but that was only because he was Hale, and the part of Kat that made her a girl wouldn’t let her forget that he was in the room. Otherwise, she was as quiet as a church mouse. She would have made her family proud.
An hour later Marcus was leading Kat up the sweeping staircase, and Kat was staring, trying to guess whether the silver-haired man was closer in age to fifty or eighty. She was listening, trying to determine whether his accent was more Scottish than Welsh. But most of all, Kat was wondering why Marcus was the only servant she had ever seen orbiting around Planet Hale.
“I’ve taken the liberty of putting you in Mrs. Hale’s room, miss.”
Marcus opened a wide set of double doors, and Kat started to protest—the mansion had fourteen bedrooms, after all. But then Marcus switched on the lights, and Kat breathed in the stale air of a room that was clean but neglected. It had a king-size bed, a chaise lounge, and at least twenty silk-covered pillows, all in varying shades of blue. It was beautiful but sad, Kat thought. It needed to feel a beating heart.
“If there is anything you need, miss,” Marcus told her from the door, “I’m number seven on the house phone.”
“No,” Kat mumbled. “I mean, yes. I mean . . . I don’t need anything. Thank you.”
“Very well, miss,” he said, reaching for the doors.
“Marcus?” She stopped him. “Have Hale’s parents . . . I mean Mr. and Mrs. Hale . . . How long will they be away?” Kat asked, wondering which was sadder: having parents who’ve died or ones who’ve simply floated away.
“The lady of the house will not be needing the room, miss.”
“Are you ever going to call me Kat, Marcus?”
“Not today, miss.” He repeated softly, “Not today.”
He closed the door, and Kat listened to his footsteps receding down the long hallway. She lay down on Hale’s mother’s empty bed, the duvet cover cold against her skin. She felt very much alone in that big room, thinking about her dad and Uncle Eddie, about Porsche Speedsters and Monet.
Hours passed. Her thoughts blended together until they were like an Impressionist painting, and Kat knew she was too close to see anything plainly. She thought about crime, as she so often had in her fifteen years—ever since the day her father had told her he’d buy her ice cream if she would scream, and keep screaming until one of the guards outside the Tower of London left his post to see what was wrong.
She heard Hale’s words: He used to have you.
Kat jumped from the bed and rifled through her bags until she found her passport. She flipped it open and saw the name Melanie O’Hara beside a picture of herself in a red wig. She dug again, flipped open another cover: Erica Sampson, a slender blonde. Three more tries yielded three more memories, until Kat found . . . herself.
She tucked those other girls away. For now. Then she picked up the phone and dialed. “Marcus?”
“Yes, miss,” he replied, seeming too alert for four a.m.
“I think I may need to leave.”
“Of course, miss. If you’ll look by the phone, you’ll see I’ve already taken the liberty. . . .”
Then Kat saw it—an envelope. A plane ticket. Eight a.m. first class to Paris.
Chapter 4
Kat used to love Paris. She remembered being there with her parents—eating croissants, visiting a pyramid, and carrying six red balloons. It wasn’t until years later that she realized it hadn’t been a fun family outing—that actually they’d been casing the Louvre at the time. Still, the memories made her smile as she bought a pastry from her father’s favorite café and carried it outside into the chilly wind. She shivered a little and wished she’d brought a warmer coat. Across the busy square, she saw the shop where her mother had bought her a pair of bright red patent leather shoes for Christmas. She wished a lot of things.
“I know Uncle Eddie says he’s in Paris, but it might take a day or two to find him,” she’d told Marcus as he dropped her off at the airport.
“Of course, miss,” Marcus had said in a way that implied that he knew better; and somehow, as always, Marcus was right.
Bobby Bishop’s name and address and phone number might be constantly changing, but Kat knew her father, and that, it turned out, was enough to track him down.
He was half a block away when she spotted him. The faintest hint of gray was settling into his dark hair, but it was still thick and slightly curly. He took long strides and kept the collar of his dark cashmere coat turned up against the wind as he walked—not too slow, not too fast—among the crowd.
Kat hurried back inside, bought a black coffee, and took the steaming cup outside, expecting to see him—to watch him stop in surprise at the sight of her. But when she returned to the street and scanned the crowd for his face and that familiar gait, he was gone. Had he passed her by? For a second she worried that she might not find him again. Or worse, that she might find him too late.
She set off in the direction he’d been going, and was about to call his name, when, on instinct, she stopped and turned around. There, in the center of the square, she saw him standing amid a large group of tourists, listening to a guide who was lecturing at the fountain’s edge.
Her father didn’t seem to notice her weaving through the hordes of tourists and scavenging pigeons. There were no hugs or cries of hello when she stepped up beside him.