Read Chapter 23: The Spy in the Shadows

The first time Julien followed Lucien, he felt like a character from one of the penny detective novels Evie devoured. He waited in a doorway across from Chez Nous, collar turned up against the damp night, watching the club's back entrance until Lucien emerged just past two in the morning. The club owner walked with purpose, unbuttoning his collar and lighting a cigarette in a single fluid motion, then turned not toward his apartment on the Rue de la Roquette, but east, toward the Marais.

Julien followed at a careful distance, heart hammering. Twice Lucien stopped to adjust his shoe, and twice Julien pressed himself into shadow, certain he'd been spotted. But his target seemed distracted, his gaze skyward as if counting stars against the smog.

Lucien led him to a narrow building wedged between a print shop and a shuttered milliner's atelier. The façade was unmarked except for a bronze serpent door knocker—small, tasteful, but unmistakable in the gaslight. Julien watched from across the street as Lucien produced a key, glanced once over his shoulder, and slipped inside.

The man with the serpent ring.

Julien waited until a light flickered in a third-floor window before retreating. He returned the following night, and the night after that, learning patterns. Lucien visited the building three times that week, always alone, always after midnight, always staying less than an hour. But he never emerged the same way he entered. Once he came out whistling. Another time he looked shaken, rubbing his hands together as if trying to warm them.

On the fourth night, a woman arrived. Young, dark-haired, pretty in a washed-out way that suggested restless nights. She carried a small valise and wore a coat too thin for November. She knocked, and the door opened before her hand fell, as if she'd been expected. She went inside and did not emerge during the three hours Julien stayed watching.

He left just before dawn, cold to his bones, and found Evie waiting for him at his flat with coffee gone bitter and a question in her eyes.

"Where have you been?" She pushed his hair from his forehead, her touch gentle even through her worry. "I was beginning to think— I don't know what I was beginning to think."

"Sorry." He kissed her temple and poured himself a cup of the stale coffee, stalling. He hadn't decided how much to tell her. But looking at her face—her exhaustion, her guarded hope after the difficult meeting with his mother—he found he couldn't withhold anything.

"I followed Lucien."

Her hand paused on the coffee pot. "You what?"

"He goes to a building off the Rue des Archives. Always well after midnight. It has a serpent emblem on the door."

The color drained from her face, leaving her gray in the lamplight. "Le Cercle's door."

"I believe so. A woman came last night—young, carrying a valise like she was moving in. She's still there. I waited three hours and she never came out."

Evie sank into the chair across from him, pressing both hands flat against the table as if she needed to steady herself against the room spinning. "Lily must have gone somewhere just like that. Marguerite said they recruited her from a bar in Montmartre, and she seemed so excited, so certain it was her big break. She packed the blue dress I'd helped her pick out at Les Halles and couldn't stop thanking me for teaching her the higher harmonies."

"Did she ever mention Lucien? Before she disappeared?"

"I only met him weeks after she'd gone. I'd never connected them." She laughed, but it came out hollow. "God, I've been so stupid."

"Don't do that." Julien knelt before her, taking her hands. "You chased the only lead you had. You built a life from nothing in a foreign country. If anyone's been stupid, it's me—walking through Chez Nous every night for years, shaking the man's hand without ever asking where he found his singers."

Her eyes glittered. "So we go to the police. We tell them what Marguerite told us, what you've seen—"

"Do you think the police will act?" His voice came out harsher than he intended. "Le Cercle is patronized by men whose names appear in the society columns. Ministers, bankers, the same aristocrats who attend my mother's salons. A girl from Pigalle who sang one season at a jazz club disappears? She's a cautionary tale, not a case."

"Then we go directly to the building. Break down the door and—"

"And get ourselves killed." He softened his grip, rubbing his thumbs along her knuckles. "I'm telling you what I saw so we can decide together how to proceed. But we have to be smart."

Evie pulled away and stood, pacing the length of his small parlor. She stopped at the window, gazing down at the street where hawkers were beginning to set up their morning stalls. "He used me, Julien. Lucien hired me because he knew I'd draw a crowd, but all along he was feeding another pipeline. And Lily—my Lily—was part of that pipeline. And when I started asking questions, he didn't fire me. He fought to keep me. Is there a chance..." Her voice dropped. "He wants me for Le Cercle. I'm the singer he plans to sell next."

The thought had occurred to Julien too, ugly and unavoidable. "That's why he manufactured the contract dispute. That's why he won't let you go."

"But he hasn't tried to recruit me."

"Not yet."

She turned to face him, something hardening in her jaw. "Then we use it. If he wants me for Le Cercle, I can get inside. I can find out what happened to Lily from the source."

"No." The word came out sharper than he'd intended. He crossed to her, cupping her face so she had no choice but to meet his eyes. "I won't let you walk into that place. Not knowing what we know."

"I'm not asking your permission, Julien."

"Then I'll go with you. We'll face whatever's behind that door together."

For a long moment they stood locked in opposition, her stubbornness meeting his, each refusing to break. Finally Evie's shoulders sagged. "You can't come where I'm going, and you know it. Those patrons want someone pretty to play dress-up in their drawing rooms. A pianist from a good family would raise too many questions."

"So we find another way. Marguerite's friend Jeanne—the one who went to Lyon after her night at the club. She could confirm the building, the rituals, what exactly happens to the women who go in."

"Assuming she'll speak to us at all."

"Assuming." He pulled Evie into his arms, breathing in the smell of her—woodsmoke and cheap violet perfume and something indefinable that was simply Evie. "But first, there's something I didn't tell you about last night."

She stiffened against him. "What?"

"When I followed Lucien the first time, I'd just passed Le Procope. There was a carriage waiting at the corner. The man inside was watching the serpent building with the same patience I'd brought. He saw me watching Lucien, and he didn't look away."

"Did you recognize him?"

Julien felt the knot tighten in his chest. "He was the baron we were supposed to meet. The one who holds your debt. I know him now—I've seen him in the club before, always in the shadows, always alone. He saw me see him, and he tipped his hat."

A chill moved through Evie's frame. "What does that mean?"

"It means you're already caught between them. Lucien steers singers to Le Cercle. The baron supplies its patrons." He pressed his forehead to hers. "And they both want something from you. We need to find out what before one of them moves."