The memory hurts like a scab I shouldn’t have picked at.

“Anyone have any better ideas?” I ask. I’m met with stony silence.

I flop back on the floor. If I moved my arms and legs, I could make a snow angel out of the papers. “Fine.” I sigh. “Let’s rob the Louvre.”

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Nina accompanies us two days later for a perfectly respectable, perfectly innocent trip to the most renowned art museum in the world. What else would three tourists on summer holiday from New York do while in the City of Lights?

We debated asking my father directly about the key, but that would require admitting to stealing his paper or breaking into the meeting of the Brothers of Morte d’Arthur, and we don’t trust him yet. The fewer people we can involve in this, the safer we are.

Maxine’s mother herself told us it would be a crime not to see the Mona Lisa.

We cut the very picture of three upstanding members of society as we enter the marble halls of the museum, clad in near-identical high-necked white tea gowns, large sun hats poised on our swept-up hair.

Lena hauls her art kit by her side, an easel and paints that fold cleverly into a carrying case.

Nina runs in front of us, skittering like a duckling on an icy pond, the pink sash of her dress flowing behind her.

“I want to see the ballerinas!” she shouts.

Maxine’s stepfather was annoyed to see us leave without an escort, as the city is on edge. Another murder was reported in the paper this morning. Like last time, they left the body in a cathedral. Maxine’s stepfather offered the article to me, extending it over a steaming carafe of coffee this morning. “Another body,” he said.

“I’m sorry,” I said, shaking my head, refusing the paper. “I have a weak stomach.”

I don’t need to read the details in the paper to be on the edge of vomiting. My head has been pounding all day, which hasn’t helped things. Lena has checked my pupils at least three times. I insist I’m fine, but I may be lying to myself.

We follow her to the Impressionists Hall, their blurry colors dancing over walls. Degas’s ballerinas in their pale blue and baby pink seem to dance right over the walls.

In the center of the room is a statue in bronze of a young girl posing in her tutu. Her hands are clasped behind her back, her head arched to the ceiling.

I wander over to her and re-create the pose, lacing my hands together at the base of my spine. And for a moment, I just breathe.