“He was with them for almost two months.”
Bile creeps up my throat. That’s two Heat cycles.
Aaiden’s shoulders stiffen. “We’ll make them pay. And he’s safe now, thanks to you.”
The acknowledgment catches me off guard. I’d expected recrimination for abandoning Ezra, not gratitude for helping Jade.
“Why are you really here?” I ask, suddenly exhausted by this game. “It’s been three months. If you wanted to warn me to keep staying away, you could have sent someone else.”
Aaiden turns from the window, catching me staring. Without speaking, he reaches into his jacket and removes a cream-colored envelope, thick with expensive cardstock. He crosses to me and extends it, the gesture neither threatening nor warm.
I hesitate before I take it. The envelope bears no address, no name, just the embossed logo of Sanctum Gallery in the corner. A frisson of interest goes through me. The new gallery has been the talk of the local art world, though I haven’t had the heart or the stomach to go check it out.
I turn it in my hand. “What is this?”
“An invitation.” Aaiden watches me break the seal and remove the card inside. “To a private exhibition opening next Friday evening.”
The invitation is a masterpiece of understated elegance, the deep charcoal gray cardstock engraved with silver lettering that catches the light as I tilt it.
Sanctum Gallery
Presents
Forgeries Through History: Art, Authenticity, and the Masters of Deception
A Private Exhibition
8 PM, Friday
My pulse quickens. This is too specific, too targeted to be a coincidence. A gallery show about forgeries, given to a forger, and hand-delivered by Aaiden Rockford to my door.
“What does this mean?” I look up from the card to find Aaiden studying my reaction.
“It means what it says.” He taps the invitation with one long finger. “A show about the line between real and fake, and the people who cross that line.”
“Why give this to me?” Cold fear trickles down my spine, mixing with a treacherous heat of anticipation in my gut. “What game are you playing?”
Aaiden straightens, adjusting cuffs in need of no adjustment. “No game. Think of it as an opportunity.”
“For what?”
“Come and find out,” he challenges. “You might discover what you’ve been looking for.”
How much does he know about my search for the Valenne? About my grandfather’s connection to it? About why I approached Ezra in the first place?
Without another word, Aaiden moves toward the door, his purpose in coming here fulfilled.
He pauses with his hand on the knob, turning back to me with an expression I can’t read. “The invitation includes a plus one, but I suspect you’ll come alone.”
The bell jingles as he departs, its cheerful song crashing through me. I stand frozen in the middle of my shop, the invitation clutched in fingers gone numb. Through the window, I watch Aaiden slide into the back of a waiting black car, which pulls into traffic and disappears.
Is this a trap designed to expose me? Or an olive branch extended for reasons I can’t fathom?
How can Aaiden know what I’m searching for when I no longer do?
Am I still chasing my grandfather’s ghost? Or am I now after the man I sketched to exorcise from my dreams, only to etch him deeper instead?
11
