table, then wraps his arms around me. Without even thinking about it, I return the hug but cast my gaze back to Leila and the fountain she’s staring at. I’d missed it while I was busy staring only at her.
Oh my God.
“Alexandre, holy crap. The fountain.” I pull myself out of the hug and bend over the painting again. “The last letter. The one from Dumas to Leila, from the Baudelaire book. Show it to me.”
“Okaaaaay. But why?” He pulls out his phone from his back pocket and begins scrolling.
“Hurry up. Please.”
He scrolls faster, clicks, and then hands the phone to me.
I read out loud from the last note Dumas wrote to Leila, “Happiness is like the enchanted palaces we read of in our childhood, where fierce, fiery dragons defend the entrance and approach. That’s from Monte Cristo, right?”
Alexandre nods.
“The dragon . . . defends . . . the entrance,” I say slowly. “He guards it from anyone who might try and trespass.” I get goosebumps as I say the words; I finally see the pieces clicking into place. “Look closer.” I point to the fountain. “That’s the fountain from the garden. That little dragon is guarding Dumas’s happiness. Or, I dunno, maybe Leila’s. It doesn’t matter, because that fountain must be where the Leila cache is hidden.”
“This is the Leila cache. Cherchez la femme, trouvez le trésor. We looked for the woman and found the treasure: the painting.”
“I swear, I know your great-grandfather better than you. For Dumas, the treasure wasn’t the Delacroix; the treasure was Leila. Her story. Whatever it is she gave him.” I walk toward the door and beckon Alexandre to follow.
“Where are we going?”
“The garden. To find the dragon that’s guarding Dumas’s happiness.”
The Bassin du Dragon juts out from the stone wall below the Chateau in a sunken garden. My heart thumps in my ears as we take the steps two at a time, skidding across the gravel to the basin.
Facing the fountain, actually looking at it this time, I see there are three rectangular sides. Two have carved medallions of lions’ heads that once must have spewed water into the small basins directly underneath. But the center panel, the one I’m looking at, sports a sculpted faun’s face. As with the lions, a small semicircular basin sits right below the faun, ready to catch any water. But what we’re here for crouches below the faun, our little dragon on its own pedestal that would’ve emptied into the large basin at the foot of the fountain. Ferocious, with wings back, teeth bared, body at the ready, guarding this place from any who may try and trespass.
Alexandre steps right into the dry basin and bends down by the dragon, feeling around the stone. Unlike the two sides, this front piece is decorated with long, fernlike leaves carved behind the dragon and stalks that look like they could be . . .
“Birds of paradise.” My mom’s favorite flower. Alexandre is occupied with his task, so I say it louder. “Birds of paradise.”
Alexandre shifts to look at me. “So . . .”
“This has to be the place that Dumas talks about in his deathbed letter to Leila—his paradise on earth. Where his love is evergreen and Paradise eternally in bloom. The birds of paradise flowers are sculpted, always in bloom.”
There’s this look of delightful disbelief in Alexandre’s eyes, and the space between us feels full of possibilities. For a second, it seems like he might kiss me. But I tense, and my body sways back slightly.
“You’re amazing,” Alexandre says. “This is it. I can feel it. The dragon, the birds of paradise, even that.” He points to the carved head above the medallion. “I think it’s Pan. Dumas was a huge mythology buff—there are references to myths throughout Monte Cristo.”
“Pan is the god of nature, right? The guy with the flute, surrounded by nymphs?”
“Exactly. Nymphs aren’t goddesses. They’re divine spirits on earth—young, beautiful maids who never aged.”
“Leila,” I whisper. “The beautiful spirit.”
The strange juxtaposition of all these elements isn’t lost on me. The dragon guarding the