Autumn break trundled on. After the Samhain Formal, the entire student body was some combination of 1) hungover, 2) disgruntled about their failed business deals, 3) lazily riding on their successful business deals, or 4) stressed to the point of paralysis about future business deals. The campus was pleasantly subdued without the normal rush of classes.

Of course, some nerds were still hard at work. For example, today, a mostly-recovered Antoinette was in a meeting with one of the other magi-botany class groups to discuss their project.

Sooooo, I decided to misbehave a little bit and use her makeup.

Look, I had to disguise myself somehow. The backstory goons and their cohorts clearly knew my plain face, since I didn’t wear makeup on the daily and I’d had little more than some eyeliner and shadow during the Samhain Formal.

Rémi knocked on my door halfway through, trying with all his might to initiate a game event, but I turned him down. He grinned at me, totally recognising that he’d just walked into the equivalent of a little girl trying on mommy’s makeup. At least Marie let me encourage him to drop the date, and he left.

When I was done, I looked more 2010’s Taylor Momsen than anything else. It made my reflection alienating and unfamiliar all over again, so it was perfect, even if it’d shock the people of the nearby hamlet. I tied up my black hair and tucked it under a pageboy cap I'd stolen from Lou's room yesterday when planning this trip, and the look was complete.

Once I arrived at the hamlet near La Belle Lavande, I had no idea where to start. It wasn’t like anyone had quest marker exclamation points floating above their heads.

But in games, you learned things by talking and looking around until every stone was turned, right?

I popped into boutiques and cafes, asking the workers and anyone who looked at me too long if they knew anything about the Gagnon arson case. I flipped through the newspapers in roadside stands, sure that there’d be a conveniently concise and informational paragraph. Nothing.

Hey, Marie, want to chime in with a dialogue box? Maybe a nice jpg full of clues? No? 

One place left. I walked into the police station exuding all the confidence I could.

The station–slick, dark, so full of glass panels and tables that I thought I’d shatter the place if I stomped too hard–was deserted except for a young secretary at the front desk. He was so comically weedy and nerdy that I could practically see the spirals drawn on his oversized glasses and the messy curlicues sprouting from his sandy brown hair. He tossed down the stack of loose files he was holding, caught the few that made a leap for the floor, and said, “H-hello? What brings you here today?”

“Hiya. I need a little help with something.”

He squinted at my face. I may have misjudged how much the raccoon-eye makeup would help me. “O-of course. I can call a guard–”

“No, that’s okay. You can help! I want information on the Gagnon family arson case.” I pointedly looked at his stack of files. “Any and all information.”

He pushed up his glasses…and pushed the stack so it was tucked under the overhang of the desk, away from my prying eyes. “Anything you need, you can find in the newspapers. We–we have a free selection right outside.”

“I need things you can’t find in the newspapers.” I batted my eyelashes, summoning Marie’s sweet, persuasive naivete, tilting my tone so if it was written out, it'd be bracketed by uwu’s and ~’s. “I wish I could tell you why, but it’s really private and important to me, and I…I…I’ll be so indebted to you.”

Clearly this guy had more integrity than I guessed, because he straightened up his bony shoulders and said, “I’m very sorry. Further details on the case are classified.”

“But I said I'd be indebted to you! Don't you know what that means?”

“Miss, you can look in the newspapers.”

Argh, give me dialogue options!!!

The secretary said, voice shaky around his newfound authority, “Is there anything else I can help you with?”

I scowled. “I guess not.”

“Have a good day.” He turned back to his files, kinda shuffling and flicking through them, probably so he wouldn’t have to look me in my sparkly protagonist eyes.

I dragged myself outside. All dead ends. What was I supposed to do? Wait for another informational booklet to land in Étienne’s lap? Go to another opera and hope the emcee’s trying out for a true crime gig?

Knock knock, Marie. Got a helpful memory for me?

“Chloé?”

I looked up to see Antoinette, frowning at me quizzically from a shop away.

“What on earth is on your face?”

“It’s, um, it’s a long story.”

Her gaze snapped to the station sign above my head. She strode up to me, heels clicking on the cobblestones, and said once we were side by side, “You weren’t telling them anything about the dance, were you?”

“No, of course not.”

“Well, what happened, then? You looked like they didn't help you. Dressed like that, it's no wonder.”

“It's a disguise.”

“Who would be looking for you?”

“The answer to that is why I'm here…”

We hadn't spoken much since the dance. I gave her privacy in our dorm to recover, electing to hang out with the guys or explore the campus, but whenever we did speak, she was apparently determined to act normal. I guess if your ‘normal’ was cranky, did it really matter if you were mad at someone for a new reason?

“You remember the Gagnons?”

“Yes, the missing family. Why?”

“I really want to learn more about them. There's gotta be some kind of police–I mean, guard report I can read, something that the newspapers can't reveal.”

She tilted her head, putting a hand on her hip. Then something occurred to her, her red eyebrows shooting up behind her bangs, and she said, “Oh, you think you're the missing daughter, don't you?”

Hearing that, I should have been alarmed. But all I felt was relief. “A little bit?”

“I was wondering when you’d figure it out.” Antoinette bit her lip, seemingly unaware of how much my relief nearly bowled me over. “Were you telling the guard that when they turned you away?”

I could kiss her feet with how easily she took the news. No wonder–it’d take the target off her back if there was a chance the poisoning wasn’t about her at all, which she seemed desperate to do. Besides, she just said I thought I was the missing daughter, not that I was.

“No way, they’d think I was crazy if I said I was a Gagnon!”

Antoinette’s blue eyes narrowed in on the weedy little secretary through the window, now trying to fit a handful of pencils into a cup in one go.

“Come with me.”

I scurried after her. The boy at the desk looked alarmed again at the intrusion, but this time, Antoinette’s presence kept him terrified.

She swept directly up to him, no slowing or weaving like I’d done, and set her hands firmly on the raised part of the desk that acted as a partition (and file-hider). “Salut. I am Antoinette Delphine, daughter of Georges Delphine, heiress to the Aconitum Corporation. A corporation who, you may know, if they respect you enough to give you any information at all, does what for the city guard?”

He blurted the answer, like a prof had called on him in class, “Th-they fund our buildings.”

Talk about a conflict of interest!

“Precisely. That chair you’re sitting on?” She extended a sharp red nail to indicate the red satin and blonde wood peeking over his narrow shoulders. “Taken right from my very own nook in my estate library. I could take it back, if I so pleased, along with anything else that belongs to the Delphines in this pathetic little office. And what is your name?”

“I–...Jean-Paul, miss.”

“Fabulous. Now that we know each other, Jean-Paul, I can trust you to listen to a concern I have, non?”

“O-of course, m-m-miss.”

“This friend of mine,” and here she gestured to me, and Jean-Paul stared at me like he hadn’t even realized I was there beyond the corona that was Antoinette (who could blame him?), “asked you for a summary of the Gagnon case, and you denied her. Is that so?”

“It’s, um, it’s confidential–”

“Oh, of course it is. I fully intend to keep this a secret between the three of us. But if you say no, well, I’m afraid I won’t be able to keep a secret about the guard secretary’s horrible rudeness to the heiress.”

She was speaking at top speed. His eyes darted all over her face like he couldn’t catch half her words.

So when she hit him with a pointed, icy, “Yes?” he nodded out of what seemed like pure instinct.

“Merci,” she cooed. “We’ll find a private corner to read and return all files posthaste.”

“Well, um, actually…the files are locked up. I don’t have access.”

She frowned. “Excuse me?”

“These are little things.” He slid aside that damn pile of files for her to see. “Like carriage parking violations and taxes and stuff…”

I groaned. “Then why didn’t you say that?”

“Because I…um…” Jean-Paul blushed fantastically. “Because I kind of transcribed the files about the Gagnon case, so…I know…”

I lit up. Antoinette said coyly, “Oh, your thoughts on the case–every single one of them, I must insist–would be grand.”

In his halting way, constantly checking the door, Jean-Paul first gave us a refresher on the tale: out of nowhere, the Gagnon estate in the nearby city of Altolia burned to the ground. The family–Claude Gagnon, Helene Gagnon, and Marie Gagnon (shudder!) were gone. Poof. Nothing was stolen as far as investigators could tell, and the scene was too damaged to assess if there was forced entry or any blood, but they could suss out that the fire was set on purpose, oil dumped all over the floor of the entrance hall and around the support beams, so the house would collapse.

“Could you tell us more about the Gagnons?” I asked.

“Um…Helene Gagnon was pretty well-known for her business. They bound books of all kinds and even published some stuff that the big companies wouldn’t touch a-and had their own factory outside Altolia and everything. They’d gotten into a little bit of, um, trouble recently, I guess, with one of their factories getting damaged and the whole operation having to go on hold, but they were in an okay spot, because of Georges Delphine…”

Antoinette tilted her head. “My father?”

“Yes, she, um–Helene and Georges were involved in business together.”

Antoinette and I glanced at each other.

“Georges Delphine made a couple statements to the guard once the news reached the crown city,” Jean-Paul said.

Obviously I didn’t remember any of this stuff, but Antoinette’s eyebrows were dented together, giving me a hint that maybe she never knew about this either. Maybe the business stuff in question was too boring for the daughters to be involved? Antoinette said, “What kinds of statements?”

“Uh, nothing really of note, as far as I was told? Sympathies and stuff… He explained their previous work together. It was private because it was publishing and wasn’t set to be released yet, you know how that can go, reporting bans and stuff if the topic is really sensitive…”

Aaand what else?

Antoinette brushed it off. “My father has endless business connections. Are there any suspects? Persons of interest?”

He blushed and pressed his lips together. Antoinette pointedly leaned on the counter. He blurted, “The–the insurance and the will are strange.”

“How strange?” I pushed.

“The beneficiaries were changed a bit over a year ago? So in the case of Helene and Claude dying, the insurance money and the inheritance passed on to Helene’s nephew and niece.”

Antoinette asked the question that was caught in my throat. “What about the Gagnon daughter?”

“Th-that’s weird, right? So obviously the nephew and niece were…considered as suspects…but they had perfect alibis, nothing seemed amiss…I mean, last I heard…”

Although we peppered him with more questions, he couldn’t give us much more. When a guard entered the office with his fancy red suit and riding boots, Jean-Paul shut up entirely (looking more suspicious than if he’d kept talking, but whatever). Antoinette and I left.

Niece and nephew? I was stuck on that. In the game, the whole Gagnon case was half-assed and half-explained, pinning the arson on random anonymous goons who wanted to rob the Gagnon family, so their defense could easily be collapsed by Marie’s new beau helping her earn all her money back and put them in jail. Claude and Helene (not even named in Love Blooming!) died in the fire, while Marie ran off, losing her memory thanks to a head injury and plot convenience. Why hadn’t the police (police, guard, whatever) here not even found the dead parents yet? Were their bodies hidden? Were they not even dead?

And what did that mean for me?

If I was gonna get far enough in the game’s timeline to give Antoinette her happy ending, well, I’d have to run into the Gagnon murder plot too.

What if I never solved it? What if I never got the money and estate back? What would I do, just float around this world forever? Oh, god, would I have to job search again and endlessly tour apartments, this time in a world without internet?

And what if I did get the money? I couldn’t run a publishing business! I’d never had more than three thousand bucks in my bank account at any one time, and even that was right before rent was due!

I felt like I’d just stepped off the tilt-a-whirl.