Rhea held on to the rail at the back of the last tram as it rattled along the shore, with the wind off the lake whipping at her hair.
She had caught that rail just as the tram went past.
She didn’t let herself look back at the roofs, in case he was still standing there watching her go.
Of all the ways off that roof, this one at least took her home.
The last tram of the night always ended its run at the depot, right below her room.
Only now that it was over did she realize how frightened she had been.
She would have fallen four floors if that man hadn’t caught her by the back of her jacket at the last minute.
Her mind was still trying to catch up with what had just happened.
At the next stop, she pulled her mask down around her neck, since on a tram a mask would definitely catch everyone’s attention.
Then she slipped inside, where it was warm.
It was also full.
About forty people were packed in among the seats, all of them singing, with paper cups of mulled wine in their hands.
From what she could hear, they had spent the evening singing at the Christmas market and were still in the mood to sing some more.
Every one of them was dressed in black, just as she was.
A cheerful woman in a red scarf pushed her way down the aisle and pressed a songbook into Rhea’s hands.
“You’re late, honey,” she said.
“Page twelve.”
“Actually, I’m not…” Rhea began, but the man beside her was already placing a spare red scarf around her neck.
“We can’t have you singing without your scarf,” he said kindly.
“Not tonight.” Then he noticed her gloves.
“Very professional, though.”
“My hands get cold,” Rhea said.
She let him, mostly because the scarf hid the mask around her neck.
For a moment she thought about getting off at the next stop, but now that the rush of adrenaline had worn off, her whole body had started to ache.
The tram was already going exactly where she needed anyway, so she opened the songbook to page twelve and sang along.
She knew the carol from school, more or less.
Someone passed her a paper cup of mulled wine, and she drank it gratefully, as she was frozen through.
Between verses, the man beside her leaned closer.
“Do you sing high or low?”
“Low,” Rhea said, since it seemed the safest answer.
When the carol ended, the cheerful woman turned around to her.
“You’ve got a lovely voice, honey. Why haven’t we heard it until now?”
“That’s… because… I usually stand at the back,” she mumbled.
“Well, don’t.” The woman took her by the arm and pulled her to the front.
“What’s your name again, honey? I’m hopeless with names.”
“Anna,” Rhea said.
It was the first name that came into her head.
“Anna! Of course.”
So Rhea sang the next carol at the front of the tram, where everyone could see her, which was the last thing she had wanted.
When someone held up a phone to take a picture of the choir, she made sure she was standing behind the tallest man in it.
Between carols, she took out her phone.
Lola was still waiting at the bottom of the hill.
*I’m out, but I ended up on the last tram home.
Meet me at the depot.*
Lola’s reply came almost at once.
*The TRAM??*
Rhea put the phone away.
She could only hope that Coco’s video showed nothing but wine racks, since all of Coco’s followers would have seen it by morning.
Leo would probably watch it too.
The next carol was a slow one.
While everyone around her sang it, Rhea looked out of the window, and went over what she had learned that night.
The Gentleman had asked her about the knot.
Her mother’s knot.
As far as Rhea knew, nobody but her mother had ever tied it.
Now it turned out this person knew it as well as she did, so he must have known her mother, and known her well.
That also meant that sooner or later, he might figure out who she was too.
As for the catch, Rhea would almost rather have fallen.
At least then she wouldn’t owe him anything.
Ever since her mother disappeared, Rhea had relied on nobody but herself, and she had gotten good at it.
Tonight, for a few seconds, she hadn’t, and that unsettled her more than the fall itself.
He had also called her Trouble, as if he had every right to give her a nickname.
Nobody had given her one since she was a girl.
At the depot, the choir poured out onto the platform, wishing her a merry Christmas.
“Rehearsal’s on Tuesday, Anna!” the cheerful woman called.
“Don’t be late again!”
When Rhea tried to give back the scarf, the man waved her off.
“Keep it,” he said.
“It suits you. Merry Christmas, Anna.”
It took Rhea a moment to remember that she was Anna.
Then they disappeared into the night, and the depot was quiet again.
Priscilla was waiting under the clock tower with the engine running.
As soon as Rhea saw it, she opened the back door and fell into the seat.
Lola looked at her in the mirror, then at the red scarf.
“I sat at the bottom of that hill for an hour, babe.”
“I know. I’m sorry. It’s a long story.”
“I thought you’d been caught.”
“Well… it depends on what you mean by ‘caught’.”
Lola turned all the way around in her seat.
“Babe.”
So Rhea told her everything, every annoying little detail of the encounter with the Gentleman.
“And did he tell you what you wanted to know?”
“No. In fact, he had a question of his own. He wanted to know where I learned the knot I use for my ropes. I mean… of all the things he could have asked me, he asked about that. Right?”
“Men always notice the strangest details, babe. Anyway, then what?”
“He chased me across the roofs like a lunatic, and I slipped off the edge of one. But the maniac caught me at the last minute.”
“Maniac,” Lola repeated, giggling.
“You should have called him that to his face.”
Rhea hesitated.
“I actually called him Your Grace.”
Lola burst out laughing.
“Your Grace?”
“He’s polite about everything,” Rhea said.
“Even when he’s holding someone over a four-floor drop.”
Lola cracked a seed and thought about it.
“So, to sum it all up, he knows your mother, you bit him, and he *caught* you. Babe. There’s commitment there.”
“I have no idea what you mean.”
Lola only cracked another seed.
Upstairs, Rhea hung the red scarf over the back of her chair.
For a while, she sat on the edge of the bed in her jacket, looking at the curtain over the wall.
Then she got up and drew it back.
Until tonight, the wall had held nothing but the seven photographs.
The safe in that cellar hadn’t brought her any closer to finding the rest of them.
It had only sharpened two questions that were already circling in her mind, so she wrote them down.
She took two index cards from the drawer.
On one she wrote *VICTOR VOSS?*, and on the other, *THE GENTLEMAN?* Then she pinned them side by side under the photographs.
Then she went over what she had so far.
Her mother’s voicemail had ended on Victor’s name, the Gentleman knew her mother’s knot, and Leo had traced his chocolates to the Voss.
Whichever way she looked at it, everything kept leading back to the same hotel.
She couldn’t prove any of it yet, of course.
Standing there in that little room of hers, all she could do for now was draw a line in pencil from one card to the other.