Robin grimaced. “He lost the battle trying to take down the vacuum cleaner.”

“Ouch, I thought Splinters was the smart cat.”

“I guess not. And Suzie said you received some certified letter from France.”

“It’s probably my contract,” I said. “I’m scheduled to teach another class at Lyon this summer.”

Lyon, France, was considered by many to be the heart and soul of bookbinding and all things book related. The city had an entire museum dedicated to book art, and the Institut d’Histoire du Livre in Lyon was a top school for advanced study in book history, conservation and restoration. It was the same place I’d last spent any time with Helen.

“Cool,” Robin said as we rode the elevator down. “You’ll get to see Ariel and Pascal again.”

Years ago, Ariel Hodges had come to Sonoma to work with Abraham on some big book restoration projects, and we all became her surrogate family. Then she moved to Lyon to run the institute, where she met Pascal, a curator at the Musée de l’Imprimerie, the printing museum.

“I can’t wait,” I said. “Maybe you should plan a trip while I’m there.”

“I’ll do it,” Robin said. “I suppose Pascal is still as sexy and annoyingly French as ever.”

“I imagine so.” I laughed. Pascal was totally hot but completely in love with our friend Ariel, which naturally made him even more adorable in our eyes.

We walked outside and I breathed in the crisp, clean Scottish air and admired the odd shadows of the Old Town rooftops as the sun set behind the castle. Was it silly to think that air and light were different depending on the part of the world you were in? If so, call me silly, but the northern lights and the arctic air that passed over Scotland seemed to transform me. Everything was different here. I loved San Francisco, but as I took in the sights and sounds and views from the top of the Royal Mile, I knew I could be happy living here for the next few years.

As we passed St. Giles’ Cathedral, Robin pointed across the street at Mary King’s Close. “Isn’t that where you found Kyle’s body?”

At the unwelcome memory, I felt a chill and tugged my jacket tighter. “Yeah. In one of the tenement rooms.”

“Ugh.”

“Yeah.”

“Whoa.” She stopped to stare at a store window filled with every kind of tartan pattern imaginable. It was dizzying.

“Looks like Brigadoon on acid,” Robin muttered.

I snickered. Not that either of us had ever dropped acid before. Looking at this place now, I was assured we never would.

Dozens of people passed us on the street, their conversations rising and falling around us like music. There was something spectacular about a rolling Scottish burr. And speaking of rolling, the sidewalks were a little uneven, so we had to watch our step or that was what we would be doing. The cold wind kept pushing at us, as if determined to drive us back to the hotel.

We continued walking, but stopped again to look at another wondrous storefront filled with lace items: doll clothes, a wedding gown, a little girl’s starched, high-collared dress that looked horribly uncomfortable, napkins and doilies and petticoats and curtains and all sorts of table runners strewn like crepe-paper ribbons across the ceiling.

“God, that’s bizarre,” Robin said, but she couldn’t look away. The store window was practically hypnotic.

“Come on, sweetie, let’s keep walking,” I said, nudging her out of her stupor.

She blinked and nodded. “Thanks.”

“That was close,” I muttered, knowing that if Robin actually went into one of these stores, she’d leave with her credit card sizzling.

Back to her old self, she said, “Would you mind if I take your mom and dad on a ghost tour this week?”

“Oh, they’d love it. You should do it.”

“But you won’t be joining us.”

I shuddered. “No way.”

“I could contact a different tour than the one you used.”

“I don’t even want to think about it.” I would never be able to take a ghost tour again without half expecting Kyle to be one of the ghosts.

We stopped at a corner and Robin looked around. “Where are we going, by the way?”

“Dinner. There’s a good restaurant another block or two from here.”

“Great.” She shoved her hands in her pockets as we maneuvered along the cobblestone sidewalk. Robin’s heels were wobbling over the ancient stones, and she looked almost drunk as she walked. “I was reading about Deacon Brodie’s Tavern. It’s supposed to be good.”

“Sort of touristy,” I said. “It’s back toward the castle a few blocks.”

She turned to look up the street. “Do you want to go there?”

I shook my head and winced. “I made the mistake of reading about it. Brodie was this upstanding citizen-a deacon, as you might’ve figured-who took up burglary at night. So they hanged him-or maybe he escaped. Since this is Scotland, the legends go both ways, depending on the day of the week. But he was supposedly Robert Louis Stevenson’s inspiration for Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.”

“You know way too much history for someone who never liked high school.”

“It’s a curse.”

“Maybe I’ll take your parents there tomorrow.”

“Don’t tell them about the icky Mr. Hyde part.”

“I think they might like that aspect.”

I chuckled. “You’re probably right.”

We passed through the long shadow of the Tron Kirk spire and crossed the High Street.

I’d heard that many people in Scotland considered Glasgow, not Edinburgh, to be the garden spot to visit, because Edinburgh was rife with counterculture, drugs,

AIDS and crime. But the public perception outside Britain was that Edinburgh was the jewel in the crown of the British Isles. In that regard, it reminded me a lot of San Francisco, and maybe that was why I loved it so much. It was the scruffiness around the edges that appealed to me, as well as the fact that, to my mind, the view from every direction was picture-perfect.

I pointed out a cheery, wide-windowed pub with flowerpots hanging from the tops of each of the tall columns. “That’s where we’re going.”

“The Mitre. Looks nice, but what about that place?” She pointed to another pub two doors down.

“Do you really want to eat at a place called Clever Dick’s?”

“Depends,” she said with a grin.

Do I know how to pick a best friend or what?

“I’m stuffed,” Robin groaned as we walked out of the Mitre. “Let’s walk for a while.”

“You didn’t have to order dessert,” I said, as we walked east along the Royal Mile, in the opposite direction of the hotel. It was cold, but the air felt good. The sky was studded with stars and the sidewalks were crowded with people out looking for a good time.

“It’s not every day you get to eat spotted dick.”

“You can say that again,” I said, as we passed the aged, turreted Tolbooth. It had been a wretched prison in the sixteenth century, with public hangings and all that fun stuff, but now it was a museum, with its ten-foot-high fancy clock hanging five stories up above the street. “And I guess you could say the same for tatties and neeps.”

“Oh, my God, don’t remind me. That waitress was trying to terrify me on purpose.”

I laughed at the memory of Robin’s expression when the waitress suggested tatties and neeps on the side, then gave her a break and explained that it was the local name for potatoes and parsnips. We figured she did that to all the tourists. At the end of the meal, Robin asked for the recipe and the chef himself came out to recite it, basically mashed root veggies with a touch of this and that-and tarragon, the secret ingredient.

When Robin invited him to move to San Francisco to cook for her, I knew it was time to leave.

“Look, puppets!” Robin cried, and hurried over to a storefront display of numerous stringed puppets in intricate costumes, all standing and ready to perform. There was a bagpiper, a ballerina, a golfer, three soldiers, all in different uniforms, a harlequin clown and a pirate. Their oversize faces were carved from wood and their cheeks were splotched with bits of red paint-to make them appear happy and healthy, I supposed.