The Watchtower

to burst into flame—or at least collapse and drown—but neither took any more notice of the lightning flashing through them than of the steady stream of rain falling over them. Suddenly I knew what I was watching. The white swan was one of Marguerite’s sisters, but the black swan, its lover, was a mortal creature subject to the vicissitudes of flesh. Marguerite had come to comfort her sister because she knew the pain of seeing her mortal lover die. How many mortal lovers must she have seen grow old and die—or be struck down—in the long centuries of her existence? I felt her weariness—her grief—as she held the dead swan in her arms and lay its long neck against her breast. The white swan twined its own long neck around its lover’s, then both it and Marguerite keened their sorrow into the rain. Their voices sluiced through my breastbone so sharply I awoke, shivering in my darkened bedroom at the Hôtel des Grandes Écoles. The rain had come into the room through the open window, soaking the sheets twisted around my legs. For a moment I thought it was the dead swan wrapped around my limbs, dragging me down into the dark water.
    *   *   *
    The rain had stopped by the time I reached the avenue de l’Observatoire, but flashes of lightning still lit up the Paris skyline, and I could hear the steady drip of water falling from the trees in the park as I walked along the boulevard Saint-Michel. The garden gates, I saw as I rounded the corner of the rue Auguste Comte, were locked. How did Madame La Pieuvre plan to “walk me over”? Was the Luxembourg like New York’s Gramercy Park in that the surrounding apartment tenants had a key to the park? No. 1 avenue de l’Observatoire, a lovely beaux arts building with marble caryatids and columns framing the windows, was right across the street. Looking up, I saw that it was topped by an octagonal tower that stood out against the night sky like an echo of the Observatory dome at the end of the street. I wondered if Roger Elden was there now, watching the sky. I felt for my cell phone in my pocket. I was half tempted to call him and ask for that after-hours tour he’d offered. Gazing at the night sky seemed a lot safer right now than going to meet the queen of the forest in a locked park.
    But, no, Madame La Pieuvre was expecting me; I couldn’t disappoint her. As I started to cross the street, a movement on my right in the shadow of the park’s iron gates caught my eye. I glanced in its direction and a shadow detached itself from the gloom—a shadow shaped like a man in a long coat and a wide-brimmed hat.
    “Hey!” I called, throwing all caution to the wind. This was the fourth time I’d seen this guy. Clearly he was following me. At the sound of my voice the shape rippled, bunched, and then shot upward. I froze, watching the man vault straight up and over the high spiked gates. The only person I’d ever seen move like that was Will Hughes, but it couldn’t be Will, could it? I’d seen him in the daylight. And why would Will flee from me? Unable to answer that question—or any of my questions—I gave up staring at the locked gates and crossed the street. Maybe Madame La Pieuvre would have answers. At least she might have a key.
    I rang the bell beside Madame La Pieuvre’s name and was rung into an elegant courtyard full of potted camellias. Gas lamps added to the air of nineteenth-century Paris. I might have been paying a visit to Dumas’s famous courtesan instead of a librarian. An octopus-librarian, I reminded myself as the ornate cast-iron elevator carried me up to the sixth floor.
    The elevator let me out on a marble landing also full of potted plants. In addition to the camellias there were azaleas, miniature roses, orchids, plumeria, bougainvillea, and other, exotic flowers I couldn’t identify. They were all in shades of coral, shell pink, and bone white so that I felt as though I might be under the sea. The splash of water added to that impression. I followed the sound through wide-open doors into a foyer with a marble fountain of a naked nymph held aloft by a fish-tailed triton. The statue was so old that the fingers of the triton grasping the nymph’s hip had all but merged with her flesh. The nymph’s face was worn down to the smoothness of a mask. Still, the panic in her eyes was as immediate as if she had only this moment been seized. I had an urge to intervene … to save her … only in the few seconds I had looked into her