Rhea had been lying on the conservatory roof of Emeric Vidal’s house for almost ten minutes, waiting for the right moment to break in.
Vidal had been an antiques dealer, and he had died a month ago.
Tomorrow his nephew was selling everything he’d left behind, and tonight, on the eve of the sale, he was holding what the invitations called a wake.
From the noise coming up through the glass, it sounded far more like a party.
Somewhere in the house, among all the things waiting to be sold, was a ring, and Rhea had come to steal it before anyone else could buy it.
It was three in the morning when the music changed to something with more bass.
The pane under her cheek began to hum, and a loose sheet of glass nearby rattled every time the beat dropped.
She watched it, hoping nobody below would hear it, and was relieved when nobody did.
She worked her fingertips beneath the edge of one of the panels, lifted it free, then rested it on the frame beside her.
Then she tied her rope around the nearest support beam, using a knot she knew very well.
It was an odd one, but she trusted it to do its job reliably.
Rhea lowered herself through the gap on the rope, then crossed to the door.
The hallway was dark at her end and bright at the other, where the music was coming from.
She kept to the wall as she headed for the back stairs, a dozen steps away.
Reaching them meant passing the main staircase, which, of course, was lit.
Rhea stopped when she saw a peacock asleep on the banister.
It was a real, live one, blue and enormous, with its tail hanging over the steps like a curtain.
Someone had apparently hired it for the evening, then left it to roam wherever it pleased once the novelty wore off.
Thankfully, it didn’t wake, and she slipped past it.
Beside the cloakroom, a man in a velvet jacket was explaining something to the coat rack.
He was completely drunk, so Rhea paid him even less attention than she had paid the peacock.
The study was upstairs, at the end of a hallway.
The door wasn’t locked.
Everything in the room had been prepared for tomorrow’s sale, with a small card beside every item describing it and giving its price.
A glass cabinet stood against the far wall.
Inside were only a few objects: a pocket watch, a pair of cufflinks, and, resting alone on a piece of black velvet, a ring.
The card beside it read: *Antique star sapphire ring, maker unknown.*
The maker was not unknown.
Rhea knew exactly where the ring had come from, though she doubted anyone at the sale tomorrow would care.
She also kept a photograph of that ring back at home.
She had looked at it so many times in the past that she could have drawn it from memory, especially the dark blue dome in the center with a pale star that only showed when the light caught it right.
She moved her head a little, watching the star appear in the stone.
It matched the photograph in every detail.
Only then did she realize she had been holding her breath up until that moment.
She let it out slowly, reminding herself that it was only a ring.
The cabinet’s lock was very old, as she had expected.
She knelt in front of it and took out her picks, ready to do what she was actually good at.
She found the first pin easily, and as she eased it up, she remembered herself sitting at a kitchen table, long ago, under a yellow lamp.
A pair of hands had been showing her how to turn a much smaller pick once.
*Slowly.
Like this.
Now listen.*
But she quickly snapped out of it and made herself concentrate on the lock again, since this was hardly the time to get lost in a memory.
The pins gave one after another.
She had the last under the pick when she heard something move on the other side of the wall.
She went still.
There was a connecting door beside the cabinet, and it stood slightly open.
Beyond it was the bedroom.
She had checked it from the garden an hour ago, and the room had been completely dark, with nobody in it.
It was just as dark now, though evidently no longer empty.
Had one of the guests wandered up looking for a bathroom?
She leaned a bit to the right and looked through the gap.
A man stood beside the bed.
He was tall, dressed entirely in black, and the lower half of his face was covered.
He was bent over the pillow, placing something on it with great care.
It was a chocolate, a small square wrapped in gold foil.
Hotels left them on pillows at night, when they turned down the beds.
Rhea stared at the chocolate in disbelief.
She had been in a great many rooms she wasn’t supposed to be in, yet she had never seen anyone do this during a break-in.
He was breaking in too, wasn’t he?
Eventually, the man turned and saw her standing there.
Neither of them moved as his eyes went from her face to the pick in her hand, then past her to the cabinet.
She followed his gaze, finding the situation so strange that she could think of nothing useful to say.
He seemed to have much the same difficulty, since neither of them spoke for a long while.
She was three steps from the glass, and he was five.
The lock was also already open, which gave her the advantage.
On the other hand, he had longer legs and, as it turned out, no hesitation at all.
She pulled the pick free and reached for the cabinet door as he came through the doorway.
Her glove landed flat against the glass, followed by his, close enough that their fingers touched.
He then spoke and Rhea noticed his voice was low, amused and perfectly polite.
“After you.”