Chapter 4

The air in the museum had cooled, the heavy humidity of the evening gathering dissipating into a crisp, electric chill that clung to my skin. The grand gala was over, the chatter of two hundred elite guests fading into the distance as the last of the stragglers drifted toward the exit, their heels clicking against the polished marble floors like a retreating tide. I stood near the edge of the main atrium, adjusting the strap of my emerald silk dress, watching the way the last of the fairy lights from the chandelier caught the dust motes dancing in the dark. Most of the crowd had dispersed, leaving the vast, cavernous space of the Science Museum to us alone, a private kingdom of glass, steel, and silence. He was waiting for me, as he always did, in the shadowed alcove beneath the towering replica of the Earth’s core, a kinetic sculpture that spun slowly, silently, in the center of the room. The museum was set up for a specific exhibit tonight—interactive astronomy and geology—and the pathway to the planetarium was lined with glowing touchscreens and suspended models of the solar system. But we weren’t here for the exhibits. We were here