The Hypnotist

SIXTY-ONE

As he walked up the museum’s grand marble staircase, the pull of the palace reached out to Lucian, but it wasn’t a night for sentiment. Passing through the medieval galleries, heading for the American Wing, he was blind to the artwork for the first time that he could remember. Tonight he was going to solve more than one mystery, and as much as it might cause him personal pain, there’d be relief to finally get to the truth. Hard, cold knowledge was the only thing he could trust. The past few weeks had all been a game, and he’d been played. He clenched his teeth against the thought of that and his unremitting headache.

Golden light flooded the Charles Engelhard Court, a glassed-in garden on the park that was home to large-scale sculptures, leaded-glass windows and architectural elements from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. There were already at least a hundred guests milling about the three-story atrium, but the space was far from crowded. Lucian recognized and nodded to members of the board of directors. Top-tier museum patrons were there, as well as descendants of the families who had bequeathed the paintings to the Met.

In the center of the room an area was cordoned off by a twelve-foot opaque screen. Behind it, Lucian found Marie Grimshaw repositioning five empty easels. When she saw him she forced a smile. He had the sudden urge to tell her he was sorry-but for what? Everything had turned out the way she and Tyler Weil wanted it to-the paintings rescued, Hypnos safe.

“Congratulations, Agent Glass. In a career dedicated to protecting art, to keeping the treasures of the centuries safe, tonight should be a major celebration for you. Thank you.”

She was right. He should be reveling in what he and Matt had accomplished, but the surprise he’d suffered earlier this afternoon when Oliver Canton finally gave him the name of his accomplices had ruined that. One name meant nothing. The other meant far too much.

Afterward, Matt had tried to convince Lucian to have a drink with him. To talk about what had happened. Lucian had refused and sat in his office on the computer ostensibly working but just staring at the screen trying to figure out how to deal with the information and its ramifications. He’d been made a fool of. He’d wanted to believe something so badly he’d risked his credibility, his job and his fucking sanity.

He’d forced himself here, not for the celebration, but for the confrontation. He’d even dressed for the magnitude of the event, wearing black slacks, not jeans, a jacket made in Italy and suede loafers that replaced his everyday boots. The only item that was the same was the Glock in his shoulder holster.

There were two bars set up at opposite ends of the gallery. The one with the smaller crowd backed up to a Frank Lloyd Wright living room that had been transplanted to the Met in 1982. Since Lucian was officially off duty, he ordered vodka on the rocks and, while the bartender made it, he stared out the windows into the park’s lush green backdrop. A familiar sense of loneliness overtook him as he remembered someone who was gone, whom he’d almost been able to reach out and touch. Emeline had raised the specter of Solange’s ghost, put flesh on her bones and blood in her veins. It was a mean trick. She should have stayed a memory. Even if he’d mythologized her, as a myth she’d done him no harm.

He could smell her, as if she were right there. It was the curious mixture it seemed he’d been smelling all his adult life, either in reality or in his imagination-that particular mingling of lilies of the valley with turpentine and linseed oil. Solange’s scent.

But it was Emeline approaching, leaning on her father’s arm. More sickly looking than ever, Jacobs was probably leaning on her but disguising it well. The man’s navy suit hung on his frame, his illness all the more obvious for the excess fabric.

Lucian’s hand gripped his glass as he fought the urge to throw it in the man’s face, battled with the overwhelming desire to beat him to a bloody pulp right here, right now. And Emeline? He had to force himself not to turn away.

Emeline and her father had reached the bar. Her scent was so pervasive. She’d never used Solange’s perfume before. Why tonight? To continue the farce?

As she smiled at him, a faint blush rose in her cheeks. She was wearing cream-colored, wide-legged silk pants with a narrow, fitted blouse of the same fabric. On her feet were flat ballet slippers in the same shade of cream with gold strings tied in a bow. Her hair was sleeked back and pulled into a chignon, almost as if she was showing off her scar. In her ears were round diamonds that caught the light and reflected back the sunset’s glow.

Reaching up, she brushed Lucian’s cheek with a kiss that would appear innocuous to anyone watching-including her father-but wasn’t, and then whispered that signature line Solange had always used on greeting. “I very much missed you.”

Lucian couldn’t help noticing the swell of her small breasts. Despite everything he knew and all the emotions roiling in him, he was still overwhelmed by an urgent need to touch her skin-to make sure it was warm, not cold-to reassure himself that she was real, that she was still here, that she was not about to evaporate into the past. His heart hadn’t caught up to his head yet.

Coming here had been a mistake. He suddenly knew how the men he had put in prison felt. This wasn’t the place to pose the questions he needed to ask or to hear the answers he was almost afraid to learn. He needed to get out.

“Good evening, Lucian,” Jacobs said formally.

“Good evening, Mr. Jacobs, Emeline,” Lucian responded. His own voice sounded forced. He wasn’t managing this very well. “Would you like drinks?”

Emeline told the bartender she’d take champagne and Jacobs asked for gin. “No rocks,” he muttered, and Lucian noticed Emeline stiffen.

He knew, because she had told him, that Jacobs’s daily promises to stop drinking never lasted long past each evening’s cocktail hour, despite the fact that the liquor was killing him.

Around them, as more and more people poured into the luminous stone-and-glass gallery, the sounds of tinkling crystal and excited voices rose and hovered in the air along with the mixed scents of flowers, burning candles and perfumes. Satins and silks shimmered in the twinkling light from the votives scattered around the room on the cocktail tables. Diamonds hanging from earlobes, necks and fingers glinted; sequined jackets and beaded handbags shone.

The festivity was an affront to what he knew about the two people standing beside him. Lucian wanted to climb up on a bar and scream at them all to be quiet, to honor the memory of a dead girl and take revenge on the man who was responsible for her death.

The bartender delivered the Jacobses’ drinks just as the string quartet stopped playing and the museum’s director, Tyler Weil, stepped onto a platform to the right of the screened-off area.

Weil scanned the audience, found who he was looking for and motioned for Marie Grimshaw to join him. Then, picking up the microphone, he welcomed everyone.

Beside Lucian, Emeline took his arm and pressed close to him. She smiled up at him, and he was struck by her enigmatic expression. She looked as if she was trying to be happy but at the same time was struggling with where she was, with who she was, with trying to assimilate it all. The stress was no doubt real but its source was not what she’d led him to believe. Before tonight he would have been empathetic about her dilemma. Now he knew it was a lie.