Well, they did do that here in France. But still.

“Ah, hi,” he said, looking at her. “Yo. You’ve, um, got lipstick on.”

“So do you now.” She wiped at his cheeks.

“You didn’t before,” he said.

“Wow. An observant male-type person. Must make an entry in my blog.”

“You have a blog?”

“No.”

He laughed. But he was still unsettled. She looked good. Her hair was brushed out today, not tied back. She wore chunky silver earrings, and—he belatedly realized—she had some kind of perfume on. He decided not to comment on that.

“Montreal men,” he said instead. “We’re the observant ones. Finest kind.”

“So you say. Where’s the food, dude? I asked you…”

Ned took a breath.

“I, ah, thought we’d do things a bit differently. I haven’t been in town much. Not at all, really. Thought we’d see this studio since we’re here, then cruise Aix? I’ll get you a caffeine fix, then we can eat Chinese or a pizza or something?”

Kate Wenger stepped back a bit. A car horn honked, not at them.

“Ned, I really wanted to show you this place. It is seriously cool. And it may tie in to the stuff we’ve been finding.”

He cleared his throat. “Well, that’s the thing. You’re right, it may tie in. And tonight’s not a real good night, if it does.”

“Beltaine?” She smiled a little. She had some kind of eye makeup on, too, he realized. “Uh-huh. Montreal men, careful, cautious guys…little bit afraid?”

“Kate, there’s a couple things I’ve got to fill you in on. And, yes, maybe I’m being a bit careful. I did tell you what happened by the mountain, remember?”

“Well, obviously if you start getting sick or whatever, we turn back. You think I’m an idiot or something?”

“No, but I think you’re a little overfocused on doing this today.” There. He’d said it.

She crossed her arms, looking up at him. “You really are scared.”

Stung, he said, “Kate, I’m the one who went into that tunnel. I’m not exactly afraid of doing stuff.”

Her expression changed. “I know you aren’t.” She shook her head. “But look, Ned, it’s twenty after five. It only gets dark after eight. It’s a fifteen, twenty-minute walk and we’ll go right now, forget the studio. I’d like to show you Entremont, even see if anything feels funny to you or anything? Then we’ll leave. I prefer Chinese to pizza, and I know where to get good hot-and-sour soup. So, come on?”

She took his hand and tugged.

He found himself falling into step. Her fingers were cool. It took a second or two—he hadn’t done a whole lot of hand-in-hand walking with girls—for them to get their fingers sorted out. He felt briefly as if he had a few too many digits, then they did interlace and it was…pretty good, actually.

He seemed to be going north with her, after all. He caught another hint of that perfume. He wondered if they’d be alone at this place.

“As it happens,” she said cheerfully, “I am more woman than you deserve. I still have two apples and half a baguette in my pack.”

“Ew,” Ned said. “For how many days?”

With dignity, she said, “Montreal men may do that sort of thing but New York women don’t. Packed this morning.”

They walked beside the road into the wind. It was rush hour, cars going by, a lot of students getting on and off buses, classes over for the day. Ned saw another sign pointing towards Entremont. Just past it the road became a minor highway as they left the city limits.

“So, what else happened?” Kate asked. “What’d you need to tell me?”

Her fingers were still in his. The guys, were they aware of this, would be saying things about how he had it made, make-out wise, heading off with a chick who had started the hand-holding and had even met him with a tiptoe kiss. He wouldn’t have gotten far pointing out that sometimes even guys greeted each other with kisses on the cheek in France.

There was something about Kate today. Or maybe—new thought—maybe this was what she was usually like and the tour-guide geek stuff had been her manner with a stranger?

He didn’t think so. Ned shrugged, inwardly. Go with it, he told himself. She was right about one thing: Beltaine wouldn’t actually begin until dark, hours away. They’d be back in Aix.

“You aren’t talking to me,” she said.

He sighed. Decided to go halfway, but keep his aunt to himself—too many family things entangled in that. He said, “After you left the café, day before yesterday, the guy from the cloister showed up.”

He felt her react. The thing about holding hands: you could tell right away.

“You saw him outside?”

“No. He’d been in there, two tables over. Behind a newspaper.”

“Oh, Jesus Christ,” she said.

Ned, in his current mood, found that funny. “Nah. I’m beginning to think this goes back way before him.”

“Don’t be cute, Ned. What happened? How did you find him?”

The hard part. Explaining this. “He let his…screen down, whatever, his guard, when you and I walked out. And the sense of him I had in the cloister when he was on the roof kicked in. I knew he was inside.”

“And you went back?”

“Yeah.”

She walked a few steps in silence. “I didn’t mean it, you know, before…when I said you were scared.”

That felt good, but it would be uncool to show it. He said, “Well, I’m obviously not careful. I’m being led into the countryside by some hot New York woman I hardly know.”

“Hot? Ned Marriner! You coming on to me, babe?”

Again! There was no way she’d have said that before. He looked over at her. She was grinning, and then she winked at him.

“Ack!” Ned cried in horror. “No winking! Melanie winks all the time, I can’t stand it.”

“I refuse,” said Kate Wenger, “to let my behaviour be dictated by the habits of someone named Melanie. I will wink if I wish to wink. Deal with it.” She was smiling.

Then she pointed ahead. Ned saw a brown sign with the symbol for a tourist site and “Oppidum d’Entremont” on it. They had arrived.

It was at a branching of highways. A lot of traffic, still. They waited for a break and ran across. No sidewalk here, just grass by the highway. They walked a little farther north.

“Right here. Up the hill,” said Kate. “It’s pretty steep. Can you handle it?”

Ned didn’t actually feel like joking.

They went up a dusty gravel slope. He couldn’t see anything at first, then they were high enough above the highway—they always built high in those days, he knew—and he saw a small parking lot and a metal gate. The gate was open, the lot was empty.

“I’ve never seen anyone here,” Kate said. “I’ve been twice. I don’t even think the guard sticks around, probably just comes to lock up at closing.” Closing, Ned saw on the gate, was at six-thirty. They would be out of here hours before dark.

Kate led him through, still holding hands, along a wide path between olive and almond trees. “That’s what’s left of the outer wall,” she said. She pointed. “This was a city here, not just a fort.”

The wall was on their right, three metres high in places, rough stones still in place. A little ahead of them it had crumbled a lot more; stones lay where they’d fallen or been dislodged. The Romans had brought catapults all the way up here, Ned remembered. It couldn’t have been easy to do that.

It was very quiet now, two thousand years after. He heard birdsong. The wind was still blowing. The light was really clear, what his father had been talking about.

A little self-consciously, he stopped walking, unlaced his fingers from Kate’s, and closed his eyes. Found nothing, though, no sense of any presence, and he didn’t feel queasy or unwell or anything like that.

She was staring at him when he opened his eyes. He shook his head.

“Told you,” Kate said. “It’s an archaeological dig, a tourist site, that’s all.”

“So,” said Ned, “was the cathedral.”

She bit her lip. First time today she’d reminded him of the girl he’d met three days ago. They walked on. There were almond petals scattered on the ground, making it seem like snow had fallen. The gravel path reached the end of the high wall and turned south to an opening and Ned looked through and saw the long, wide, levelled ruins of Entremont.