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He let out an unamused laugh. “Vanished. The café has been closed all day. No one has seen him since last evening when you fainted dead away.”

“I did not faint, I—” The image of the man’s lifeless eyes flickered back to mind. Of the two bodies in the lake from my dream. It had been the briefest of thoughts when I was speaking with the barman, small enough I’d disregarded it but …

Ruan overheard the thought. “We don’t know he’s dead. For all we know he’s left town. He did try to kill you, if you recall.”

I hoped he was right. “Regardless, I have news too.” I lowered my voice, stretching up to my toes to whisper in his ear. “The orderly knows more than he let on. He indicated my mother found something before she died. Something she wasn’t supposed to. He’s promised to show me tonight. But I cannot help but wonder if that was what she was trying to tell me in my dream. If she wanted me to find something.”

Ruan’s expression flickered with concern. “Tell me everything.”

I tucked my arm into his, and as we walked hand in hand back to the boardinghouse I recounted my conversation with Narcisse in hushed tones. How Djhan Wauters was the other patient—the one who disappeared with my mother and had not yet been found—my suspicions that he was working with Étienne and Félix for some unknown reason. I did not spare a single detail. While the morning had been mostly an exercise in polite boredom, I had a sense this evening would be an entirely different situation. One I hoped would at last break the silence here at Saint Oda once and for all.

CHAPTER SEVENTEENAn Impossible Imposter

FROM the moment we entered the boardinghouse it was clear something was wrong. Mrs. Wauters was gone, her sewing basket still sitting by her chair near the wood burner with an abandoned cup of coffee alongside it. I moved closer, laying my hand upon the cup. Still warm.

“She was here moments ago,” Ruan murmured beneath his breath, evidently having heard my train of thought.

“Perhaps she went back out?”

The floorboards above creaked.

Someone was here.

I could only hope it was our landlady, but something deep down told me it wasn’t. Mrs. Wauters hadn’t set foot in our rooms since the day she showed them to us. She’d promised utter privacy while we stayed here and thus far had kept her end of the bargain.

I pressed my fingers to my lips and started for the stairs. Ruan caught my intention and shook his head, gesturing to the ceiling then back to me. I had the distinct impression he was not in favor of my plan. Step by step, I climbed. The shadows, which before had given off a cozy air, now carried a much more sinister sentiment. Ruan followed behind. Our soft breath scarcely audible, and yet even that subtle sound echoed in my mind.

I was not built for this sort of excitement. I simply wanted to live my life with my books and my fluffy black house cat and his newfound kittens. Was it too much to ask for a normal, simple sort of existence? Yes. Apparently, it was.

Masculine pride pricked, Ruan paused outside our rooms, pressing his ear against the door and listened. His head was bent, dark curls falling over his brow.

“Someone’s here…” he whispered. But I’d heard the sound too. The slight shuffling of paper. The scrape of a bottle. The creak of wood behind the door. The hair rose on the back of my neck.

What do we do?

Ruan wet his lips, his gaze fixed upon the door as if he could somehow see through it. A fact I knew most certainly could not occur.

With a frustrated huff, I laid my hand on the knob. We weren’t going to get answers waiting here wringing our hands. If anything, our guest might decide to climb out the window and down the trellis before we made up our minds on how to proceed—and then we’d never know who it was.

I lifted the latch and flung the door open, fully expecting to find the intruder standing there. But the room was empty, save for an unfamiliar scent of floral soap hanging in the air.

I stepped inside, closing the door, to reveal the slight form of a woman standing there, her back pressed against the wall. My bottle of brandy dangling loosely from her left hand.

She wore a defiant expression as she looked up at me, giving the sense I was the intruder here. This was the woman who’d been arguing with Dr. Peterson back at the priory, and I knew deep down in the very marrow of my being this woman was also the imposter.

She scarcely came to my shoulder. Slight in stature, precisely as Hari had noted, however he’d omitted how arresting she was. Her features were irregular. Too sharp. Too soft. Too everything all at once. The combination of which made her impossible to look away from. Her honey-colored hair was short-cropped and she wore a workman’s trousers and coat, much as she had when I’d first seen her at the hospital. She wasn’t threatening. Not in the least—infuriating, yes—but she had no weapon I could see. Nothing except an obnoxiously expectant look as she awaited my next move.

There was something familiar about her. It seems I’d found the imposter. Or rather, she had found me. And I hadn’t a clue what to do with her now.

Her eyes were dark brown and fathomless. The sort a frivolous person might drown themselves in, succumb to, and not surface for days. That is if one was inclined to such romantic notions, which I most certainly was not. Particularly when the owner of said eyes was holding my bottle of brandy in her hands and lurking behind doors. I folded my arms across my chest.

I hated her.

How dare she come into my room. How dare she snoop around, looking at things, and have the temerity to not be abashed for her crimes. “You…” I growled out. “What are you doing in here?”

But unlike nearly everyone else in my life—with the exception of a handful of my dearest friends—she did not feint. She did not waver one bit. Instead, the insolent creature folded her own arms in a mocking echo of my own posture. “Are you going to glower at me all day, or do you have some plan on what to do with me now you’ve caught me?”

Ruan let out a hoarse laugh and I whipped my head around to glare at him. Traitor. He schooled his expression at once, glancing between me and the interloper with the vaguest hint of amusement upon his features.