She laughed. “It was a man I had seen before, in childhood. He told me I needed to come to Paris; he’d have answers about what happened to Todd. There was no way that I was not going after that.”

“And it never occurred to you that this man might be some sick lunatic?”

“Oh, he’s a sick lunatic, all right, but no,” she said. “Never once, even as I sat there with Gaston and Barrow with the damned ticket in my pocket, did I consider not going.” She brought her leg up on the chair, then she laughed like she often did at Delilah’s—that full, throaty laugh. It was the first laugh he’d heard from her, and it made him realize how worried he’d been that she’d never return. “Tell me, would you not have gone? Even the ticket was magical. It bled when I tried to tear it.”

“It’s a fantastic story.” He slid his wineglass away and wondered why everyone was so convinced there was something otherworldly circling around them.

She raised her eyebrow and settled back in her seat. “So, what do you think happened to me?”

“The woman who chased you might have kidnapped you and drugged you.”

“Then what?” There was a change in Lara, a confidence he hadn’t seen before. “She just let me go?”

He had to admit, it didn’t make sense. Had someone kidnapped Lara for the painting, they’d have asked for ransom. There had been no request. He folded his arms.

There had been something that he’d been worrying about with her. Perhaps in her grief over Todd, Lara had imagined this circus, this ticket. She might have just wandered the streets of Paris this way for days. He knew her grandmother Margot had struggled with mental illness. Was it happening to Lara, too? Was this why Audrey looked so stricken?

“I’m sure there are people who wouldn’t have thought entering the Devil’s Circus was a grand idea,” said Lara, unaware of the narrative running through his mind, “but then I remembered that people had coveted those tickets for years in Paris. To the best of my knowledge, they all returned safely. I wanted answers, so I went. I stood outside the Palais Brongniart, and one minute there was nothing, then the next there was a circus. Not a tent, Ben. An entire building in another dimension. I took a Ferris wheel down past the River Styx accompanied by a monkey—who might have been a damned Benito Mussolini. The rooms were opulent. Giroux captured the way it looked. Everything has a soft focus and a sharp oversaturated color to it.” She sighed. “I know it sounds crazy; I do. It’s a form of Hell and yet it is the most magical, magnificent place I’ve ever seen.”

“You were missing for more than forty-eight hours.”