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Tristan grimaced at me.
“He's been watching you for a very long time.” Haversham pulled out several more printouts and handed them to Tristan. “And making sure, somewhere along the way, that he left a record of it. Your painting isn't the first breadcrumb he's left for you.”
I peered over at the printouts. They were old paintings, all of them with Fabian in them, at least one a century up until the 1800s, when photography was invented.
“How is he still alive?” I whispered.
Haversham grinned. “There are many ways to prolong life, Ms. Takeda. The question isn't how this man survived so long, but why.”
Tristan stood up. “I need to tell the Conclave about this.”
“But I haven't even got to the best part.” Haversham handed Tristan one last piece of paper. “The name he's using now is Alex Turner. That's his address.”
Tristan took it, read the address, and looked up at Haversham. “He's in DC?”
Haversham nodded. “And before you leave, I've also got more on Osric.” He handed Tristan a list. “Among the relics he's purchased within the last eighteen months are six items from Stylos.”
I scanned the list. Ritual vessel, fragment. Ceremonial binding cord, silk and iron thread. Monastic ledger, partial, water-damaged. Silver chalice, good condition. Byzantine cross, minor damage. Rare iron manacles engraved with occult symbols, good condition.
Tristan's hand found mine as he looked at me. “That's enough confirmation for me. Osric is trying to recreate the ritual.”
Chapter Seventeen
The address Haversham gave us sat on a quiet street in Kalorama, the kind of block where the trees had grown old enough to arch over the road and touch each other, forming a tunnel of green to filter the sunlight. The townhouse looked just like its neighbors, it didn't loom or exude dread. Frankly, it failed in its job as a villain's lair. But maybe Fabian wasn't a villain. I didn't know what he was yet.
“Alex Turner.” Tristan looked up at the townhouse.
“Does it sound familiar?” I headed up the steps with him.
“No, but this is only his most recent identity.”
Recessed between two extensions of the house, the front door sat in a nook between two windows. After finding the door locked, Tristan tried the window in the bump-out to the right. It window was unlocked, which I thought was a little suspicious, but Tristan climbed inside anyway. He came around and opened the front door for me.
A tiled foyer opened on two immaculate front rooms. After glancing in those, we headed to the back of the townhouse. Signs of life appeared in the laundry and kitchen. So, we headed back to the front and up the stairs.
There were more empty rooms up there with nothing of note. I assumed we'd clear the house and then go through everything. But we didn't have to.
Th last room was a contrast to the rest of the house, smacking us with color, hundreds of faces, and insanity.. Photographs covered the walls—hundreds of them, pinned edge to edge, some yellowed and brittle with age and others glossy and new. Between them hung small oil paintings in tarnished frames, watercolors gone soft at their corners, and old newspaper clippings. Handwritten notes flapped in the disturbed air, older scraps of paper stuck on with pins and yellow post its.
I turned in a slow circle. “People actually do this?”
Tristan stood before a photograph of him and a woman in Victorian clothes. She wore a high-collared dress, her dark hair pinned into a pile of curls. Her hand rested on Tristan's arm. They both looked stern, no smiles, but it was normal for the era. Victorians preferred to look dignified, and when you had to sit still for several seconds to take a photo, it was easier to relax your face. Still, it was an accurate representation of Tristan.
“Eleanor.” Tristan's fingers hovered an inch from the photograph without touching it, as if touching it might wake something. “This was in Boston. I posed for this because she wanted a photo of us so badly. She left me six months later.”
Beneath the photograph, on a scrap of paper, was the a date, location, and a paragraph describing Eleanor's fate after leaving Tristan. Her fiancé had discovered her correspondence with another man and ended the engagement. Eleanor entered a sanatorium eight months later and never left. It read like a case file. This was not like Tristan's mementos. It was more like a crime board meets a stalker's shrine.
I moved down the wall and through the decades. A soldier's photograph from what must have been the First World War was pinned beside a woman standing outside a factory gate in the 1940s. A newspaper clipping of an engagement announcement in 1962 was pinned with a note about its dissolution eight months later. Paintings or pictures of Tristan nested among the others. The earlier photographs, with the exception of the photo of Eleanor, were similar to those I'd found online—with Tristan in the background, not posing. Further along, the photos of Tristan increased and those of Heartbreak's victims decreased. It looked like a collection you might receive from a private investigator. Candid shots of Tristan showed him walking down the street, eating in a cafe, and sitting in the park.
“This guy must have rejoiced when digital cameras were invented.” I glanced at a printer, over on the desk near the window.
The room curved around the corner of the master bath, into a nook. We followed the wall into the nook and reached the end of the collage, taking us into the present.
A photograph of the Lunder Center caught my eye. I was walking in, a coffee cup in one hand, my museum badge clipped to my collar. Beside it hung another photo of me, taken outside my apartment building, my head turned slightly as if something down the street had caught my attention half a second before the shutter clicked. In the next photo, Tristan and me were walking into his house. It was taken through the iron bars of his gate.
“Tristan.” I gaped at the images.
He came around the corner and stopped short. After a sweeping glance, he stepped up to the wall and tapped the sticky note stuck on the photo of me at the Lunder Center. “Is this date correct?”
