“No.” She turned to face him. “They weren’t.”

He held out her champagne glass. “I thought you were dead. As I watched your mother walk down the hallway, crying, I had a minute where I imagined my life without you.”

Lara kissed him, hard, hiding the dreadful secret that he would, indeed, be without her soon enough. She belonged to Le Cirque Secret now.

Finally she pulled away. There was something pressing that he needed to know. Both now and for the future. “In whatever state I was in, Todd came to me. He was sitting on his car and asked me to come with him. I knew it was a choice.” Her eyes filled with tears. “But I told him I couldn’t go with him.”

With the lights of Paris shining on his face, Lara looked up. “I know now that I came back for you.”

Part 3: Esmé’s Secret

Chapter 31

Back in her old bed at the farm in Kerrigan Falls, Lara had slept soundly. The absorption of Cecile was still taxing her body. Yet the voice inside her had remained quiet ever since they’d left Paris. “Are you still there?”

Nothing.

There was a temptation to think it had all been a dream, except the desire to go to Montparnasse and the market at Rue Mouffetard that last day had not been hers. There were small signs that she wasn’t alone in her body and that Cecile was observing the world, having been gone from it for over seventy-five years.

This time, there was no question that she would be staying at the farm. Since she’d gotten back last week, Audrey had been fussing over her. Her mother was out getting groceries. Lara had no doubt that she’d be picking up chocolate chips, pierogies, and turkey pastrami—all her favorite comfort foods. Caren would join them and they’d watch old Hitchcock films and eat popcorn. She could tell that Cecile’s heart had quickened at seeing Audrey and Lara together. Her granddaughter and great-granddaughter—her legacy.

Like a tour guide, Lara had visited the old Kerrigan Falls Cemetery to show Cecile Margot’s grave as well as the one marked CECILE CABOT that was actually Sylvie’s final resting place. Lara thought Cecile would like that. “She wanted you to live on,” said Lara out loud to the voice inside her. Sylvie had been the one living connection between them. They’d both known and loved her.

“What happened to her?” asked Lara finally. “I saw Margot and you at Le Cirque Secret, but not Sylvie.”

Finally, the voice inside her head spoke: Because she was human, she passed on normally. She wasn’t bound to the circus like we were. We’re half daemon, so we return to him. You will return to him as well, in the circus.