The Watchtower

her seat in a fit of giggles, hiding her face in her friend’s lap. Still half dazed by my vision—I’d been having quite a few of them lately, hadn’t I?—I stared at the girls wondering why they looked familiar. Then I realized they were the same girls I’d seen a few nights ago in the Square Viviani—the art students who’d rushed off to make their midnight curfew.
    “Don’t mind Sarah,” one of the girls, a redhead, said when she noticed me staring. “She’s got Tourette’s.”
    Sarah punched her friend in the arm and collapsed in another fit of giggles.
    “I’ve heard worse,” I assured them. “Are you girls going to Fontainebleau to sketch?” I pointed at the portfolios they all carried.
    “Yeah,” the redhead, apparently the designated speaker, answered. “Our art teacher says that Fontainebleau has been an inspiration to artists for centuries and we ought to ‘take our line for a walk’ there.”
    Sarah dissolved into another fit of laughter. “We were going to spend the weekend in Nice, but Becca’s parents pitched a fit.”
    The third girl, a gamine with black bangs and dark eyes, blushed. “They didn’t think it was safe. They’re freaked out by reports of missing students.”
    “They think she’s going to end up like that boy they found this morning in the Seine,” Sarah said, her voice suddenly sober.
    “What boy?” I asked.
    “Do you still have the paper, Carrie?” Sarah asked the redhead.
    Carrie handed me this morning’s Herald Tribune. On the front page was a photograph of nineteen-year-old Sam Smollett, a sophomore at Bard College, who had gone missing from his dormitory a week ago. He’d been found drowned in the Seine this morning.
    Bard Boy, I thought, recognizing the boy I’d seen with Sylvianne last night. Had he broken away from her dominion last night and thrown himself into the river? Or had someone decided to deprive the Queen of the Forest of her special pet? I recalled the man in the overcoat and hat I’d seen vaulting into the park last night. That made twice that I’d seen him at the scene of a crime. And I’d just seen him standing in the station. Had he boarded our train?
    I glanced around the car nervously, but there was no sign of the man in the long coat and hat—although, if he took them off, would I recognize him? What if his next target was one of these three girls?
    I tried to focus on the girls’ conversation again, if only to slip in some warning to them about staying out of dark, deserted parks at night. They were discussing the history of Fontainebleau.
    “Our teacher says it’s the birthplace of plain air, or something,” Carrie was saying.
    “En plein air,” I gently corrected. “And he’s right. Before the impressionists, painters came out to the woods of Fontainebleau to paint outdoors instead of in their studios. They were called the Barbizon school for one of the villages.” I gave a little lecture on the Barbizon school to the three girls, supplemented by details I’d learned on the Internet last night. They listened patiently and politely, like the three nice American high schoolers they were. I ended by stressing that the painters worked during the daylight. The woods could be dangerous at night.
    “Are you an artist?” Carrie asked, ignoring my warning.
    “A jeweler.” I showed them the watch I’d recently made and the swan ring and pendant I always wore and they immediately became more animated. Sarah had seen some of my pendants at Barneys, which instantly gave me more “cred” than all the art history knowledge in the world. We talked about different art schools in New York City and where the girls were thinking of going to college. Becca, who was from Texas, said her parents were against her going to art school in Manhattan; Sarah said her grandparents refused to let her use her college fund for anything less than an Ivy; while Carrie said her mom wanted her to go to art school but that she wanted a more general liberal arts college.
    “I don’t think I can take four years of emo art kids,” she said.
    The girls’ chatter made the trip fly by and distracted me briefly from my worries over the two drownings. We were heading away from Paris, where they’d occurred. Still, I was happy to learn we were all staying at the same hotel—the Aigle Noir—right across from the entrance to the château and park. I could keep an eye on the girls tonight.
    I resisted the urge to follow when they ran off