Read Chapter 13: The Aftermath of Petals

The air in Violetta’s sitting room had gone cold, though no window stood open. Camille knelt beside the chaise where her friend had died, the velvet still bearing the impression of Violetta’s body, the scent of her jasmine and white musk already fading into something thin and distant. The tracer vial pressed against Camille’s palm, small and cool, useless now. There was no one left to signal.

She should move. The guild would convene within the hour to perform the death rites, to burn Violetta’s robes and seal her workshop. They would ask questions Camille could not answer without exposing everything—the library, her mother’s journal, the Eau de Résurrection. Yvette would preside, composed and mournful, and Camille would have to watch her play the grieving elder while the poison she had meant for another still burned in Violetta’s lungs.

A knock came at the servant’s entrance, three sharp raps. Camille rose, her skirts heavy with dried tears she had not noticed shedding. She opened the door to Inspector Laurent.

He filled the frame, coat damp with evening fog, hat in hand. His eyes went immediately to Violetta’s still form, then to Camille’s face, and he said nothing for a long moment. That silence was more kind than any platitude.

“I heard,” he said finally. “The commissioner sent word. He thought it politically prudent for me to offer condolences.”

“And you came for other reasons.”

Laurent stepped inside, closing the door behind him. “I came because the commissioner also told me the official account is that Mistress Violetta suffered a seizure during a spiritualist exercise. A convenient story.” His gaze held hers. “The woman was poisoned. And you were there.”

Camille’s throat tightened. “You don’t sound like you suspect me.”

“If I suspected you, I’d have come with constables.” He moved past her, toward the chaise, but stopped short of touching anything. He studied the room—the overturned chair, the broken séance bowl, the line of salt scattered across the floorboards like a wound. “What really happened?”

She should not tell him. The guild’s laws were absolute: no outsider could know their true work. But Violetta was dead. Eudora was missing. Her mother had been murdered for what she knew. And standing here, in the aftermath of petals and ash, Camille found the laws of a secret society markedly less important than the living man who watched her with steady, patient eyes.

“The séance was a trap,” she said. “A spirit spoke, claimed I killed Mistress Eudora. Fake—a puppet worked from outside. Then Yvette cast a spell meant for me. Violetta threw herself between us.” Her voice cracked on the last word. “She died for me.”

Laurent was silent for a long moment. Then he said, “Magic.”

“Yes.”

“Real magic. Not tricks, not manufactured mysticism for the entertainment of credulous aristocrats.”

“Yes.”

He exhaled, then sat on the edge of a side table, folding his arms. “I’ve spent three years investigating crimes no rational explanation could account for. Drowned women who died with no water in their lungs. Corridors where witnesses saw shadows move on their own. And now the mistress of a perfume guild tells me she practices actual sorcery.” He shook his head slightly. “You’d think I’d feel vindicated. Mostly I just feel tired.”

Despite everything, Camille almost smiled. “I understand tired.”

Laurent looked at her, and something in his expression softened. “What do you need?”

The question surprised her enough that she almost laughed. No one had asked her that since her mother died. “I need to find the library before Yvette seals it permanently. Violetta told me it exists—hidden beneath the guild floor, marked by a rose carved in a circle. She said it holds scents no one else remembers, secrets of the old masters.”

“And you believe it holds answers about Eudora’s disappearance?”

“And my mother’s death. And the Eau de Résurrection.” She lifted her chin. “The same perfume that connects them all. Whoever took Eudora is trying to complete what my mother refused to teach them.”

Laurent nodded slowly. “Beneath the guild floor. You’re certain it’s under the building itself?”

“Violetta said beneath the floor. She was dying—she didn’t have time for landmarks.”

He rose from the table, pacing a few steps toward the window. His boots kept time with his thought. “There used to be an older sewer system under the Left Bank. Before you modern line was built in the seventies, the old channels ran beneath the guild quarter.” He turned. “Some of those tunnels were dry. Sealed off. A few still connect to cellars on the older buildings.”

Camille’s heart beat faster. “You know where they are.”

“I know where the public records indicate they were.” He produced a small notebook from his coat, flipping pages until he found one covered in cramped, precise handwriting. “I charted them during the Corbeau investigation. We suspected he used them to move between crime scenes undetected. The plan changed before we could search them properly, but I have access points marked.” He looked up at her. “If your guild hall stands on those foundations—and given its age, it should—there may well be a way in from below.”

“You found Corbeau’s sewers but not Corbeau.”

“A fact that haunts me at night.” He tucked the notebook away. “But it gave me a map. And it gives us a way into that library without walking through the guild’s front doors.”

Camille considered. The idea of descending into the dark beneath Paris, into tunnels that might belong to the very cultists who had murdered her mother, who controlled the puppet spirit that had killed Violetta—it was terrifying. It was also the only path forward.

“Us?” she said.

Laurent met her gaze steadily. “You’re a target now. Yvette knows you survived. The people who killed Violetta know you’re still looking. If you go down there alone, you likely won’t come back up. I’ve lost too many witnesses to walk into that outcome again.”

“You’re a policeman. You’re meant to uphold the law, not trespass under secret guild halls with a woman you barely know.”

“I’m meant to find the truth.” He said it simply, without drama. “And that’s the only thing I’ve ever been good at. You’re the only person who has shown me where the truth actually lies.”

The words sat between them, heavy and honest. Camille studied him—the weathered lines of his face, the careful set of his jaw, the way his hands hung loose at his sides, unarmed but ready. He was not a guild brother. He was not even a believer in what she was, until an hour ago. But he was standing in the room where her friend had died, offering to descend into the dark with her.

“We’ll need an entrance,” she said. “The guild floor is sealed. I’d have to break in during the night, after the death rites.”

“Then we go tomorrow night.” Laurent reached into his coat and pulled out a folded map, yellowed and creased. He spread it on the side table, weights at the corners before Camille could object. “These are the old channels. The main artery runs beneath the guild quarter. There are three access points within a quarter mile of your hall. A storm grate on Rue des Francs-Bourgeois. A maintenance hatch behind the flour mill. And an abandoned crypt at the chapel of Saint-Germain.” He tapped the last. “That one connects directly to the older foundations. If your hall predates the modern sewers, its cellar floor may have been laid over a vault access.”

“You’ve been planning this,” Camille said.

“I’ve been waiting for a reason to go back under.” He folded the map and held it out to her. “Corbeau has been one step ahead of me for months. Every lead I chased led to a dead end. But you found a thread that actually pulls loose. I’m not letting it go because of procedure.”

Camille took the map. The paper was warm from his coat, smelled faintly of tobacco and rain. She tucked it into the inner pocket of her jacket. “I should warn you. The library isn’t just a room with books. If it’s what Violetta described, it holds perfumes with power. Scent that can alter memory, influence will.” She swallowed. “Some of them may be dangerous to anyone who isn’t trained.”

“Then we’ll need a bit of luck.” Laurent stepped away from the table, retrieving his hat. “I’ll meet you tomorrow, two hours after midnight, by the chapel door. Bring a lantern that doesn’t smoke. The tunnels have stagnant pockets that catch flame.”

“You’ve done this before.”

“I told you. I charted them.” He paused at the door, hand on the latch. “Camille.” Her name, stripped of formality. “I know tonight was grief and accusation and loss. But you’re not alone in this. Not anymore.”

She wanted to thank him, to tell him that the weight in her chest had eased a fraction, but the words tangled in her throat. Instead she nodded, and he accepted it, and then he was gone into the fog, closing the door quietly behind him.

The room was empty again. The scent of Violetta’s jasmine had thinned to a ghost. Camille stood by the window and watched Laurent’s shape disappear down the darkened street, a shadow swallowed by the city. The map pressed against her ribs, a small square of possibility.

Her mother’s perfume drifted up from memory—violet and bitter almond, sharp and comforting—and Camille allowed herself a single breath of it.

Tomorrow she would descend beneath the world. Tomorrow she would find the library. Tomorrow she would start pulling the threads that led back to the shadow who had killed her mother, taken Eudora, and stolen Violetta’s life from her lungs.

Tonight, she let herself grieve.