Susanna Kearsley
As a former museum curator, Susanna Kearsley brings her own passion for research and travel to her novels, weaving modern-day and historical intrigue. She won the prestigious Catherine Cookson Fiction Award for her novel Mariana, the 2010 Romantic Times Book Review’s Reviewer’s Choice Award for Best Historical Fiction novel for The Winter Sea, was shortlisted for a 2012 RITA Award for The Rose Garden, and was a finalist for the Arthur Ellis Award for Best Novel from the Canadian Crime Writer’s Association for Every Secret Thing. She lives outside Toronto, Canada.

A Desperate Fortune
one
MY COUSIN didn’t try to catch the bride’s bouquet. She knew me well enough to know I wouldn’t try to catch it, either.
“Come keep me company,” she said, and drew me firmly to one side of all the colourful commotion. “I need to sit.”
My father’s wild Aunt Lucy, nearly lost in layered flounces of bronze taffeta, tried once to herd us back as we went past. “Oh, girls, you mustn’t run away. Go on, get in there. Have a go.” Smiling at my cousin, she said, “Third time lucky, Jacqueline, so they say. And Sara, dear,” she added in a cheering tone, to me, “there’s always hope.”
I might have pointed out there wasn’t, really. Catching things had never been my strong suit, and it always seemed ridiculous to go through all that effort just to field a bunch of flowers that, while pretty, only showed which of the women at the wedding was the most determined to be married next, not which one would be.
Jacqui didn’t give me time to point out anything. She simply answered, “Yes, Aunt Lucy, thanks for that, but Sara isn’t feeling well.”
And then she steered me off again.
I looked at her. “I’m feeling fine.”
“I had to give her some excuse, or she’d have never let us be. You know the way she is. And I could hardly say I wasn’t feeling well—she’d only think that I was pregnant.”
I had to admit that was true. Jacqui’s love life—including her two short-lived marriages, one to a singer flamboyant enough to ensure their divorce had been given a place in the tabloids—was frequently a source of gossip at these family gatherings. She fueled that gossip on her own sometimes when she got bored, and had been known to start a rumour in one corner of the room to see how long it took to travel to another, but this evening she did not seem bored.
I asked, because I couldn’t see the man she’d come with, “Where did you leave Humphrey?”
“Over there. He found the punch bowl, I’m afraid, before I had a chance to warn him. Drank three glasses of it.”
Uncle Gordon spiked the punch at every family wedding. No one knew with what, but even those of us who’d only ever heard about the hangovers knew better than to drink the stuff. “Poor Humphrey.”
Jacqui sighed. “Poor me, more like. I doubt he’ll make it into work on Monday, and we’ve got a sales meeting. That’s what I get,” she said, “for bringing my assistant to a Thomas family wedding.”
I agreed she should have known better. I hadn’t brought a date myself, but then I didn’t have a Humphrey, clever and good-looking, sitting handily outside my office door. And no one here expected me to bring somebody, anyway.
“Let’s find a table,” Jacqui said.
We found one tucked quietly off in a corner, half-hidden by one of the faux-marble columns that held up the wedding hall’s high ceiling, painted ethereal blue with winged cherubs. The whole setting was a bit over-the-top, but it suited our young cousin Daphne, whose wedding this was. Daphne lived and breathed drama, which made her quite fun in small doses but very exhausting in larger ones.
“All a bit much?” Jacqui asked me. At first I assumed she was thinking, as I was, about the wedding, but then she asked, “How are you coping?” and I understood.
She had always been something of my guardian angel, since I’d been put into her arms as a baby when she had been ten. She was, if one worked out the family tree, more properly my father’s cousin, daughter of his youngest uncle, but that made her still my own first cousin once removed, and I had claimed her and was keeping her.
It had been Jacqui who’d first noticed something was a little different in the way I saw the world, and through my childhood and my teens she’d been close by to show me what to do, like an interpreter to guide me through the labyrinth; to pick me up and dust me off if I stepped off the path and took a tumble. And the first year I had spent at university, that awful year when things had started coming all unglued for me, it had been Jacqui who had taken me to lunch with a new author, whose first book she had been editing.
“He’s a psychologist,” she’d introduced him. “Brilliant book, just fascinating. All about these children who have—how do you pronounce it, Colin?”
“Asperger’s.” He’d said it with a hard g, as in “hamburgers.”
At Jacqui’s prompting, he had talked all through our lunch about the syndrome which at that time was believed to lie midway along the sliding scale between the “normal” world and full-on autism, making those who had it all too miserably aware that they were different without understanding why, unable to read and interpret all the complex social cues most other people took for granted—tones of voice, and body language, and the strange figures of speech that made a person say that he had been “knocked sideways” when he hadn’t moved at all.
And I had known.
It had, if I was honest, been a great relief to finally put a name to what the issue was. I’d gone for consultations later with that same psychologist, and with my cousin waiting just outside his office door, we’d done the proper tests. He had explained it very clearly, using terms I could relate to.
“You’re a programmer, aren’t you?” he’d asked me. “You work with computers. Well, if you think of your own mind as a computer, which it is, then your basic architecture is different from most of the other computers around you. You’re wired differently, you connect differently, and you run different software on a different operating system. You’re like the lone Mac,” he’d concluded, “in an office of PCs. They’re all running Windows, and you’re running OS X.”
That had helped. I’d been able to picture that one Mac computer alone on its desk with its own software, processing everything in its own way while all of the other computers, the PCs, shared their incompatible system.
But Jacqui hadn’t liked that image. “You don’t want to be alone, off in your own corner,” she had told me in decided tones. And having helped me put a name to what the problem was, she’d tackled it the way she tackled everything: head-on. She’d bought me books and studied on her own, and with a single-minded focus Henry Higgins might have envied, she had tutored me in how to hide the signs, to pass for normal.
“You just have to pretend,” she’d said, choosing another analogy, “that you’re an alien, come here to learn about earthlings. Our language, our customs, our idioms, all of that. Study and learn them, the way you would any strange culture. But you don’t want to look like an alien, and that means learning to mimic. I’ll show you.”
She’d shown me. Most days, I still felt like an alien, if I was honest. But Jacqui had done her job so well these past several years that my own parents, even when faced with the facts, still refused to believe I was anything more than a little bit quirky. And in a family like mine, I thought—bringing my mind firmly back to the present as new bursts of clapping amid shrieks of laughter announced that somebody had caught the bouquet—being quirky was hardly unusual.
“How are you coping?” asked Jacqui again, and I shrugged.
“I’m all right. I could have done without the DJ.”
“Yes, well, so could we all. It was too loud for me,” she admitted, “so I can only imagine what it must have been like for you.”
My senses were . . . sensitive. Easily jangled and jarred. The wiring of my mind made sounds that other people could ignore strike at me with the full force of a whining dentist’s drill. Strong lighting sometimes gave me headaches, certain fabrics rubbed as painfully as sandpaper against my skin, and when all that was added to a room packed full of people, interacting in a way I had to work to understand, then staying calm became a test of my endurance.
Jacqui smiled and took a piece of paper from her handbag. “Here,” she said, and slid the paper over to me. “This might help.”
Shaking my head, I assured her, “I’m not at that stage yet.”
“What stage?”
“The sudoku stage.” Then, because she was still watching me with that expression I’d known from my childhood, I added more firmly, “I’m fine.”
I admittedly found it a little endearing that she’d always fed my addiction to numbers, in full understanding that, when I felt overwhelmed, nothing could calm me like complex equations or, lately, sudoku—the neat, tidy patterns of numbers in squares, like a warm fuzzy blanket that wrapped round my mind and was instantly soothing.
It hadn’t surprised me that Jacqui had noticed when I’d made the switch to sudoku. There wasn’t much Jacqui missed noticing. And for the past several months she had seemed to have one of the puzzles conveniently tucked in her handbag whenever I’d needed one. But . . .
“You can stop looking after me,” I told her. “Honestly. I’m a big girl now.”
“I know that.” Her tone told me nothing, but I’d learned that whenever her mouth tightened down at the corners like that, she was being defensive. “And anyway, that’s not a puzzle, exactly.”
I looked at the page. She was right. These were numbers, but not in an order I recognized—just numbers printed in pairs and threes, with dots between them:
106.62.181.189.68.172.766.86.128.185.64.175.19.67.164.186.65.47.679.55.173.25.122.13.64.562.215.128.196.29.56.63
I was already starting to look for the patterns when I asked, “What’s this?”
“It’s a code. Codes were one of your things, weren’t they?”
“When I was ten, sure.” I’d been in Year Six then. Our studies had taken us through World War II and the work of the codebreakers at Bletchley Park, and I’d been so obsessed with cryptanalysis that, for the whole remainder of that winter, I had written all my school notes in a cipher of my own devising, much to the frustration of my teachers and my parents. “But that was almost twenty years ago.”
“Well, I’ll lay odds you’ve not forgotten. That code,” she said, with a nod towards the paper I was holding, “is an old one, from the early eighteenth century.”
It wasn’t actually a code, I could have told her, but a cipher. More specifically, it seemed to be a substitution cipher, in which numbers had been used in place of letters of the alphabet. But I only asked, “And why do you have it?”
“I got it from one of my authors. You’ve never met Alistair Scott, have you?”
“Who?”
“The historian, Alistair Scott. He’s quite famous. He used to be on television all the time.”
I took her word for it. I didn’t have a television. “And?” I smoothed the paper with my fingers as I focused on the numbers. There weren’t many that were higher than five hundred, so I guessed those might be placeholders, to mark the ends of words.
“He’s working on a new book,” she went on, “and there’s a source he needs to use, but it’s in code. He wants someone to break it for him. So I thought of you.”
“I’m hardly a professional.”
“You need the work.”
I paused, and faintly smiled. “I wondered how long it would take before you brought that up. Who told you?”
“Need you ask?”
My mother, then. I looked more closely at the numbers, noting the most common ones were in the sixties. Probably the e’s, I thought. The letter used most frequently in English, after all, was e. It also was the letter we used most for ending words. If I was right about the placeholders, then two words in this cipher ended in sixty-somethings, so again, they were most likely e’s. I took a pencil from my handbag. “So she’s told you all the details, has she?”
“Only that you handed in your notice,” Jacqui said. “You can’t keep doing that.”
“They wouldn’t let me work alone.”
“Most people in IT do work in teams.”
“I don’t.” And if the sixty-somethings were all e’s, that meant it was the six alone that mattered, and the final digit didn’t count. Testing this, I tried removing all the final digits right across the board, from all the numbers, and put e’s where all the sixes were, and spaces for the placeholders. I ended up with: 10.e.18.18.e.17.space.8.12.18.e.17.1.e.16.18.e.4.space.5.17.2.12.1.e.space.21.12.19.2.5.e
There, I thought. Much less unwieldy. Right then. Twenty-six letters in the alphabet. Except if I were dealing with a simple substitution cipher, in which a was one, and b was two, and so on, then e would be written as five and not six. I flipped e and f round, and got gibberish: Jerreq hlreqaepred fqblae ulsbfe.
Jacqui told me, “It would mean a trip to Paris. You like Paris.”
“In December?”
“Well, you wouldn’t have to go till after Christmas.”
“Even worse.”
She held her silence for a moment, then she said, “You’re right. You’d do much better staying here and moving back in with your parents. That would be a lot more fun.”
I wasn’t always good at detecting sarcasm, but in this instance just the words alone were all I needed to be certain she was teasing. Glancing up, I tried to straighten out my smile. “Ha ha.”
“No, really. And your mother could invite young men to lunch on Sundays, you could have a lovely time.”
“I won’t need to move home,” I said. “I’ve got three months left on my lease. I’ll find another job.”
“This one would let you work alone. Besides, he pays obscenely well, you know, does Alistair.”
I shook my head. “I couldn’t take his money.” I flipped a few more letters, moving closer to an understanding of the patterns used by whoever had made this cipher. “This,” I said, “is really pretty basic, not so difficult. I’ve nearly got it. When I’ve finished here, I’ll let you have the key, and you can pass it on to him, and he can do all the deciphering himself, for nothing.”
“Yes, well, there’s one problem with your logic,” Jacqui told me.
“What’s that?”
“The code you’ve got there,” she informed me, “is not the one Alistair needs to have broken.”
My pencil paused, but only briefly, because I was too far along to just stop. “Then why do I have it?”
“It’s sort of a test. I told Alistair you were a wizard with codes and things, and he said if you cracked this one in under a week, he would not only hire you, he’d buy you a bottle of whisky.”
I wasn’t sure what letter had been flipped with r. The first word, with its double r, was likely my best clue. It might be meant to be a double l, perhaps, or double t. Since t was the most common English consonant, I went with that. Jetteq, read the first word now, unhelpfully. “He knows what this says, then?”
She nodded. “It’s out of an old book, or something.”
I had only two bits of the cipher left to unravel.
“Tell Alistair Scott,” I said, “that if he’s buying me whisky, my preference is sixteen-year-old Lagavulin.” I jotted the translation down and rotated the paper to slide it back over the table towards her.
I knew that I’d done it correctly when I saw her smile. That was how Jacqui always smiled when I did something to make her proud. “See? I was sure you could do it.”
“I’m not a real codebreaker.”
“Sara.” She held up the paper. “You solved this in seventeen minutes. You’re good at it.”
Probably not good enough, said my inner perfectionist.
Jacqui, who’d known me so long and so well that she likely could hear that voice, too, said, “Come with me tomorrow, I’ll take you to meet him.”
“To Paris? Be serious.”
“Alistair Scott’s not in Paris.”
“But you said—”
“He only lives over the river, in Ham. It’s the job that’s in Paris.”
She asked me again to come meet him, and of course I told her yes, because I knew she wouldn’t let it go until I gave the answer that she wanted. But my gaze stayed on the paper in her hand while we were talking, and I wondered who had written it, and whom they’d meant to warn with those four words. Not me, I knew . . . and yet the final two words resonated, curiously:
Letter intercepted. France unsafe.











The Firebird chapter One
He sent his mind in search of me that morning.
I was on the Tube, half a minute out of Holland Park and in that muzzy not-awake-yet state that always bridged the time between my breakfast cup of coffee and the one that I’d have shortly at my desk. I nearly didn’t notice when his thoughts touched mine. It was a rare thing these days; rarer still that I would let him in, but my own thoughts were drifting and I knew that his were, too. In fact, from what I saw of where he was—the angle of the ceiling and the dimly shadowed walls—I guessed that he was likely still in bed, just waking up himself.
I didn’t need to push him out. Already he was drawing back, apologizing. Sorry. Not a spoken word, but still I heard the faint regretful tone of his familiar voice. And then he wasn’t there.
A man sat heavily beside me, squeezed me over on the seat, and with my senses feeling raw already, even that unwanted contact was too much. I stood, and braced myself against the bit of wall beside the nearest door and forced myself to balance till we came to Bond Street. When the doors slid open I slid safely back into the comfort of routine, my brisk steps keeping pace with everybody else as we became a texting, talking, moving mass that flowed together up and out and through the turnstiles and emerged onto the pavement, where we went our separate ways, heads down and purposeful.
The morning was a lovely one for August. The oppressive sticky heat had given way to fresher air that promised warmth but didn’t threaten, and the sky was a pristine and perfect blue.
I barely saw it. I was thinking of that shadowed room, a greyer light that spoke of clouds or maybe rain, a hand that had come lazily in view, to rub his eyes while he was waking. It had been his left hand, and there’d been no rings on it. At least, I didn’t think I’d seen a ring on it.
I caught my thoughts before they had a chance to wander further and betray me. Doesn’t matter, I reminded myself firmly, and to make quite sure I heard myself, I said the words aloud: “It doesn’t matter.”
I could feel the glances of the people walking closest to me, wondering if I were off my trolley, and I flushed a little, tucking my head well down as I came round the corner and into South Molton Street, a little pedestrian haven of upscale shops, cafés, and galleries. Everything always seemed quieter here, with the mad rush of Bond Street behind me. I carried on down past the graceful old buildings with beautiful doors to the one with the freshly white-painted facade where an expensive-looking brass plaque with fine lettering read: GALERIE ST.-CROIX, FINE RUSSIAN ARTEFACTS AND ART, THIRD FLOOR.
The naming of the gallery had been one of Sebastian’s little vanities—in spite of his French surname he was English through and through, born of a line that likely traced its Hampshire roots back to the Norman conquest. But Sebastian knew his business, and to art dealers like him it was essential to create the proper image.
I was part of that, I knew, because I had the proper look, the proper pedigree, the right credentials, and I always dressed to fit the part. But when he’d hired me two years ago, he’d also made no secret of the fact that it had been for my abilities—not only that I held a master’s degree in Russian Studies and the History of Art, but that I spoke fluent Russian and besides, my organized nature appealed to his strong sense of order, and I had, what he’d called then, “potential.”
He’d worked to transform me, to mentor me, teaching me how to get on the right side of the bid at an auction, and how to finesse our more difficult clients. I’d come a long way from the rather unworldly young woman I’d been when he’d taken me on.
He had transformed the gallery building as well. We were on the third floor, in a space that today was as richly detailed as a penthouse. Even the lift was mirrored, which this morning didn’t thrill me.
I was frowning as it opened to the elegant reception room where a flower-seller painted by Natalia Goncharova hung above the desk at which our previous receptionist had sat. She’d had to leave us unexpectedly, and I’d been interviewing this past week to fill the vacancy, while Sebastian and I shared out the extra duties.
It was not an easy thing to hire a person who could suit Sebastian’s tastes, aesthetically. He wanted something more than simple competence, or class. He wanted someone who embodied what the Goncharova painting did—the painting he had hung above that desk, where it would be the first thing noticed by each customer who stepped into the gallery.
He’d had offers for it. Several of our clients could afford to pay a million pounds with ease, but then Sebastian didn’t need the money.
“If I sell the thing,” he’d told me once, “then I’ll have only satisfied one client. If I leave it where it is, then every one of them will think it can be theirs one day.”
It didn’t only work with art. It wasn’t a coincidence that many of our loyal and best customers were women, and they looked upon Sebastian as they did that Goncharova flower-seller, as a prize that could be won, with time and effort.
In fact, as I passed by his glass-walled office on the way down to my own, I saw he had a woman with him now. I would have left them to their business, but he saw me and beckoned me in, so I pushed the door open and joined them.
Sebastian’s smile was all professional, with me, and even if it hadn’t been, I would have been immune to it. He was too rich to be my type. A gold watch flashed beneath his tailored sleeve as he leaned forward, looking so immaculate I half-suspected that he had a team of stylists working on him every morning, from his polished shoes right to the tousled toffee-coloured hair that had been combed with just the right amount of carelessness. “Nicola,” he introduced me, “this is Margaret Ross. Miss Ross, my associate, Nicola Marter.”
Miss Margaret Ross was not what I’d expected, not our usual sort of client. For one thing she was plainly dressed, but dressed with so much care I knew she’d taken pains to look her best. And although I was usually quite good at guessing ages, I had trouble guessing hers. She had to be at least a decade older than myself, so nearing forty at the least, but while her clothing and the way she held herself suggested she might be still older, there was something in her quiet gaze that seemed distinctly youthful, even innocent.
“Good morning.” She was Scottish. “I’m afraid that I’ve been wasting Mr. St.-Croix’s time.”
Sebastian, ever charming, shook his head. “No, not at all. That’s what I’m here for. And even if it can’t be proved, you still have a fascinating story to tell your grandchildren.”
She cast her eyes down as though she were hiding disappointment. “Yes.”
“Tell Nicola.” Sebastian’s tone was meant to salve her feelings, make her feel that what she had to say was fascinating, even if it wasn’t. He was good, that way. To me, he said, “She brought this carving in for an appraisal.”
It looked to me, at first, an undistinguished lump of wood that curved to fit his upraised palm, but when I looked again I saw it was a small carved bird, wings folded tightly to its sides, a sparrow or a wren. Sebastian was saying, “It’s been in her family . . . how long?”
Margaret Ross roused herself to his smooth prompting. “Nearly three hundred years, so I’m told. It was given to one of my ancestors by Empress Catherine of Russia. Not Catherine the Great,” she said, showing her knowledge. “The first Catherine.”
Sebastian smiled encouragement. “Peter the Great’s widow, yes. So, the 1720s, sometime. And it very well might have been.” Holding the carving as though it were priceless, he studied it.
Margaret Ross told him, “We call it the Firebird. That’s what it’s always been called, in our family. It sat under glass in my grandmother’s house, and we children were never allowed to come near it. My mother said”—there was the tiniest break in her voice, but she covered it over—“she said, with Andrew gone—Andrew’s my brother, he died in Afghanistan—with him gone, and me not likely to have any family myself now, my mother said there was no point in the Firebird sitting there, going to waste. She said I should sell it, and use all the money to travel, like I’d always wanted to do.”
“Miss Ross,” said Sebastian, to me, “lost her mother quite recently.”
I understood his manner now, his sympathy. I told her, “I’m so sorry.”
“That’s all right. She had MS, it wasn’t the easiest life for her. And she felt guilty for having me there to look after her. But,” she said, trying to smile, “I looked after my aunties as well, till they passed, and she was my own mother. I couldn’t have left her alone, could I?”
Looking again at her eyes, I decided their youthfulness came from the fact that she’d never been able to live her own life as a woman. She’d put her own life into limbo while caring for others. I felt for her. And I felt, too, for the mother who’d hoped that her daughter would sell their one prized family heirloom, and finally have money and comfort to live just a little. To travel.
“The thing is,” Sebastian said, kindly, “without any documentation or proof, what we dealers call provenance, we simply can’t know for certain. And without that provenance, I’m afraid this poor creature has little real value. We can’t even tell if it’s Russian.” He looked at me. “Nicola? What would you say?”
He passed it to me and I took it, not thinking, forgetting my mind had already been breached once this morning. It wasn’t until I was holding it, light in my hands, that I realized I’d made a mistake.
Instantly I felt a warmth that had nothing to do with the carving itself. I closed my eyes to try to stop the vision, but that only made it worse. I saw a slanting fall of light, with fine dust dancing through it. Two women, one ageing but lovely, with heavy black eyebrows; the other respectfully bent, perhaps kneeling, her young face upturned in uncertainty. “My darling Anna,” the first woman said to the other in elegant Russian, and smiled. “You were never a nobody.”
I opened my eyes quickly, maybe a little too quickly, but to my relief no one seemed to have noticed. “I really don’t know,” I said, giving the small carved bird back to Sebastian.
He looked at it with a commendable blend of admiration and regret.
“The trouble is,” he told our would-be client, “it’s so difficult to date this sort of thing with any certainty. If it is Russian, it was very likely peasant made; there is no maker’s mark or factory stamp to go by, and without any documentation . . . ” He raised one shoulder slightly in a shrug that seemed to speak to the unfairness of it all. “If she had brought you back an icon, now, this ancestor of yours, or some small piece of jewellery—that I might have helped you with.”
“I understand,” said Margaret Ross. Her tone was bleak.
Sebastian turned the little carving over in his hands one final time, and I knew he was searching for some small thing to praise, to let this woman down as gently as he could. “Certainly it’s very old,” was what he ended up with, “and I’m sure it’s had a few adventures.”
Margaret Ross wasn’t sure about that. “It’s been sitting there under that glass for as long as I’ve known it, and likely it sat there a good while before that.”
The twist of her faint smile held sympathy, as though she knew how that felt, to be there on the mantelpiece watching the bright world pass by, and I saw the small sag of defeat in her shoulders as, accepting Sebastian’s return of the carved bird, she started to carefully wrap it back up in its layers of yellowed, creased tissue.
Impulse drove me to ask aloud, “What was her name?”
She looked up. “Sorry?”
“Your ancestor. The one who brought your Firebird back from Russia.”
“Anna. That’s all we know of her, really, we don’t know her surname. It was her daughter married into the Ross family, that’s how the Firebird came down to us.”
Anna. Something tingled warmly up my arm. My darling Anna . . .
“Because maybe,” I suggested, “you could try a bit of research, to establish some connection between her and Empress Catherine.”
From Sebastian’s glance I couldn’t tell if he was grateful or annoyed, but he chimed in with, “Yes, if you were able to find proof of any kind, that would be useful.”
Again that faint twist of a smile that spoke volumes about how much hope she held now of discovering that. She admitted, “My granny tried once, so she said, but no joy. Common people, they don’t make the history books. And on our side of the family, there’s nobody famous.”
I saw the warm smile in my mind. Heard the voice. You were never a nobody.
“Well,” said Sebastian, beginning to stand, “I am sorry we couldn’t be more of a help to you. But if you’ll leave us your address, we’ll keep it in mind, and if ever a client requests something like it . . . ”
I felt like a traitor, as Margaret Ross stood, too, and shook both our hands. The feeling held as we escorted her back out into reception, and Sebastian, with full chivalry and charm, gave her his card and wished her well and said goodbye, and as the lift doors closed he turned to me and, reading the expression in my eyes, said, “Yes, I know.”
Except he didn’t.
There was no way that he could have known. In all the time I’d worked for him I’d never told him anything about what I could do, and even if I’d told him, he’d have rubbished the idea. “Woo-woo stuff,” he would have called it, as he’d done the day our previous receptionist had told us she was visiting a psychic.
“No,” she’d said, “she really sees things. It’s this gift she has—she holds a thing you’ve owned, see, like a necklace, or a ring, and she can tell you things about yourself. It’s called psychometry.” She’d said the term with confident authority.
Sebastian, with a sidelong look, had said, “It’s called a scam. There is no way that anyone can be a psychic. It’s not possible.”
I’d offered him no argument, although I could have told him he was wrong. I could have told him I was psychic, and had been for as long as I remembered. Could have told him that I, too, saw detailed visions, if I concentrated on an object someone else had held. And sometimes, like today, I saw the visions even when I didn’t try, or concentrate, although that happened very, very rarely now.
The flashes of unwanted visions had been more a feature of my childhood, and I had to close my eyes and truly focus now to use my “gift”—my curse, I would have called it. I had chosen not to use it now for years.
Two years, to be exact.
I’d chosen to be normal, and I meant to go on being normal, having the respect of those I worked with, not their nudges or their stares. So there was no good reason why, when I sat down at the computer in my office, I ignored the string of waiting emails and began an image search instead.
I found three portraits, different in their poses and the sitter’s age, but in all three I recognized the woman easily because of her black hair, her heavy arching eyebrows, and her warm brown eyes. The same eyes that had smiled this morning in the brief flash of a vision I had viewed when I had held the wooden Firebird.
There could be no mistaking her: the first Empress Catherine, the widow of Peter the Great.
“Damn,” I whispered. And meant it.

The Firebird chapter One
He sent his mind in search of me that morning.
I was on the Tube, half a minute out of Holland Park and in that muzzy not-awake-yet state that always bridged the time between my breakfast cup of coffee and the one that I’d have shortly at my desk. I nearly didn’t notice when his thoughts touched mine. It was a rare thing these days; rarer still that I would let him in, but my own thoughts were drifting and I knew that his were, too. In fact, from what I saw of where he was—the angle of the ceiling and the dimly shadowed walls—I guessed that he was likely still in bed, just waking up himself.
I didn’t need to push him out. Already he was drawing back, apologizing. Sorry. Not a spoken word, but still I heard the faint regretful tone of his familiar voice. And then he wasn’t there.
A man sat heavily beside me, squeezed me over on the seat, and with my senses feeling raw already, even that unwanted contact was too much. I stood, and braced myself against the bit of wall beside the nearest door and forced myself to balance till we came to Bond Street. When the doors slid open I slid safely back into the comfort of routine, my brisk steps keeping pace with everybody else as we became a texting, talking, moving mass that flowed together up and out and through the turnstiles and emerged onto the pavement, where we went our separate ways, heads down and purposeful.
The morning was a lovely one for August. The oppressive sticky heat had given way to fresher air that promised warmth but didn’t threaten, and the sky was a pristine and perfect blue.
I barely saw it. I was thinking of that shadowed room, a greyer light that spoke of clouds or maybe rain, a hand that had come lazily in view, to rub his eyes while he was waking. It had been his left hand, and there’d been no rings on it. At least, I didn’t think I’d seen a ring on it.
I caught my thoughts before they had a chance to wander further and betray me. Doesn’t matter, I reminded myself firmly, and to make quite sure I heard myself, I said the words aloud: “It doesn’t matter.”
I could feel the glances of the people walking closest to me, wondering if I were off my trolley, and I flushed a little, tucking my head well down as I came round the corner and into South Molton Street, a little pedestrian haven of upscale shops, cafés, and galleries. Everything always seemed quieter here, with the mad rush of Bond Street behind me. I carried on down past the graceful old buildings with beautiful doors to the one with the freshly white-painted facade where an expensive-looking brass plaque with fine lettering read: GALERIE ST.-CROIX, FINE RUSSIAN ARTEFACTS AND ART, THIRD FLOOR.
The naming of the gallery had been one of Sebastian’s little vanities—in spite of his French surname he was English through and through, born of a line that likely traced its Hampshire roots back to the Norman conquest. But Sebastian knew his business, and to art dealers like him it was essential to create the proper image.
I was part of that, I knew, because I had the proper look, the proper pedigree, the right credentials, and I always dressed to fit the part. But when he’d hired me two years ago, he’d also made no secret of the fact that it had been for my abilities—not only that I held a master’s degree in Russian Studies and the History of Art, but that I spoke fluent Russian and besides, my organized nature appealed to his strong sense of order, and I had, what he’d called then, “potential.”
He’d worked to transform me, to mentor me, teaching me how to get on the right side of the bid at an auction, and how to finesse our more difficult clients. I’d come a long way from the rather unworldly young woman I’d been when he’d taken me on.
He had transformed the gallery building as well. We were on the third floor, in a space that today was as richly detailed as a penthouse. Even the lift was mirrored, which this morning didn’t thrill me.
I was frowning as it opened to the elegant reception room where a flower-seller painted by Natalia Goncharova hung above the desk at which our previous receptionist had sat. She’d had to leave us unexpectedly, and I’d been interviewing this past week to fill the vacancy, while Sebastian and I shared out the extra duties.
It was not an easy thing to hire a person who could suit Sebastian’s tastes, aesthetically. He wanted something more than simple competence, or class. He wanted someone who embodied what the Goncharova painting did—the painting he had hung above that desk, where it would be the first thing noticed by each customer who stepped into the gallery.
He’d had offers for it. Several of our clients could afford to pay a million pounds with ease, but then Sebastian didn’t need the money.
“If I sell the thing,” he’d told me once, “then I’ll have only satisfied one client. If I leave it where it is, then every one of them will think it can be theirs one day.”
It didn’t only work with art. It wasn’t a coincidence that many of our loyal and best customers were women, and they looked upon Sebastian as they did that Goncharova flower-seller, as a prize that could be won, with time and effort.
In fact, as I passed by his glass-walled office on the way down to my own, I saw he had a woman with him now. I would have left them to their business, but he saw me and beckoned me in, so I pushed the door open and joined them.
Sebastian’s smile was all professional, with me, and even if it hadn’t been, I would have been immune to it. He was too rich to be my type. A gold watch flashed beneath his tailored sleeve as he leaned forward, looking so immaculate I half-suspected that he had a team of stylists working on him every morning, from his polished shoes right to the tousled toffee-coloured hair that had been combed with just the right amount of carelessness. “Nicola,” he introduced me, “this is Margaret Ross. Miss Ross, my associate, Nicola Marter.”
Miss Margaret Ross was not what I’d expected, not our usual sort of client. For one thing she was plainly dressed, but dressed with so much care I knew she’d taken pains to look her best. And although I was usually quite good at guessing ages, I had trouble guessing hers. She had to be at least a decade older than myself, so nearing forty at the least, but while her clothing and the way she held herself suggested she might be still older, there was something in her quiet gaze that seemed distinctly youthful, even innocent.
“Good morning.” She was Scottish. “I’m afraid that I’ve been wasting Mr. St.-Croix’s time.”
Sebastian, ever charming, shook his head. “No, not at all. That’s what I’m here for. And even if it can’t be proved, you still have a fascinating story to tell your grandchildren.”
She cast her eyes down as though she were hiding disappointment. “Yes.”
“Tell Nicola.” Sebastian’s tone was meant to salve her feelings, make her feel that what she had to say was fascinating, even if it wasn’t. He was good, that way. To me, he said, “She brought this carving in for an appraisal.”
It looked to me, at first, an undistinguished lump of wood that curved to fit his upraised palm, but when I looked again I saw it was a small carved bird, wings folded tightly to its sides, a sparrow or a wren. Sebastian was saying, “It’s been in her family . . . how long?”
Margaret Ross roused herself to his smooth prompting. “Nearly three hundred years, so I’m told. It was given to one of my ancestors by Empress Catherine of Russia. Not Catherine the Great,” she said, showing her knowledge. “The first Catherine.”
Sebastian smiled encouragement. “Peter the Great’s widow, yes. So, the 1720s, sometime. And it very well might have been.” Holding the carving as though it were priceless, he studied it.
Margaret Ross told him, “We call it the Firebird. That’s what it’s always been called, in our family. It sat under glass in my grandmother’s house, and we children were never allowed to come near it. My mother said”—there was the tiniest break in her voice, but she covered it over—“she said, with Andrew gone—Andrew’s my brother, he died in Afghanistan—with him gone, and me not likely to have any family myself now, my mother said there was no point in the Firebird sitting there, going to waste. She said I should sell it, and use all the money to travel, like I’d always wanted to do.”
“Miss Ross,” said Sebastian, to me, “lost her mother quite recently.”
I understood his manner now, his sympathy. I told her, “I’m so sorry.”
“That’s all right. She had MS, it wasn’t the easiest life for her. And she felt guilty for having me there to look after her. But,” she said, trying to smile, “I looked after my aunties as well, till they passed, and she was my own mother. I couldn’t have left her alone, could I?”
Looking again at her eyes, I decided their youthfulness came from the fact that she’d never been able to live her own life as a woman. She’d put her own life into limbo while caring for others. I felt for her. And I felt, too, for the mother who’d hoped that her daughter would sell their one prized family heirloom, and finally have money and comfort to live just a little. To travel.
“The thing is,” Sebastian said, kindly, “without any documentation or proof, what we dealers call provenance, we simply can’t know for certain. And without that provenance, I’m afraid this poor creature has little real value. We can’t even tell if it’s Russian.” He looked at me. “Nicola? What would you say?”
He passed it to me and I took it, not thinking, forgetting my mind had already been breached once this morning. It wasn’t until I was holding it, light in my hands, that I realized I’d made a mistake.
Instantly I felt a warmth that had nothing to do with the carving itself. I closed my eyes to try to stop the vision, but that only made it worse. I saw a slanting fall of light, with fine dust dancing through it. Two women, one ageing but lovely, with heavy black eyebrows; the other respectfully bent, perhaps kneeling, her young face upturned in uncertainty. “My darling Anna,” the first woman said to the other in elegant Russian, and smiled. “You were never a nobody.”
I opened my eyes quickly, maybe a little too quickly, but to my relief no one seemed to have noticed. “I really don’t know,” I said, giving the small carved bird back to Sebastian.
He looked at it with a commendable blend of admiration and regret.
“The trouble is,” he told our would-be client, “it’s so difficult to date this sort of thing with any certainty. If it is Russian, it was very likely peasant made; there is no maker’s mark or factory stamp to go by, and without any documentation . . . ” He raised one shoulder slightly in a shrug that seemed to speak to the unfairness of it all. “If she had brought you back an icon, now, this ancestor of yours, or some small piece of jewellery—that I might have helped you with.”
“I understand,” said Margaret Ross. Her tone was bleak.
Sebastian turned the little carving over in his hands one final time, and I knew he was searching for some small thing to praise, to let this woman down as gently as he could. “Certainly it’s very old,” was what he ended up with, “and I’m sure it’s had a few adventures.”
Margaret Ross wasn’t sure about that. “It’s been sitting there under that glass for as long as I’ve known it, and likely it sat there a good while before that.”
The twist of her faint smile held sympathy, as though she knew how that felt, to be there on the mantelpiece watching the bright world pass by, and I saw the small sag of defeat in her shoulders as, accepting Sebastian’s return of the carved bird, she started to carefully wrap it back up in its layers of yellowed, creased tissue.
Impulse drove me to ask aloud, “What was her name?”
She looked up. “Sorry?”
“Your ancestor. The one who brought your Firebird back from Russia.”
“Anna. That’s all we know of her, really, we don’t know her surname. It was her daughter married into the Ross family, that’s how the Firebird came down to us.”
Anna. Something tingled warmly up my arm. My darling Anna . . .
“Because maybe,” I suggested, “you could try a bit of research, to establish some connection between her and Empress Catherine.”
From Sebastian’s glance I couldn’t tell if he was grateful or annoyed, but he chimed in with, “Yes, if you were able to find proof of any kind, that would be useful.”
Again that faint twist of a smile that spoke volumes about how much hope she held now of discovering that. She admitted, “My granny tried once, so she said, but no joy. Common people, they don’t make the history books. And on our side of the family, there’s nobody famous.”
I saw the warm smile in my mind. Heard the voice. You were never a nobody.
“Well,” said Sebastian, beginning to stand, “I am sorry we couldn’t be more of a help to you. But if you’ll leave us your address, we’ll keep it in mind, and if ever a client requests something like it . . . ”
I felt like a traitor, as Margaret Ross stood, too, and shook both our hands. The feeling held as we escorted her back out into reception, and Sebastian, with full chivalry and charm, gave her his card and wished her well and said goodbye, and as the lift doors closed he turned to me and, reading the expression in my eyes, said, “Yes, I know.”
Except he didn’t.
There was no way that he could have known. In all the time I’d worked for him I’d never told him anything about what I could do, and even if I’d told him, he’d have rubbished the idea. “Woo-woo stuff,” he would have called it, as he’d done the day our previous receptionist had told us she was visiting a psychic.
“No,” she’d said, “she really sees things. It’s this gift she has—she holds a thing you’ve owned, see, like a necklace, or a ring, and she can tell you things about yourself. It’s called psychometry.” She’d said the term with confident authority.
Sebastian, with a sidelong look, had said, “It’s called a scam. There is no way that anyone can be a psychic. It’s not possible.”
I’d offered him no argument, although I could have told him he was wrong. I could have told him I was psychic, and had been for as long as I remembered. Could have told him that I, too, saw detailed visions, if I concentrated on an object someone else had held. And sometimes, like today, I saw the visions even when I didn’t try, or concentrate, although that happened very, very rarely now.
The flashes of unwanted visions had been more a feature of my childhood, and I had to close my eyes and truly focus now to use my “gift”—my curse, I would have called it. I had chosen not to use it now for years.
Two years, to be exact.
I’d chosen to be normal, and I meant to go on being normal, having the respect of those I worked with, not their nudges or their stares. So there was no good reason why, when I sat down at the computer in my office, I ignored the string of waiting emails and began an image search instead.
I found three portraits, different in their poses and the sitter’s age, but in all three I recognized the woman easily because of her black hair, her heavy arching eyebrows, and her warm brown eyes. The same eyes that had smiled this morning in the brief flash of a vision I had viewed when I had held the wooden Firebird.
There could be no mistaking her: the first Empress Catherine, the widow of Peter the Great.
“Damn,” I whispered. And meant it.

Chapter 1
He sent his mind in search of me that morning.
I was on the Tube, half a minute out of Holland Park and in
that muzzy not-awake-yet state that always bridged the time between
my breakfast cup of coffee and the one that I’d have shortly at my
desk. I nearly didn’t notice when his thoughts touched mine. It was a
rare thing these days; rarer still that I would let him in, but my own
thoughts were drifting and I knew that his were, too. In fact, from
what I saw of where he was—the angle of the ceiling and the dimly
shadowed walls—I guessed that he was likely still in bed, just waking
up himself.
I didn’t need to push him out. Already he was drawing back, apologizing.
Sorry. Not a spoken word, but still I heard the faint regretful
tone of his familiar voice. And then he wasn’t there.
A man sat heavily beside me, squeezed me over on the seat, and
with my senses feeling raw already, even that unwanted contact was
too much. I stood, and braced myself against the bit of wall beside
the nearest door and forced myself to balance till we came to Bond
Street. When the doors slid open I slid safely back into the comfort of
routine, my brisk steps keeping pace with everybody else as we became
a texting, talking, moving mass that flowed together up and out and
through the turnstiles and emerged onto the pavement, where we went
our separate ways, heads down and purposeful.
The morning was a lovely one for August. The oppressive sticky
heat had given way to fresher air that promised warmth but didn’t
threaten, and the sky was a pristine and perfect blue.
I barely saw it. I was thinking of that shadowed room, a greyer light
that spoke of clouds or maybe rain, a hand that had come lazily in view,
to rub his eyes while he was waking. It had been his left hand, and
there’d been no rings on it. At least, I didn’t think I’d seen a ring on it.
I caught my thoughts before they had a chance to wander further
and betray me. Doesn’t matter, I reminded myself firmly, and to make
quite sure I heard myself, I said the words aloud: “It doesn’t matter.”
I could feel the glances of the people walking closest to me, wondering
if I were off my trolley, and I flushed a little, tucking my head
well down as I came round the corner and into South Molton Street, a
little pedestrian haven of upscale shops, cafés, and galleries. Everything
always seemed quieter here, with the mad rush of Bond Street behind
me. I carried on down past the graceful old buildings with beautiful
doors to the one with the freshly white-painted facade where an expensivelooking
brass plaque with fine lettering read: galerie st.-croi x, fine
russian art Efacts and art , third floor .
The naming of the gallery had been one of Sebastian’s little
vanities—in spite of his French surname he was English through and
through, born of a line that likely traced its Hampshire roots back to
the Norman conquest. But Sebastian knew his business, and to art
dealers like him it was essential to create the proper image.
I was part of that, I knew, because I had the proper look, the
proper pedigree, the right credentials, and I always dressed to fit the
part. But when he’d hired me two years ago, he’d also made no secret
of the fact that it had been for my abilities—not only that I held a
master’s degree in Russian Studies and the History of Art, but that I
spoke fluent Russian and besides, my organized nature appealed to his
strong sense of order, and I had, what he’d called then, “potential.”
He’d worked to transform me, to mentor me, teaching me how to
get on the right side of the bid at an auction, and how to finesse our
more difficult clients. I’d come a long way from the rather unworldly
young woman I’d been when he’d taken me on.
He had transformed the gallery building as well. We were on the
third floor, in a space that today was as richly detailed as a penthouse.
Even the lift was mirrored, which this morning didn’t thrill me.
I was frowning as it opened to the elegant reception room where
a flower-seller painted by Natalia Goncharova hung above the desk at
which our previous receptionist had sat. She’d had to leave us unexpectedly,
and I’d been interviewing this past week to fill the vacancy,
while Sebastian and I shared out the extra duties.
It was not an easy thing to hire a person who could suit Sebastian’s
tastes, aesthetically. He wanted something more than simple competence,
or class. He wanted someone who embodied what the Goncharova
painting did—the painting he had hung above that desk, where
it would be the first thing noticed by each customer who stepped into
the gallery.
He’d had offers for it. Several of our clients could afford to pay a
million pounds with ease, but then Sebastian didn’t need the money.
“If I sell the thing,” he’d told me once, “then I’ll have only satisfied
one client. If I leave it where it is, then every one of them will think it
can be theirs one day.”
It didn’t only work with art. It wasn’t a coincidence that many of
our loyal and best customers were women, and they looked upon Sebastian
as they did that Goncharova flower-seller, as a prize that could
be won, with time and effort.
In fact, as I passed by his glass-walled office on the way down to
my own, I saw he had a woman with him now. I would have left them
to their business, but he saw me and beckoned me in, so I pushed the
door open and joined them.
Sebastian’s smile was all professional, with me, and even if it hadn’t
been, I would have been immune to it. He was too rich to be my type.
A gold watch flashed beneath his tailored sleeve as he leaned forward,
looking so immaculate I half-suspected that he had a team of stylists
working on him every morning, from his polished shoes right to the
tousled toffee-coloured hair that had been combed with just the right
amount of carelessness. “Nicola,” he introduced me, “this is Margaret
Ross. Miss Ross, my associate, Nicola Marter.”
Miss Margaret Ross was not what I’d expected, not our usual sort
of client. For one thing she was plainly dressed, but dressed with so
much care I knew she’d taken pains to look her best. And although I
was usually quite good at guessing ages, I had trouble guessing hers.
She had to be at least a decade older than myself, so nearing forty at
the least, but while her clothing and the way she held herself suggested
she might be still older, there was something in her quiet gaze that
seemed distinctly youthful, even innocent.
“Good morning.” She was Scottish. “I’m afraid that I’ve been wasting
Mr. St.-Croix’s time.”
Sebastian, ever charming, shook his head. “No, not at all. That’s
what I’m here for. And even if it can’t be proved, you still have a fascinating
story to tell your grandchildren.”
She cast her eyes down as though she were hiding disappointment.
“Yes.”
“Tell Nicola.” Sebastian’s tone was meant to salve her feelings,
make her feel that what she had to say was fascinating, even if it wasn’t.
He was good, that way. To me, he said, “She brought this carving in
for an appraisal.”
It looked to me, at first, an undistinguished lump of wood that
curved to fit his upraised palm, but when I looked again I saw it was a
small carved bird, wings folded tightly to its sides, a sparrow or a wren.
Sebastian was saying, “It’s been in her family . . . how long?”
Margaret Ross roused herself to his smooth prompting. “Nearly
three hundred years, so I’m told. It was given to one of my ancestors
by Empress Catherine of Russia. Not Catherine the Great,” she said,
showing her knowledge. “The first Catherine.”
Sebastian smiled encouragement. “Peter the Great’s widow, yes. So,
the 1720s, sometime. And it very well might have been.” Holding the
carving as though it were priceless, he studied it.
Margaret Ross told him, “We call it the Firebird. That’s what it’s
always been called, in our family. It sat under glass in my grandmother’s
house, and we children were never allowed to come near it. My
mother said”—there was the tiniest break in her voice, but she covered
it over—“she said, with Andrew gone—Andrew’s my brother, he died
in Afghanistan—with him gone, and me not likely to have any family
myself now, my mother said there was no point in the Firebird sitting
there, going to waste. She said I should sell it, and use all the money to
travel, like I’d always wanted to do.”
“Miss Ross,” said Sebastian, to me, “lost her mother quite recently.”
I understood his manner now, his sympathy. I told her, “I’m so
sorry.”
“That’s all right. She had MS, it wasn’t the easiest life for her. And
she felt guilty for having me there to look after her. But,” she said, trying
to smile, “I looked after my aunties as well, till they passed, and
she was my own mother. I couldn’t have left her alone, could I?”
Looking again at her eyes, I decided their youthfulness came from
the fact that she’d never been able to live her own life as a woman.
She’d put her own life into limbo while caring for others. I felt for her.
And I felt, too, for the mother who’d hoped that her daughter would
sell their one prized family heirloom, and finally have money and comfort
to live just a little. To travel.
“The thing is,” Sebastian said, kindly, “without any documentation
or proof, what we dealers call provenance, we simply can’t know for
certain. And without that provenance, I’m afraid this poor creature
has little real value. We can’t even tell if it’s Russian.” He looked at me.
“Nicola? What would you say?”
He passed it to me and I took it, not thinking, forgetting my mind
had already been breached once this morning. It wasn’t until I was
holding it, light in my hands, that I realized I’d made a mistake.
Instantly I felt a warmth that had nothing to do with the carving
itself. I closed my eyes to try to stop the vision, but that only made it
worse. I saw a slanting fall of light, with fine dust dancing through it.
Two women, one ageing but lovely, with heavy black eyebrows; the
other respectfully bent, perhaps kneeling, her young face upturned in
uncertainty. “My darling Anna,” the first woman said to the other in
elegant Russian, and smiled. “You were never a nobody.”
I opened my eyes quickly, maybe a little too quickly, but to my relief
no one seemed to have noticed. “I really don’t know,” I said, giving
the small carved bird back to Sebastian.
He looked at it with a commendable blend of admiration and
regret.
“The trouble is,” he told our would-be client, “it’s so difficult to
date this sort of thing with any certainty. If it is Russian, it was very
likely peasant made; there is no maker’s mark or factory stamp to
go by, and without any documentation . . .” He raised one shoulder
slightly in a shrug that seemed to speak to the unfairness of it all. “If
she had brought you back an icon, now, this ancestor of yours, or
some small piece of jewellery—that I might have helped you with.”
“I understand,” said Margaret Ross. Her tone was bleak.
Sebastian turned the little carving over in his hands one final time,
and I knew he was searching for some small thing to praise, to let this
woman down as gently as he could. “Certainly it’s very old,” was what
he ended up with, “and I’m sure it’s had a few adventures.”
Margaret Ross wasn’t sure about that. “It’s been sitting there under
that glass for as long as I’ve known it, and likely it sat there a good
while before that.”
The twist of her faint smile held sympathy, as though she knew
how that felt, to be there on the mantelpiece watching the bright
world pass by, and I saw the small sag of defeat in her shoulders as,
accepting Sebastian’s return of the carved bird, she started to carefully
wrap it back up in its layers of yellowed, creased tissue.
Impulse drove me to ask aloud, “What was her name?”
She looked up. “Sorry?”
“Your ancestor. The one who brought your Firebird back from
Russia.”
“Anna. That’s all we know of her, really, we don’t know her surname.
It was her daughter married into the Ross family, that’s how the
Firebird came down to us.”
Anna. Something tingled warmly up my arm. My darling Anna . . .
“Because maybe,” I suggested, “you could try a bit of research, to
establish some connection between her and Empress Catherine.”
From Sebastian’s glance I couldn’t tell if he was grateful or annoyed,
but he chimed in with, “Yes, if you were able to find proof of any kind,
that would be useful.”
Again that faint twist of a smile that spoke volumes about how
much hope she held now of discovering that. She admitted, “My
granny tried once, so she said, but no joy. Common people, they don’t
make the history books. And on our side of the family, there’s nobody
famous.”
I saw the warm smile in my mind. Heard the voice. You were never
a nobody.
“Well,” said Sebastian, beginning to stand, “I am sorry we couldn’t
be more of a help to you. But if you’ll leave us your address, we’ll keep
it in mind, and if ever a client requests something like it . . .”
I felt like a traitor, as Margaret Ross stood, too, and shook both our
hands. The feeling held as we escorted her back out into reception, and
Sebastian, with full chivalry and charm, gave her his card and wished
her well and said goodbye, and as the lift doors closed he turned to me
and, reading the expression in my eyes, said, “Yes, I know.”
Except he didn’t.
There was no way that he could have known. In all the time I’d
worked for him I’d never told him anything about what I could do,
and even if I’d told him, he’d have rubbished the idea. “Woo-woo
stuff,” he would have called it, as he’d done the day our previous receptionist
had told us she was visiting a psychic.
“No,” she’d said, “she really sees things. It’s this gift she has—she
holds a thing you’ve owned, see, like a necklace, or a ring, and she can
tell you things about yourself. It’s called psychometry.” She’d said the
term with confident authority.
Sebastian, with a sidelong look, had said, “It’s called a scam. There
is no way that anyone can be a psychic. It’s not possible.”
I’d offered him no argument, although I could have told him he
was wrong. I could have told him I was psychic, and had been for as
long as I remembered. Could have told him that I, too, saw detailed
visions, if I concentrated on an object someone else had held. And
sometimes, like today, I saw the visions even when I didn’t try, or concentrate,
although that happened very, very rarely now.
The flashes of unwanted visions had been more a feature of my
childhood, and I had to close my eyes and truly focus now to use my
“gift”—my curse, I would have called it. I had chosen not to use it
now for years.
Two years, to be exact.
I’d chosen to be normal, and I meant to go on being normal, having
the respect of those I worked with, not their nudges or their stares.
So there was no good reason why, when I sat down at the computer in
my office, I ignored the string of waiting emails and began an image
search instead.
I found three portraits, different in their poses and the sitter’s age,
but in all three I recognized the woman easily because of her black
hair, her heavy arching eyebrows, and her warm brown eyes. The same
eyes that had smiled this morning in the brief flash of a vision I had
viewed when I had held the wooden Firebird.
There could be no mistaking her: the first Empress Catherine, the
widow of Peter the Great.
“Damn,” I whispered. And meant it.





