"Let's go downstairs," Nathalie suggested, closing all of the windows and documents on her screen.
She locked the computer and closed the lid, then collected her purse and walked to the exit. Plagg followed, with one short glance at Adrien's bedroom door.
Nathalie remained silent in the elevator. She remained silent in the hallway. She remained silent as she walked from the building entrance to a tree planted on the edge of the parking lot, then fished a pack of cigarettes out of her purse.
She lit one, breathed the smoke in and coughed.
"I did talk to Bella," she finally said.
Plagg stared at the glowing tip of the cigarette, that shone vivid orange in the darkness.
"When did you start smoking?" he murmured, with an uneasiness she couldn't have understood.
"At fourteen," she replied. "Mostly as part of a feud with my mother. I stopped three months later. This is the first pack I bought in… twelve years?"
Plagg's eyes followed the orange glow that swayed from side to side as she shook her hand.
"Never smoke in front of Gabriel."
The human blinked, perplexed. She hesitated.
"Why?"
"His father died of lung cancer," he explained. And his mother blamed herself to the point she let herself die, he didn't add.
"Oh." Nathalie dropped the cigarette and crushed it under her heel, then picked it up and pushed it into the pack it had come from. She looked around, found a trash can and threw it all away.
"What did Bella say?" Plagg asked when she came back.
" Bella ," the woman replied, tone laced with disgust, "tried to make a deal. She wanted me to transform and send a champion to free Alim Kubdel, in exchange of what she would have told me everything she knew about Alice's disappearance. That's as far as the conversation went."
Plagg scoffed.
"He's her chosen. Of course she would ask that."
"She doesn't know anything," Nathalie stated. Hesitation flickered on her face. "At least, I think she doesn't. 'Everything someone knows' can be very little. But if Kubdel doesn't know anything, I doubt she has more information than he does."
"Then what are you doing with the maps and the dates?"
"I have… a lead, of sorts. I am… putting a timeline together, preparing the terrain. Not that it is of any real use, but I want to wait for Gabriel to recover some semblance of sanity."
"And what are you planning, exactly?" the black cat wondered, eyes reduced to thin slits.
What did you need a test run for?
She ignored the question.
"Plagg. If you had a way to find her and were hiding it from Gabriel - for his own sanity, that is - how long could you keep it to yourself? How long would be 'too long' for him to forgive you?"
"Roughly the time it took you to decide to keep it a secret," the Kwami commented. She knew that.
"I see. Well, then. Waiting a little more can hardly make it worse."
###
If you wanted prime quality moping, you went to the roof.
Some prefered to do their moping in a dark room, with the curtains closed and a pillow to cry on, but when you were a teenager in the company of another teenager you were dating, it was much harder to lock yourself in your bedroom and in the dark. You faced some scrutiny. Your makeshift guardian insisted on open doors or long talks that 'trust me, Adrien, you would rather have with the internet'.
The roof was good too.
Marinette and Adrien were laying on their backs and staring at the sky, with Tikki sitting on the edge of the roof and Plagg curled up in the sun.
It was a good way to spend a saturday morning.
The clouds were moving faster than the news.
"What do you think will happen when they reveal his identity, Tikki?" Adrien asked. He wanted a new perspective. "Has this ever happened before, or did you always go the memory wipe road? Was there ever a villain who got away with it?"
He realized too late how silly his question was. Bella had roamed the world for centuries.
The Kwami sighed.
"We've seen justice evolve over the centuries, a lot ," she responded, looking at the sky. "I remember a time where there was no such thing as a 'burden of proof'. I remember a time when proof came in the form of a needle that prickled your skin, or as the word of a spoiled prince, or as an omen. If Alim Kubdel gets away with it, then I will still be content, as it will be a sign that humanity has bettered itself." - She turned to Adrien and smiled. - "Cautiousness in those matters is a good thing and we should encourage it always. It is better to see a guilty man escape the law than to see an innocent be punished. Far be it from us to slay the righteous with the wicked."
Adrien blinked at the familiar words he couldn't quite place. He let them sink in.
Tikki was something else.
"Fair point," he admitted, smiling.
"You might not see it because, from where you stand, it looks like every single thing is going wrong, but in the greater scheme of things… you have freed the world from a great evil. Bella is finally back with us. Her reign of terror is over. I don't think you realize how important that is. She has been lost for millennia. We lost Waspp to corruption for a century, and Vixx for the odd decade, but Bella was out of our reach for most of our lives. We can finally hope to be reunited. Finding Zharr and Waspp should be easy enough. The cursed weapons Bella caused will be cleansed, the souls they contain finally put to rest."
"Provided miss Lenoir gives the one she stole back," Marinette mumbled.
Adrien bolted upright.
"The watch."
Marinette sat and Plagg raised his head, curious.
"Alix's watch is not a tracker!" Adrien exclaimed, standing up. "Her father had one. The real one, with a bird hologram in it. He had it on him when you rescued me. It has to be somewhere in the house, or with the cops!"
Tikki's words echoed in his mind. Finding Zharr. It was why Hawk Moth had travelled to Brazil to begin with. How had Adrien forgotten about that so easily? He hoped the device had survived the collapse of the floor they had been on. With some luck, it was safe and sound in a box of evidence.
"We need to get it," he said. "I'll warn Nathalie we're leaving."
He ran to the maintenance staircase, not waiting for his partner. Tikki landed on his shoulder as he raced down the stairs.
"Are you sure?" she asked.
"Yes! It looks exactly like my father's butterfly watch."
"Are you really sure?" she insisted.
"Yes!"
He nearly ran past the door to Nathalie's floor, backtracked and stopped there. By that point, Marinette had caught up with them.
"What did the bird look like?" Tikki insisted. "What was it doing?"
"Is that important?" Marinette asked, pushing the door open and holding it for them.
"It was flying," Adrien replied. "Just beating its wings."
Tikki jumped from his shoulder to Marinette's.
"What about its tail? Was it displayed? In a fan?" she clarified. "Or was it down?"
Adrien thought about it.
"Down. Definitely down."
"Oh," Tikki murmured, lowering her head.
Marinette led the way towards the apartment door.
"What would be the difference?"
"I've seen that watch before," her Kwami explain. "It was part of a set of six, one for each of us except Bella, since she was on the run. They were made by a magical engineer, back in the seventeenth century. We were all active in France back then, and the king commissioned them for our heroes. Chat Noir destroyed his and mine in… as soon as we left the room after the ceremony, actually. But the others still work."
Adrien frowned.
"How come my father has one?"
"The butterfly watch was assembled but never linked to Bella. I assume someone got it to work by powering it with Akuma. Anyway… the watches have two modes. In their dormant state, they give the time and display the image of an animal. When our holders are transformed, however, the clock hands point at us, and the hologram changes. If the peacock's tail had been on display, it would have meant that Zharr is active in the vicinity."
They stopped in front of Nathalie's door.
Little fragments of information were weaving themselves together. Tikki's story, Alim's words, Gabriel's.
"My father said his was an heirloom," Adrien said, narrowing his eyes. "Tikki… Is it at all possible that Bella could have chosen mister Kubdel because she knew he would inherit the watch? She wants to find the Miraculous, right?"
Marinette paled.
Tikki pursed her lips.
"I think it's a distinct possibility. Especially since that watch is linked to Zharr. He's her favorite brother."
"She could have gotten to the others," Marinette remarked, horrified. "She needs to attack to lure us out, but… as long as she gets the watches, she can find the other Kwami and surprise them. Waspp is missing!"
"The bee watch is in Volpina's… in Fu's hands," Tikki reassured her. "Waspp is many things, but 'naive' is not one of them. She realized how dangerous those trackers were, just like Plagg. However, she was willing to admit the watches could prove useful if one of us was corrupted. She made sure to leave hers in the right hands."
"But the peacock watch remained in Zharr's holder's family," Adrien supposed.
"It… Yes ," Tikki sighed. "That magical engineer was Zharr's chosen. He kept his."
Adrien bit down on his lips, mulling over the possibility that Alim Kubdel had been targeted , rather than chosen, by a deity five-thousand years older than the child he had been.
You have freed the world from a great evil.
Her reign of terror is over.
"We should get the peacock watch back," he said. "Master Fu should have it. We never know who might end up finding it."
Tikki nodded. Adrien unlocked the apartment door and let Marinette walk inside before him. As soon as they entered, they heard Nathalie's voice from the kitchen.
"- same approach my mother took and I turned out fine." There was a pause, then her tone grew horrified. "When did you meet my… You remember that? " she exclaimed, going silent once again. "My mother calling you 'dreamy' doesn't mean a thing. She has horrible taste in men."
Marinette and Adrien exchanged a stunned look, then joined Nathalie into the kitchen.
"The children are here," the woman muttered into her phone.
She was making coffee. Plagg, who had not bothered with the stairs, was already in the room, chewing a piece of Camembert on a countertop. The volume of Nathalie's phone was loud enough for Adrien to recognize his father's voice, but not to make out what he was saying.
"Your father says hello, to the both of you," Nathalie announced, greatly shortening whatever it was that Gabriel had said.
Marinette muttered a 'good day to him'. Adrien nodded, then grew serious.
"We'll be out for the rest of the morning. Is that okay or should I be back for lunch?"
"Where are you going?" Nathalie asked, over what sounded distinctly like a 'where is he going?' from Gabriel. She muted her phone.
"To the pool!" Marinette blurted out, despite the fact that neither of them had a gym bag or even the shadow of a swimsuit with them.
"To the movies," Adrien said at the exact same time, being the excellent liar he was. "Jurassic World is on at half past ten and I left the blu ray in my room."
"You have blu rays of movies that are still in theaters?" his girlfriend exclaimed.
"Father gets them for me whenever he wants to avoid spending time with me," he deadpanned.
Everyone winced, even Tikki and Plagg.
He scratched the back of his neck.
"Anyway, Nathalie, I don't know if you had something planned for lunch…"
She shook her head.
"No, no. Feel free to eat something at the 'pool'," she told him. " Please avoid facing gunfire, knife-wielding criminals and journalists, though. If you get interviewed, you will be grounded."
Adrien was unused to such a level of freedom.
"Uh. Okay. Uh. See you this afternoon, then. Thank you!"
He retreated to the door, while Marinette thanked Nathalie too. Tikki promised to keep an eye on them both. As for Plagg, he asked if he could finish his cheese.
###
"They'll be fine," Nathalie told Gabriel when the door closed on Adrien and his girlfriend.
"I never said they wouldn't be," he lied. Well, not lied . He had not said it. She knew he had his worries.
"I'll keep you updated. What are your plans for the afternoon?"
She waited for a satisfactory answer, something that could translate to 'yes, I have recovered' or 'yes, I am in full control of my emotions'. What she got was 'I'll drop by my fencing club, I think'. It did not shed any light on Gabriel's mental state.
"Good," she commented. "Exercise will do you good."
There was a deafening crunch followed by the briefest munching noise. She nearly threw her phone out the window. She squeaked.
"Shorry," her nightmare of an… ex… something mumbled. She heard him swallow. "I thought I had muted the call. My breakfast is ready. Can I call you later?"
"I will keep you updated," she repeated. "Enjoy your fencing session."
"Thank you. Have a nice day, Nathalie."
"You too," she sighed, hanging up.
She wished she could be sure of how he felt. He tried, tried very hard to be nonchalant and pleasing (with that thin layer of obnoxiousness that put her in a murderous mood). That being said, it meant little. There were blanks in their conversations. He would be talking to her then, in the span of an instant, his eyes would glaze over. He would lose focus. He would stop answering. He was also exhausted: she had woken him up twice by calling him in the middle of the day.
He had been fueled by his need to find Hawk Moth. Now that he had, that energy had been drained out of him, leaving him… different.
It was like that afternoon they had spent in that guest room, after the first panic attack he had had in front of her. The difference was that, this time, his weariness was there to stay.
He's not all there yet, she told herself.
She thought of the coalescing darkness she had seen oozing out of him and squeezed her eyes shut.
Not yet.
But she remembered Plagg's words too.
"If Alice is alive and you waste a single second Gabriel could have spent rescuing her, he will kill you," the black cat had warned her when they had discussed the secrets she kept.
"If," Nathalie had replied. "I am not delusional. I doubt you are. We are looking for her bones, if there is that much left to find."
But she wasn't sure. She could not be.
"Trust me when I say I wish she could be alive and well," she had continued. "Adrien needs his mother, especially now. But, realistically speaking, everything points to her being dead."
Uncertainty had pooled in Nathalie's stomach as she forced those words out of her mouth. It had made her ill.
The nausea came and went, along with her doubts.
###
Saturday went by uneventfully. For the most part.
Hawk Moth's identity remained undisclosed. The press kept rehashing what little they had to go on. Conflicting information about his hospital stay were revealed, then corrected, then corrected again.
Plagg spent most of the afternoon grumbling about stupid human cops and their refusal to cooperate, but Adrien was not as negative as he was. Chat Noir had met with the police commissioner, along with Ladybug, and they had asked about the watch.
"It is a dangerous magical artefact," Ladybug had pretended, in a seamless, perfect lie she would never have managed out of costume. "We just want to make sure it will be handled properly."
Unfortunately for them, the commissioner had not been much help.
"Evidence is still being processed," he had replied. "Dusted for prints, photographed, transported from one lab to another… I'll give a few phonecalls, get the list, see if it was catalogued."
He had given said phonecalls, discovered the peacock watch was safely stored with the rest of the items collected from mister Kubdel's mother home, and refused to give it to them.
It made sense. Evidence couldn't just vanish from the police headquarters. The entire case had to be handled 'by the book', despite the overwhelming amount of tampering André Bourgeois had done already. The watch would be kept under close watch, however.
"Trust me. This is Hawk Moth ," the commissioner had promised. "We're not leaving anything to chance. Those items will be guarded night and day."
Tikki was of the mind that it was good enough. They would wait for the trial to be over and quietly steal the watch and voila.
Plagg wanted to skip the whole 'waiting' part.
He started ranting the instant Adrien and Marinette untransformed, in a back alley two streets away from the police station. He kept mumbling under his breath for the whole bus ride to Nathalie's, forcing the two teenagers to talk loudly and non-stop to cover his voice (everyone shot daggers at them). He grumbled and whined and argued from the moment they walked into the apartment, continued while his chosen and his best friend prepared themselves lunch and went on while they played Ultimate Mecha Strike.
Adrien had never seen him so interested in getting his paws on something that wasn't cheese. Yet, when the Kwami finally shut up, the boy didn't stop to think that it was suspicious, nor did he pay any mind to Tikki and Plagg's sudden disappearance. He was winning his matches, and feeling good for the first time in days (The winner got a kiss. Of course, seeing how they were alone, so did the loser. It was a win-win situation with added mechas).
He did not question Nathalie closing the bedroom door because the game's sound effects got on her nerves, even though she had made snide remarks about teenage pregnancy in the morning.
Even when he raided the kitchen for more snacks, in the late afternoon, he nearly failed to notice that something was amiss. Everything looked normal: the apartment was quiet, with the television softly buzzing in the background. Nathalie was sitting at the dinner table with her laptop, still busy sending jobs applications. Adrien nearly ran back to his room with the bag of doritos and the cans of Dr. Pepper he had pilfered. He stopped on his way back to look for Plagg. A quiet Plagg was an omen of trouble.
That was when he heard the muffled voices coming from Nathalie's room. Tikki's quiet whispers and Plagg's random interjections merged into background noise. What caught Adrien's attention was a third voice, a childish, enthusiastic soprano that answered the other voices in quick bursts.
He froze, then turned to Nathalie. She pretended to be absorbed in her work, but pursed her lips.
"You released Bella?" Adrien gasped, keeping his voice barely above a whisper so the Kwami would not hear him. "And you did not tell us?"
She took a deep breath.
"Tikki needed her to lift some 'seals'," she explained without looking up. Her tone was strictly professional. "As soon as that's done, the brooch is going back into its box."
"No! No, Nathalie, please, at least give me a chance to talk to her," he begged. His stomach twisted. "Please. I need to ask her about mom."
For a split-second, Nathalie looked as if she had taken a blow to the gut. She collected herself, grimaced and pinched the bridge of her nose. Then she sighed.
"Please sit," she instructed.
Adrien paled and walked to the table, clutching the back of a chair.
"You asked," he murmured.
Nathalie nodded.
"I did. She doesn't know anything, Adrien. I'm sorry."
He had to clutch the chair a little harder. His legs felt like jelly.
"I… Are you sure? I mean… What did she say exactly?"
"That she was not in Brazil when your mother went missing and neither was Hawk Moth. Her siblings are talking to her. They will try asking her too - she is much more likely to be honest with them than with us - but I don't think she has the answers."
"Could I just-"
"No."
"But-"
" No . Adrien, she is poison, and she is angry at you and Ladybug. She will tell you whatever she believes will hurt you the most. Let the Kwami try."
He opened his mouth, not to protest but to answer 'I understand'. Nathalie still cut him off.
" No! " she snapped.
She was angry, but it was anger rooted in fear. She was scared of letting him near Bella. He understood that, though the would have liked a little more trust.
"Alright," he blurted out, quickly so she wouldn't believe he was about to argue. "Could you… Could you call me as soon as they're done? Please? "
"Of course," she promised. "Of course I will. In the meantime, please stay with Marinette and try not to work yourself up. We will get to the bottom of this, I promise."
Well, if even Bella doesn't know, good luck with that.
"Alright," he repeated. He crushed the bag of doritos against his chest and moved the cans of Dr. Pepper to his other side before the condensation on them could permeate through his t-shirt. "Alright."
He returned to his room and found Marinette sitting cross-legged on the floor, next to the game controller she had discarded. She looked worried.
"Something wrong with Nathalie?" she asked.
Just no news at all. Business as usual.
He did not feel like repeating that his mother would never be found.
"No, no. Just a disagreement about Doritos and carpets," he pretended. He sat next to her and pushed their controllers away with both feet. Then he smiled and leaned against her until she collapsed.
"Hey!" she gasped.
He chuckled and pressed himself against her back, burying his nose against her shoulder. Her clothes smelled like pastries. She grumbled about cold floors and blushed so hard he saw her neck color.
"D'you still want to play?" he asked her. "It's been hours."
"I don't knoooow, I was winning, so…"
"We could watch a movie," he suggested.
"We could."
###
Adrien had tried to stay awake, really tried.
He had wanted to wait for Plagg. Tikki had returned to Marinette less than one hour after Adrien's talk with Nathalie, but she had returned alone. He had not asked about Plagg. He had not talked to Tikki at all, merely kept his eyes on the TV screen and Alicia Silverstone in her white Calvin Klein dress.
He had let Marinette pick the movie and watched her select The devil wears Prada , then flail and fidget and frantically look for something that didn't involve a bad-tempered fashion leader, all of that while trying to make sure Adrien had not noticed her first choice. She had settled for Clueless but, as it turned out, it took little to remind someone of Gabriel Agreste. Gigantic closets with a computer based matching system did, for a start.
Then again, when your girlfriend smelled like pastries fresh out of the oven, your father wasn't the first thing on your mind. He wasn't even the second. The second thing was pie. The third was chocolate bread, then croissants, then éclairs, then macarons, then those weird balls covered in sugar and filled with cream Adrien didn't know the name of, then your father. And it was a distant thought you tried to smother.
"Where did you vanish to?" Marinette had asked Tikki.
Adrien had shaken his head so she would not worry her chosen with the truth.
"Just getting some food," The Kwami had replied.
Marinette, oblivious to the grimaces her boyfriend was making behind her, had asked about Plagg, only to be told that he would be busy for a while.
They had left at the end of the movie. Ladybug had transformed in a corner of Adrien's room, kissed him and slipped out through the window.
Adrien had paced for an hour, returning to the living room every five minutes to find Nathalie shaking her head. Her bedroom door had remained closed. After a while, he had given up on the pacing and sat down on his bed, then laid down, then… Well.
The sunlight woke him up the next morning.
It took him a few seconds to remember where he was, then what he had been doing right before falling asleep. Then he bolted upright, looking for Plagg.
"Plagg?" he called. "Plagg?"
The Kwami emerged from a cardboard box.
"Mhngf."
Adrien jumped out of bed and crouched on the floor next to the box.
"What did Bella say?" As Plagg merely squeezed his eyes shut, the teenager insisted. - "What did she say about mom?"
The look on Plagg's face told him everything.
"She doesn't know," the Kwami replied. "She doesn't, or if she does, she will lie to the end. Tikki all but begged her for answers, because it is Alice , you know. I tried to get Bella to brag and tell me… We used to be birds of a feather, you know? But she insists she knows nothing."
"Do you believe her?"
"I don't know. Your father hurt her chosen. You captured him. She holds grudges."
Adrien ran his hands over his face.
Alright. Alright. It changes nothing. You didn't know. You had no leads. It changes nothing at all.
He remained still for a moment, head tilted back, hands flattened over his eyes. He let the pressure clutching his brain slowly recede.
"Alright. It. was worth a try. Did Nathalie put her back in the box?"
Plagg nodded.
"Nathalie is terrified of Bella. She will only summon her if strictly necessary."
Adrien sighed.
"That's still… I don't like it. At all."
Plagg yawned, shrugging.
"She'll get over it."
"W-what? I don't get you! Just yesterday, you were furious!"
"I had forgotten," Plagg said, hovering to the door and landing on the doorknob.
"Forgotten what?"
"I had forgotten what she was like. I mean, corrupted. It's not really her you are talking to, it's ghosts of her previous holders. All of their spite bottled up. I don't want that near you. Nathalie can let her out when you are not around."
"Thanks for the vote of confidence," Adrien muttered, frowning.
Plagg lifted his chin and looked at him with eyes that, for once, had nothing of a person and everything of a cat. His tail flicked left and right.
"She would lash out at you," he ended up saying. "And you are kind. You would let her." His demeanor changed. All of a sudden, he was an impish furball again. He shrugged. "Truth is, when someone spews vitriol at you, you don't have to listen. Now come on, I'm hungry. Let's get cheese."
###
For the entire morning, Adrien was kept busy with the cruel realities of life, also known as what teenagers called 'homework'. Nathalie sat at the opposite end of the living room table as he worked, busy sending job applications while he worked. If he tried to procrastinate by asking what companies she was targeting or if she had received answers, she gave monosyllabic answers and questioned him on his schoolwork.
When he was done, she checked it all, from the math homework to the French book report he had prepared. She had him redo the math homework, seeing how it contained a 'careless mistake' that was 'not like him at all' (he agreed on that when he did the exercises again and saw that he had mixed up two formulas).
By half by eleven, he was cooking (potatoes, microwaved apple sauce and steak).
If he had it his way, he would never eat chef-prepared meals served to him on a platter again. Cooking was fun. Nathalie didn't seem to be worried about him setting the apartment on fire, either. As a matter of fact, Nathalie didn't seem to be worried about what he did as long as he didn't set the apartment on fire.
They ate at noon, while watching the news (that had nothing new to report on Hawk Moth and his identity). Adrien waited a good thirty minutes to made sure no one had been poisoned, then asked if he could go out.
Ten minutes later, he found himself standing at the bus stop and sighing at a text from Marinette.
"have to hold donw the fort, lots of customers today, see you tnight"
"I forgot the bakery was open on sundays," he told Plagg. "Where should we go?"
"Are cheese shops open on sundays too?"
"You JUST finished eating."
"Yes, but we came allllll this way," the Kwami retorted, pointing at Nathalie's building down the street.
"Oh! I know. We're going to Nino's," Adrien exclaimed, running off to hide between two vans, where no one could see him. "Claws out!"
He jumped to the closest roof and had to use his staff's GPS to know in which direction to go. He knew Nino's address but had never visited it. They had gone to the park, the zoo, the Champ de Mars, but never to Nino's home. He was curious. Paying a surprise visit couldn't hurt, could it?
It was nice to run from roof to roof just for fun again. The fresh air and the speed were relaxing. Chat Noir felt lighter and happier just thanks to the sun and the wind.
He had nearly arrived to his best friend's place when he spotted a construction worker on a roof.
He had learned to pay attention to lone construction workers on roofs, especially when their outfits leaned to the side of the sportswear.
The man was standing on top of a four-storey building, on the edge of the roof. He was lanky, with pale blond hair and sharp features. His clothes were black, but he was wearing a yellow safety vest on top of them. Strange how, to become virtually invisible on the roofs, all you had to do was make yourself as visible as possible. 'What are you doing there, sir? Just inspecting the gutters'.
Adrien sighed.
What was his father planning now?
He jumped closer, making sure to stay hidden. He would follow Gabriel and figure out what mess he had gotten himself in this time.
From up close, his father looked unsteady. He swayed back and forth, just a little, but enough for it to be concerning.
Then he jumped.
###
Marinette wiped the sweat of her forehead and covered it with flour.
She had helped her father carry bags of supplies into the bakery while her mother worked the register. Tom had not let her lift a single heavy thing, but they had gone back and forth a dozen time and the bakery itself was warm, with the oven running. It was a sunny day and people had flocked to the park, so customers arrived in a steady stream. The shelves had been emptied by noon, but Tom and Sabine had started preparing more pastries and snacks by mid-morning, trusting the weather forecast.
"So many people today," she heard Sabine say to her father when he joined her at the counter.
"People were scared of crowded places," he commented. "It's a relief for everyone that Hawk Moth has been stopped. No reason to cower at home on a day like this."
In other circumstances, Marinette would have been elated. Considering the network of lies the mayor had woven around everything, she merely felt resigned. She tried not to think about it too much, not to get angry again. She needed to cool down before taking decisions.
"I'll go wash up!" she announced, rubbing the flour on her forehead.
She left her parents to their talk and ran to the bathroom, to run water over her face.
"There's some in your hair," Tikki told her.
Marinette winced. Well. Shampoo it was, then. She was taking her top off when her phone started buzzing.
"It's Nathalie!" she exclaimed.
Her chosen's eyes went wide. She grabbed her phone and picked up.
"Miss Sancoeur?"
"Hello, Marinette. How are you?"
"I, uh, fine ," she replied, recovering from her surprise. "Is something wrong?"
"No, nothing is wrong. I was just wondering if you were home."
"Yes, yes, I am?"
"Is Adrien there?"
"No," Marinette replied, nonplussed. "Should he be?"
"No. I mean, not especially. But it is good that he is not here. Now, I have something to ask from Tikki. Could you send her to me? I'm under the archway, right next to your front door."
The teenager and Tikki exchanged a puzzled look, then the Kwami nodded.
"She's on her way," Marinette replied as Tikki darted out through the window.
"Thank you very much. I'll send her back in a few minutes."
"Of-"
Nathalie hung up.
Marinette frowned, narrowed her eyes, then ran out of the room, hurrying out of the apartment and stampeding down the staircase. This was all very weird. She was curious and she had every intention to figure out what was going on. It wasn't that she didn't trust Tikki, of course, but she was not a fan of miss Sancoeur. She liked her better at the moment, but that was it.
She stopped at the bottom of the stairs, stealthily unlocking the front door and opening it by an inch. The archway and the door were close. With some luck, she would be able to eavesdrop on Nathalie and Tikki's conversation.
She caught a few words.
"- told me Ladybug dropped by the mansion," Nathalie was saying, "so I wanted-"
Her voice grew distant. Marinette could hear the clicking of her heels. She opened the door and slipped out, flattening herself against the house wall and tiptoeing to the archway.
"- not sure of Gabriel's state of mind at all," mister Agreste's assistant said. "I can't ask because he would lie, so I wanted your opinion on-"
Once again, she moved too far away to hear her voice. Marinette was forced to give up. There was no way to follow the woman under the archway without being seen.
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