Standing in the main hall is a beautiful woman. Her hair is pulled back tightly. Black beads rope around her neck, and her dress is heavy and velvet, blue and red. In her arms, a white ermine is resting languidly. She strokes its back. She opens her mouth.

 

“Help me.” Gregory’s voice is thin, afraid. “Please help. I don’t understand. Please—”

 

The fire starts from within her body, reaching up and out of her like it has always been inside. She—Gregory—and the ermine, it all goes up like a tissue set ablaze. You can hear things falling, crashing to the ground.

 

You think about the print upstairs. Ben. If that’s him, if the skeleton has him the way the ermine woman had Gregory, could it be all of him that is left? His body is gone, his body is rotting, but his voice. His mind. It is up there. You can’t let the print burn.

 

The room is hot. It is hard to breathe. You cough and see the emergency exit out of the corner of your eye.

 

 

If you run to rescue the de Wit and the print and possibly the man you loved whom you were so certain was dead, the grief of which nearly drove you to madness, turn to page 31.

If you run out of the museum, turn to page 32.