Wicked After Midnight

20

I fled barefoot from the elephant like Cinderella being chased by her glass slippers, a ticket from the Louvre wadded up in my fist, the only helpful thing I’d found in his pockets. The duke hadn’t spoken again, had simply jerked and moaned when my blood magic helped him find his relief. It was grotesque but helpful, the way that happened with my clients. I giggled to myself, considering how this happened every night. I had become silent but deadly.

I had a foot on the stairs up to my room when Vale called my name, his voice soft and urgent as it echoed down the hall. We both knew there was no one else around to hear it. My heart lurched as it always did when he was near, but my brain was impatient. I really did need sleep, not to be up half the night thinking about the mysterious brigand. Still, I stopped. I couldn’t not stop.

I turned back to wait for him. He didn’t hurry. He never did.

“Bébé, it’s all set. Run up to your room to lose the bustle and grab your boots, and we’ll take some blud and get your book. And maybe some information, too.” He held out a disreputable umbrella and grinned. “Enough room for us both under here, if you stay close.”

I dug a bare toe into a knot in the wood floor. “I can’t. Tomorrow’s the finale and some sort of ball. I have to get sleep.”

He shook his head. “Oh, bébé. I do not understand you. You’ll go to the gardens, you’ll meet men in that ridiculous pachyderm, you’ll go to Lenoir. But I try to help you find your friend, and you brush me off like a pestering child. Have you forgotten the whole reason you’re here?”

Anger flared, my cheeks going hot and my fangs bared. “I didn’t forget. I can’t stop thinking about Cherie. Everything I do is for the sole purpose of staying here, to buy more time, to find more clues.” I held up the ticket. “See this? The duke was at the Louvre today, and there’s some sort of code on here, but I can’t even go there by myself to investigate because I have no freedom during museum hours. I’m constantly trapped. I don’t like what I do. I need the blood to live, and I need the men for the blood, and I need the performing for the men. I’m caught here.”

“You’re not caught right now. Come with me. We’ll be back in an hour.”

I shook my head again but with warning this time. “I told you. I can’t.”

For a moment, he just breathed, watching me. “You’ll do anything for anyone. Except me. And except Cherie.”

“Oh, I’m the one who won’t do what I’m supposed to? Aren’t you supposed to be taking over the family business? Aren’t you running away, too, hiding in Paris from your real responsibilities?”

“For you, bébé! For you!” The shout was sharp, and he strangled it quickly. He looked me up and down in my ridiculous costume and chuckled bitterly. “We both have issues with men who want things we don’t wish to give, I suppose. Except I run away from mine, and you run right toward yours and start sucking on it.”

I exhaled in a growl and poked him in the chest. “I like you, but you make it so damned hard, Vale! Everyone else here worships me, and you just push and push and push.”

“I could not have said it better myself.”

“I thought after last night—”

His grin curled up, his eyes dancing. “What about last night?”

“I thought we’d found something good.”

“Oh, we did. I would like to find it again.” He licked his lip, and my knees nearly melted.

“Then stop pissing me off and pushing me away, and start wooing me, you ass.”

I spun around to flounce away, but he caught a fistful of my bustle and yanked me back. No man I’d met yet in Sang would have dared it, but he held me there with a chuckle.

“As you like, bébé. Leave with me now, and I’ll woo you in the most romantic place in Paris.”

Stifling a yawn and twitching my skirt out of his grasp, I turned. “More romantic than the catacombs?”

“Oh, you’ll enjoy this place. It is dark, private, and filled with surprises. It was once a fortress, then a palace, now a national treasure. And at this time of night, you can touch . . . whatever you wish.”

He pulled me close, and the breath caught in my throat. “You want to break into the Louvre?”

His hands tightened on my waist. “Break in? We won’t break anything. It is considered trespassing only if they catch you. And no one ever catches me.” He held up the duke’s ticket, which I had slipped into my pocket moments ago. “These are directions to a painting’s placement in the gallery. Let’s go see what it is that so interests your duke, shall we?”

“He’s not my duke.”

“That’s what I like to hear,” he whispered in my ear.

I borrowed a cloak and some boots from Blue’s empty room and felt the first fine thrill of being bad. We left through the same door I used for my assignations, and I stared up through the rain at the copper elephant with foreboding as we slipped around its giant legs, Vale’s fingers entwined with mine. Lights shone from the portholes and hung from the ornate headdress and enameled howdah on the pachyderm’s back, and I saw what looked like a gazebo on top. I’d never been up there, but then again, all my suitors really wanted were my teeth and my body, not the foolish pretense of romance. I ducked back under the umbrella.

Once we hit the street, Vale whistled for a conveyance—a cheaper one than I’d used before and so small that we were stuffed together, touching from shoulder to ankle. Vale gave the dull-faced driver an unfamiliar address instead of giving the museum’s name, and the trap took off at killer speeds, leaving a puff of violet smoke hanging in the gaslight behind us. The machinery was so loud that we had trouble hearing each other, but there was a new intimacy to being so close and doing something so normal. He was wearing his striped pants and vest, and the umbrella sat sentry between our knees like a bony chaperone.

In lieu of talking, he walked his fingers up my arm every time I paid attention to something else that wasn’t him. Each time I swatted him away, we both knew it was only a matter of time before I would pretend to stare at something else.

Rain dotted the roof as the conveyance pulled to a stop, and Vale slipped a franc into the man’s filthy fist and helped me down. My boots slipped on the cobbles, and I tried to orient myself. As usual with Vale, we were in a dark alley in a place where no lady would go during daylight.

As if reading my mind, Vale opened the umbrella over my head and pulled me deeper into the shadows with a murmured “Quiet, now, bébé. I would normally go underground, but I am attempting to woo you, which requires a giddy stroll through an evening rain, yes?”

I glanced at the soot-streaked bricks and piles of bones and rocks. “It’s just like I always dreamed—slimy carcasses and all.”

“I would kiss you to keep you silent, but around here, we might be eaten.”

The words sent shivers to dance along my spine, but I took his hint and went quiet as he pulled me into a maze of ramshackle buildings and fallen walls. There had been a fire here; my nose told me that more than my eyes did. But they were rebuilding, and the scaffolds and piles of stone and wood left plenty of shadows to shield us from prying eyes. When Vale lifted the edge of a manhole cover, I realized why he’d encouraged me to leave my bustle at home and tried to put on a brave face as I followed him into the yawning hole.

Once we were both underground and standing on stone, he produced a metal object from his pocket. With a few flicks of a switch, a fire bloomed, and I was delighted to see my first cigarette lighter in six years. He hooked the umbrella over my arm and handed the lighter to me so that he could replace the manhole cover above, and I admired the flower and vine design chased in the brass. I almost asked him about his green pendant before remembering that he had given it to me, and I had broken it the same day during an attempted murder. Oops.

With a heavy clunk, the tunnel went pitch-black around my small flame. Vale landed beside me. He took the lighter gently, careful not to hurt me or let the fire go out, his fingers caressing mine.

“It’s not far,” he said, and I shrugged.

“I’m pretty tough.”

He pointed to my borrowed boots. “I would not wish you to get blisters.”

That small kindness reached past my cold heart, the warmth spreading as he held out a hand and guided me over a puddle. Rain plinked overhead, and further down the tunnel, I could hear more water moving. As we walked, Vale held up the lighter to show me an ancient rock wall that subtly curved.

“We are just outside the base of the original fortress. A great daimon king built it to protect the city from humans who wished to overrun it. Legend says the daimons repelled the humans with magic and by catapulting bludrats into the human armies.”

“That’s smart. Ratapults.”

Vale laughed, and it warmed the cold tunnel like a blast of sunshine. “Come, my clever bébé. You’re about to see the inside of the gentleman’s loo. Brace yourself.”

We turned off into an empty chamber with a high ceiling. Vale handed me the lighter before whipping away a moldering old cloth to reveal a wooden ladder, which he leaned against the stone wall. He climbed carefully as I waited below, holding up the lighter to enjoy the rare chance to see him from a different angle. He was about twenty feet up when tiny rays of light struck his face in a sunburst pattern, shining through a drain. After putting his ear up to the ceiling, he slid a chunk of stone to the side with a grunt. A beam of light shot into the chamber, illuminating a beautiful mural of daimons in medieval armor, rippling flags held aloft by their tails.

“It’s clear, bébé. If you’d care to join me?”

I clicked the lighter shut, tucked it into my pocket, and started climbing. On Earth, I couldn’t imagine how terrifying this entire outing would be: navigating a treacherous city after midnight with a strange and dangerous man, followed by tromping through the sewers and climbing thirty feet into the air over stone and into a government building. But considering who I was and where I was, it was an exciting trip. And that’s when it hit me: I was about to have unfettered access to the greatest art museum in the entire world of Sang.

I had to hold in the squeal as Vale gently took my arms and helped drag me onto the tiles above. I stood and dusted off my leggings . . . and looked directly into a urinal.

“You weren’t kidding.”

“It gets better, I promise you.”

Taking my elbow, he led me out into a wide hall. I sucked in a deep breath, considering how many atoms of paint and oil and genius I might be taking into my body forever with each lungful of air. I wasn’t sure exactly how much this Louvre had in common with the one on Earth, but it was close enough to make me drunk on art-nerd giddiness.

“Where do we start? Is there a map? Do you have Impressionists here yet?”

“Let me see your ticket again, and I will tell you.”

Vale flicked on the lighter, and I handed him the crumpled paper. The building around us was utterly silent and beautiful in its moonlit austerity, and it took every ounce of self-control I possessed to stop myself from running down the long hall, doing cartwheels and whooping with joy.

“This way.”

When Vale took off, I followed. There was scant light from the moon outside, and I wished to see more, but he didn’t ask for his lighter again. Bumbling around in a high-profile building with fire probably wasn’t the best way to remain unnoticed, after all. I didn’t know much about the layout of this Louvre or the one in my original world, so I just tried to take in as much as the shadows allowed, soaking in the sculptures, paintings, and ancient wonders when I wasn’t watching Vale’s butt. He walked with determination, moving through the Louvre as if he owned the place, and I liked that. It didn’t hurt that he was bringing me closer to what I hoped would be a clue about Cherie.

“The gallery should be through here . . .”

He turned left, and I followed so closely that when he drew up short, I ran into him. Normally, I think he would have rather enjoyed having my front plastered to his back, but this time, he was so tense and alert that he didn’t even notice.

We stood in the doorway to a portrait gallery, surrounded by daimons frowning, laughing, dancing, and seated astride screaming bludmares. Almost one entire wall was a version of La Grande Jatte but with daimons mixed among the humans and a clockwork monkey playing with the puppies in front. I hurried over to read the card and see if Seurat existed in Sang and was surprised to learn that it was the first painting created solely by automaton in a style entirely new.

“Bébé, you need to see this.”

Vale was a dark and stalwart shadow before a wall of dancing girls, many of them doppelgängers of paintings from my own world but with the twist that these girls were daimons instead of humans. The canvases were in all shapes and sizes, each in a heavy gilt frame. Vale flicked open the lighter, and a hand to my pocket told me that yet again, I’d been pickpocketed without my knowledge. He raised the flame, and I nearly barfed duke blood onto the dainty tiles of the Louvre.

The image of Limone didn’t look like Lenoir’s work, and the brass plaque on the frame was blank. In my world, this masterpiece by Toulouse Lautrec showed the Moulin Rouge, so this evil twin most likely showed the inside of the Moulin Bleu of Sang. In the bottom right corner, lit in lurid absinthe-green, was an image of Limone so true to life that I could feel hatred and disgust radiating from it in waves. I stepped closer, but Vale threw an arm out to hold me back.

“When was the last time someone saw Limone?” I asked.

“The day after she pushed you.”

“She went to the Moulin Bleu, didn’t she?”

He nodded. “There’s dark magic at work here,” he said, and I gulped and shivered but didn’t move forward again.

I could feel Limone’s cold presence in the room with me, and I spun suddenly, certain that I would feel her hard hands pushing me off into space. But the gallery was empty, peopled only with whispering shadows. I looked from portrait to portrait, trying to sense if perhaps it was only my history with Limone and the perfection of her likeness that was freaking me out. I saw faces I half recognized, a maroon girl stretching in a tutu and a pink-skinned girl laughing. But I couldn’t remember their names or when I’d seen them last.

I pointed with a trembling finger. “I know those girls . . .”

“Jess and Edwige. They went missing from Paradis. Together.” His voice was dark, torn between anger and sadness. “Neither painting shows the artist’s name, but at least it was not Lenoir.” His fists clenched at his sides.

“Why did you bring me here?” I asked.

Vale put an arm around my waist, and I shuddered as he pulled me close and led me from the room. “The words on that ticket were directions to this gallery. There was something here the duke wanted to see.”

“Ugh. I don’t know why. I feel like I need to go wash in boiling water or something. Like that painting is still staring at me.” I shivered all over like a dog throwing water, trying to get back to normal. “Do you know who painted it?”

The hall outside felt ten degrees warmer and much less haunted, and Vale clicked off the lighter and pulled me into a desperate hug, his hand cupping the back of my head.

“I do not know, bébé. Many are by Lenoir but not that one. He takes on protégés and students sometimes. I will try to find out. Do you feel . . .”

He trailed off, and I wrapped my arms around him, too. If he felt half as shaken as I did, then I was glad to give him my warmth. I couldn’t believe a painting had inspired such horror in my heart.

“That painting hates us,” I whispered, and he nodded as he rubbed my back.

“I did promise you romance, but I didn’t wish to frighten you into closeness.” He pulled away and held my face for a brief, bright moment. “How easily one forgets the hunt when one is hunted.”

“Wait.” I wanted to look through the door again but couldn’t bring myself to do so. “Did you see any paintings of Cherie? Of a Bludman or a human with long blond hair and gray eyes?”

“So far as I know, there are no humans in the cabarets, and if there were another Bludman, everyone would know. I saw no such painting.”

I sighed heavily and slumped over. “Then this whole trip was a waste of time.”

“Not so, ma chère.” He slipped his hand into mine, walking backward and pulling me after him. “We tried. And trying is worth something. We also know that there is something strange about that painting. I will come back during the day, ask around. See who painted it, and the ones of Jess and Edwige, too. Some ideas take more time to bear fruit, but you must not lose hope.”

My steps were shuffling and coy. I felt more than a little like a princess in a palace, surrounded by the dripping gilt and excess of the grand museum. The farther we got from the painting, the better I felt. “You’re right. It’s not like Cherie was going to be here and we were just going to walk in and find her. And it’s not a wasted trip.” I blushed and looked down, tracing the marble in the floor. “I mean, I’ve always wanted to see the Louvre.”

He stopped walking backward and smirked as if he knew exactly what I wasn’t brave enough to say. “Oh, you have always wished to see the Louvre? I think perhaps I can help with that.”

Before I could protest, he’d swept me off my feet and tossed me over his shoulder, taking off down the grand hall at a run. I started to shriek but slapped a hand over my own mouth. Vale ran through the Louvre like a little boy chasing a soccer ball, pointing out unhelpful things such as “Here’s a statue of a naked man with an unfortunate nose,” or “I think those are the king’s petticoats.” I laughed so hard that my stomach hurt, and when he finally stopped and placed me on my feet, we were both out of breath and far enough away from the portrait gallery that the malevolent tension was gone.

“Did you see everything?” he asked.

Without thinking, probably because of the lack of blud in my brain, I blurted, “I mostly watched your butt.”

That got his attention. He was instantly focused on me, his light eyes shining in the darkness. “Did you now, bébé?”

“Oh, well, I . . .” I looked down and fidgeted, very un-Bludman-like.

Light hands settled on my hips as he stepped into my personal space. “What is it you fear, Demi? You walk right up to the line and kick dirt over it and laugh, yet you won’t step over. Do you think a man minds being admired?”

“Of course not. I just . . .”

“Are you ashamed of me, then? Do you not find my backside pleasing?”

“What? No! Vale, come on.” My cheeks were red, my insides all twisted up. “Your butt is . . . awesome. I just . . . I didn’t break into the Louvre with you to talk about . . . this.”

“This?”

“Us.”

“And yet here we are. All alone in the greatest museum in Franchia. Think of all the things we could be doing here, and yet we stand arguing in a hall. You could always kiss me to into silence.”

For a brief moment, I let myself think of all the things we could be doing—against this very wall, on one of the velvet couches, upstairs in the Sun King’s old bed. And yet . . . I couldn’t.

“My life is really complicated right now, Vale.”

“Yes, and that is why it’s good to have someone on your side.”

“You’re already on my side.”

“But I could be on your inside, too.”

A fire burst into life in my belly and radiated outward. I knew what he meant, but it was the double entendre that really caught me. And maybe it would have been easy to give in. But I knew how relationships happened in Sang, and no matter what I had thought about romance from the confines of the caravan, I wasn’t ready to give up my autonomy and start letting him call the shots. Especially when his first demand would be that I stop seeing Lenoir and drinking absinthe.

But I couldn’t tell him that, so I chickened out and went for the cheap shot.

“Maybe once I’ve found Cherie. But until then . . .”

“Until then, you dance on your side of the line.” He dug tight fists into his eyes. “And I dance along with you. From the other side.”

“I have responsibilities.”

“You keep saying that. As if I don’t know. Mon dieu, bébé, do you hear yourself?” He rubbed his head as he paced back and forth, more agitated than I’d yet seen him. “I have halted my life to help you. I have not been back to my tribe since I found you. I haven’t seen my horse. Do you think I am a boy playing a game?”

“I do, actually. You’re using me to avoid your real responsibilities.”

“You are the only thing I’ve ever cared about besides horses! You are my responsibility! So do not toy with me, because I am not a toy.”

His passion shook me, and I was torn between running away and clawing off his clothes to screw him senseless on the floor of the Louvre. But I did neither. “I’m not used to you being serious, Vale.”

“Perhaps I hide my true intentions behind jests because in truth, bébé, the way I feel about you terrifies me. But you don’t wish to hear that.” He pulled out a pocket watch and checked the time. “But for now, let me return you to your giant, lonely bed, as I know you have . . . business tomorrow.”

I snorted. “Oh, so you get to sleep with all the girls at Paradis, but if I don’t fall at your feet and do whatever you say, you get to call me a whore? That’s fair.”

Vale’s jaw dropped, and I’d never seen him look so caught out. “Bébé, no. That’s not what I—”

I put up a hand. “That’s exactly what you meant. You imply it almost every day. And I’ve never slept with any of them, never even kissed them. So let me do my job, and I’ll let you do yours. Which way is the bathroom with the ladder?”

Giving me a long, charged, measuring look, he pointed down the hall. “I might hide behind humor, but you, ma chère, hide behind cruelty.”

I started walking with my back as straight as a curtain rod, and he followed. We didn’t talk all the way through the Louvre, which had lost its midnight luster for me. Down through the hole in the floor, we were silent. Tromping through the sewers, we didn’t say a word.

And I hated it. God, how I hated it. But he hadn’t apologized. And he needed to.

Conveyances were scarce, but at least the one we finally landed had more room in it, which meant we weren’t forced to touch. The air was too thick with resentment for words, anyway. Still, he insisted on seeing me to the back door of Paradis.

“Thanks for a shitty date in a sewer,” I said.

“And thank you for ruining a lovely experience in a romantic museum.”

We stared at each other, breathing audibly through our noses.

“Weren’t we supposed to go see some shady friend of yours and bleed me out?” I spat.

He shook his head, smiling the saddest little smile. “It was only pretense, bébé. Just an excuse to enjoy your company. I was going to take you out for a stroll. There is no way I would put your blud into another man’s hands. Not now.”

“Well, why didn’t you fucking say so? You romantic idiot!” I stormed upstairs, hating the way my hat was bobbing stupidly and even more the way I felt like a spoiled, silly child.

“Good night, bébé,” I heard just before I slammed my door.

There was something on my pillow, and I picked it up with hands still hot with anger.

“Merde.”

It was a small book. “The Elements of Signing with Style” was printed in gold on the cover, along with a hand making the Okay sign.

I ran downstairs to screw his brains out and confess my feelings, in that order.

The hall was empty.