One afternoon toward the end of July, Sebastian picked me up in his black-and-maroon Cottin-Desgouttes Torpedo, a bigger car than my little blue boy, as I had come to call my Bugatti. We were driving to Emma Calvé’s chateau, a trip that would take about four hours. We would stay for a week to ten days, or as long as it took me to paint her home using my scrying art and to help her find the lost Book of Abraham that the castle was hiding.
This was Sebastian’s scheme to liberate me from my self-imposed hiatus. Finding hidden treasure would be so much safer than uncovering people’s secrets. Wouldn’t it?
My scheme was to protect him.
The route wound west and then north about four hundred kilometers. Sebastian had planned the drive so that we could stop in Aix-en-Provence and have lunch with Marsden Hartley, the American painter I’d met at the Duplessi Gallery. Sebastian told me that Marsden had a house in Venice but was spending the month in Aix painting some of the local landscape that Cezanne had made famous.
Our lunch on the terrace was a much-needed respite from the long drive. Marsden’s housekeeper made a delicious lemon sole served with buttered parsley potatoes and a lovely, chilly rosé. Afterward, there were strawberries, good bread, and runny cheese.
The view from the terrace was a painter’s dream, and in the hills I saw the geometric patterns that had captured Cezanne’s imagination. I told Marsden that I was looking forward to what he’d do with the vista, and he invited us to stop back on our return trip.
“Where did you say you were headed, Duplessi?” he asked my brother.
“Delphine has a commission. We’ve been invited to Chateau de Cabrières by Emma Calvé.”
“The opera singer who was at my opening.”
“The same,” my brother said.
“I heard she has a school there for young girls studying opera. You should have quite a musical visit.”
“I hope the school’s not in session, Sebastian,” I said. “That would be far too distracting.”
“It’s not an official school,” my brother explained. “Young girls study with her at the chateau, but she assured me there are no students there now. You can count on peace and quiet.”
“Where exactly is it?” Hartley asked.
“Millau.”
“The land of the Cathars. There are legends on every twisting road,” he said. “I’m something of a history buff and explored there a bit. The paintings and cave art in the region are worth taking a look at. They say the Cathars were in possession of many relics, including the Holy Grail.”
I told him that I, too, loved the history of the region and how my father and I used to spend time there every summer searching through ruins.
“I would imagine it’s the perfect kind of place for you to practice your—what did you tell me it was called?” Marsden looked at Sebastian.
“Scrying,” Sebastian said.
Marsden nodded, then turned back to me. “What an exceptional gift. Your brother told me that you’ve had it since you were about ten?”
“Yes,” I said. I was shocked that Sebastian had told the painter about me. My brother had always hinted at my intuitive powers to obtain commissions but had never gone so far as to mention my scrying to anyone outside the family who might not understand. Marsden sensed my discomfort and returned to the previous and safer topic of history.
“I have a book that has some unusual Cathar stories in it. Hold on.” He left us but returned moments later. Not long enough for me to say anything to my brother about what I considered his indiscretions.
Marsden handed me a book. The green leather binding was worn and had some water spots on it. The title, embossed in gold, read From Ritual to Romance, and it was by Jessie L. Weston.
“This is one I actually don’t have,” I said.
“Take it. It will prove for some interesting reading while you are in Millau. I’d like to hear what you think of it.”
“Are you sure? I’m so possessive of my books. I always worry if I lend one, I’ll never get it back.”
“Like love,” Marsden said, “books are meant to be shared.”
Finally, it was time to push on. We said our good-byes and walked out to the car.
I’d no sooner shut my door than Sebastian remembered something he’d forgotten to tell the artist. He ran back to the villa and knocked on the door, and Marsden opened it.
In the shadows, the two men stood on the threshold, speaking.
What is it that makes us see something for the first time that we’ve literally witnessed hundreds of times before? My brother was half of my soul. We’d shared a womb together. Despite his inheriting nothing of the witching power from our mother, what we shared was atypical. And yet there was so much about my twin that I didn’t know, made even more evident by us having spent the last four and a half years apart.
His success at the gallery was partly a result of his charm but had more to do with his artistic sensibility. Sebastian had an artist’s soul, even if he didn’t create paintings or sculpture himself. He’d created an artistic life. His gallery was itself a work of art, a sensory delight, with just the right lighting, velvet settees, and comfortable couches on which patrons could sit and contemplate the paintings. The gallery served tea or coffee in the loveliest Limoges china and champagne in the most delicate Lalique flutes. Chocolates, meringues, and madeleines were always perfectly arranged on silver trays alongside linen napkins embroidered with the gallery’s logo—an Art Deco blue-and-green geometric rendition of Sebastian’s initials that he’d designed himself.
Unlike me, Sebastian was an extrovert and had plenty of friends of both sexes. Our early days in Paris had been the only time his popularity had been challenged. For the first time, he had to work at developing connections, but he very soon overcame that. Growing up with three sisters had sensitized him to what pleased and upset us, and women seemed to adore him in that wild, liberated way that so many of us, in both France and the United States, had assumed after the war. In the aftermath of so much sorrow, rules were bent. Lovers embraced with abandon, fueled with too much drink and sometimes too much opium or cocaine.
Sebastian reminded me of a bumblebee, buzzing from flower to flower. As predicted, he had just parted ways with Carlotta Simpson. I’d met so many of his women over the years and knew how quickly he tired of them. I’d stopped looking for the one who might snare his heart. And now I knew why.