With Ozzy occupied, we head toward a darkened bank of windows to the rear of the house. If the layout is as I remember it—I’ve been to one or two events here—then that is where the magistrate’s office will be. We just have to get inside without getting caught.

I pause when we reach a low balcony. Pressing a finger to my lips, I listen. The sound of nighttime insects is all that fills my ears. When no other noise comes, I jerk my head toward the balcony, signaling Ana to go on. Cupping my hands together, I kneel so she can vault over. Her boot is rough against my palm but I pay it no mind. I heave upward as she half leaps over the balustrade. Once over, she extends a hand and pulls me up behind her.

Inside, the house is ugly as sin. The walls are covered with massive oil paintings, each so big I feel like I could step inside them. I recognize most of the myths depicted in the paintings. There is Leda and the swan. A bathing Diana and her coterie of nymphs. Narcissus gazing at his own lovely reflection in a pond, cheeks just the right amount of flushed, golden hair curled delicately around his angelic face, his lithe body mostly nude save for a very strategically placed silken veil, its transparency somehow more revealing than if there had been nothing there at all.

Ana scoffs as we take in the truly unbearable decor. She fingers the petals of an elaborately blooming orchid, seated in a vase as tacky as the rest of the place. It’s burnished gold, with a complex scene etched into the side in a sort of bastardization of a Greek amphora. The details are a bit muddled, but I am fairly certain it’s some kind of orgiastic frenzy. There are plenty of limbs, all tangled up together in a jumbled mess. The scene depicts either sex or murder. Hard to tell.

“I’m beginning to think the magistrate might be a pervert,” Ana says, scrunching her nose as if she’s smelled something distasteful.

I tug on her sleeve, pulling her away from the pungent florals and shamefully bad art. “Let’s have a look around. See what we can find. If there’s a record of malfeasance lying around, I doubt he’s left it out in the open where just anyone could find it.”

And so, we begin our search. A large portrait behind the magistrate’s desk draws my eye. It depicts the man himself, albeit in extraordinarily generous fashion. His double chin has been singled and his ruddy skin has the exquisite sheen normally reserved for artistic representations of kings and cherubs. His legs stretch for miles compared to what I know they look like in real life. Likewise, his shoulders are broad to the point of heroic.

Ana follows my gaze. “Pathetic, isn’t it?”