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She drew in a long breath of her own, praying some of his calm would come with it. “I’m sorry, Oncle. I know...I know I shouldn’t have done what I did. But that doesn’t mean I’ve ruined everything.”

Does it? As a child, she would have tacked on the question, her brows drawn and begging for reassurance. But she couldn’t be that child anymore. She had to prove, to all of them, that she could handle this.

Oncle Georges considered for a moment and then gave her a small smile. “If mistakes couldn’t be turned into opportunities, I’d have been dead decades ago. Just...tread carefully from now on. Please.”

Her shoulders relaxed, and she nodded. She had been—that’s why she hadn’t picked the lock again and claimed that half-dozen books still marked with her encoded instructions, the ones that gave her nightmares every night.

The ones she’d meant to get into the hands of her students, so that they could make their observations, add their own markings, and send them back to her.

None had yet, of course, even of the ones she’d managed to deliver.

The only things she had to report thus far were things Georges had seen for himself—which made her wonder if all the work she was doing would ever even matter.

But he must still believe she could help.

Fifteen minutes later, as he gathered up his things and leaned down to give her cheeks the obligatory kisses, he whispered, “Your new code is in the book I left on the table. Learn it—burn it. I’ll find you when next I’m in Paris. Probably three weeks or a month.”

She wanted to ask him where else he was going. She didn’t. She merely hugged him back, kissed his cheek, and gave him a doting-niece smile. Then she picked up the book as if it were hers, added her own coin to the ones Georges had tossed to the table, and left.

For the sake of her own blighted curiosity, she went next to the Sorbonne, where she verified that few people were about and most buildings still locked.

No doubt if she needed the comfort, she could have gotten into the one with the offices—she could have let herself into her mother’s familiar room with her copy of that key, settled into the chair she’d spent so many happy hours in, curled up with a book while Maman graded essays.

She could have breathed in the scent of old books and new paper and fresh ink and lilac that equaled her mother in her heart.

But it only would have hurt. Reminded her that Maman wasn’t here. That, for the first time in her life, she was alone. Completely, mockingly alone.

No. She instead tried every grocer between the university and her flat until she found ones with food enough to exchange for her money, and then she returned to Boulevard Arago.

The little library stood dark and locked, tempting her to try forcing her way in again like the Germans had done. All the more tempting, really, because of her uncle’s insistence of caution.

Because she knew the danger wasn’t just in getting caught breaking in. The danger was in not getting in. In leaving those books in there. No matter how she told herself that they couldn’t link them to her, that the markings would mean nothing to them, their presence still haunted her.

She should have resisted the urge to use them as her means of sending codes with her students. She should have used her own books, or theirs. That’s what she got for putting poetic justice above practicality.

The sound of a German engine turning onto the boulevard convinced her to jog up the steps to her own building. Through the door, up two more flights of stairs, and to the flat that had been home longer than any other place in the world.

Maman was still everywhere here too, offering the comfort she’d denied herself at the university.

Corinne put the groceries away, trying not to focus on the increasingly barren shelves.

It would only get worse. She knew that. Right now, it was manageable—Paris had, after all, been rationing wine and meat and sugar for a year already.

..supposedly. Mostly, they’d ignored it. But now?

A problem she would address another day.

For now, she double-checked the lock on the door and opened up the book Oncle Georges had left for her.

Proust. She’d read Swann’s Way three times already, but still the words tried to pull her in, keep her from her task.

She had to make herself flip page after page, searching not for the author’s words, but for what her uncle meant her to learn.

In some places, he’d written in the margins. In others, words were underlined, sometimes in black, sometimes in red. She wrote it all down, word by word, filling them into the structure of code he’d already made her memorize.

The instructions were simple in theory. Complicated in execution.

Need more eyes in the Pas-de-Calais region.

Activate pigeons there. There were a few other similar instructions, making her mind’s eye fly over the map she’d pull out later, the one she hadn’t dared to actually write on.

Even so, it didn’t require circles or pins for her to remember where each student had gone.

To know who was in the regions her uncle had noted, who would be their eyes.

Their winged messengers. She’d have to send a postcard with that phrase she’d taught them all.

Have you read any good books lately? Innocuous to any censoring German eyes.

But her students would know it meant to report on any German activity they’d observed, to write the information in their own code, penciled into the margins of the books she’d sent them with.

They’d send those books back to her, and she’d pass the intelligence along to Georges.

Footsteps, heavy and rhythmic, brought her head up, and her pulse with it. None of her upstairs or next-door neighbors had returned to Paris yet. There shouldn’t be any footsteps so near her door. Not welcome ones, anyway.

Without a moment’s hesitation, she shoved her papers into the book and hurried into the small kitchen, shoving the whole lot, her pencil included, into the icebox.

Seconds later, a knock landed on her door.

She tried to remember all her uncle had taught her. Tried to project an air of calm and coolness, to borrow his ease, to be the detached professional she was supposed to be. Her hands shook.

Fine then. Forget professional. She would simply be a child determined to steal a chocolate without getting caught. Pretend it was a relative at the door.

“Coming,” she called, as if it were only a neighbor in the hallway. And it could be—perhaps someone had just returned and wanted to see if she was all right.

She knew better. Still, she jolted a bit when she pulled open the door and reality assaulted her.

She would never, never get used to Nazi uniforms in her city, on her streets, in her hallway. And the officer they called the professor shouldn’t expect anything else.

Besides, he looked even more surprised to see her than she was to see him.

His brows crashed down, and he glanced at a paper in his hand.

“Pardon me,” he said, his French as flowing and perfectly accented as it had been three weeks ago.

Deceptive, that. Treacherous. His words said I am a friend , but it couldn’t be more a lie.

“I am looking for Madame Yvonne Bastien. Or more particularly, I am looking for books checked out in her name from the library next door.”

She clutched the door, keeping herself in the space to make it clear he was welcome no farther. “My mother. She is not here, though, I’m afraid.”

The professor looked up again, his gaze softening. He was probably trying to sort out if she was young enough to need to live with her mother. To determine how forcefully he should speak. “When will she be home?”

Her chin came up. Part of her wanted to lie, wanted to make him think Maman would be home any minute—and so not realize she lived here alone.

But he was next door too much. He would know who came and went.

He would catch her in that lie within days, if not the moment she spoke it.

“Hard to say, given that she’s not in Paris. ”

He sighed and lowered the paper to his side. “Forgive me, then. But you must let me in.”

“I most certainly must not.”

He looked, as he held up his hands, palms out, like a nice man, with gold-wired spectacles and boring sandy hair.

A respectable one. A trustworthy one, if one were stupid enough to ignore his uniform.

And of all the things Corinne had been accused of being over the years, stupid wasn’t one of them.

“I am only after the books checked out from the library, mademoiselle . Return those, and I promise you I will leave and never disturb you again.”

For the space of several heartbeats, she didn’t move.

How could she? How could she just let a Nazi into her home, even one whose face was all gentleness and respect?

It was a show, nothing more. Though she wasn’t ignorant enough to assume all Nazis were the same, the fact remained that this one had come to Paris specifically to rob the city of its literary heritage.

By her definition, that made him more monster than man.

Which meant that if she didn’t let him in, he’d just call his too-eager-for-violence henchman. Caution, mon chouchou, she could hear Oncle Georges saying in her head.

She drew in a long breath, let it slowly out. And then swung open the door. “Fine then, come in. But make it quick.”

He wouldn’t, though. She knew he wouldn’t.

Because the books he wanted weren’t here.