Wicked After Midnight

29

But I recognized it. The silver thing looked like Wolverine’s claws. As Lenoir spun, hands curling into talons, Vale hurtled out of the darkness and punched him square in the teeth. Even from where I lounged, immobile and terrified, it seemed a foolish move, busting his knuckles into a Bludman’s mouth, until I smelled something sharp.

Vale’s blood.

Lenoir reflexively licked his lips as he ripped the claws from his side, painting the floor with blud. “You idiot. Do you have any idea who you’re dealing with?”

Vale shook his hand out, sending splatters of his own blood everywhere. Red danced in my eyes, spots and streaks like the scattered stains left by the white-haired paintbrush Lenoir had dropped on the carpet.

“I did not know you were a Bludman, at first.” Vale straightened and walked over to the crouched and wounded artist as if inspecting the painting. “Rather lucky for me, don’t you agree?”

Lenoir had one arm over the three puncture wounds dribbling red through his jacket and one hand to his mouth, scrubbing at his pale lips as if he could erase the blood he’d already ingested. “Abyssinian,” he wheezed. His skin was going over pale, his nostrils wide and his eyes all black with widening pupils.

“Tell me how to save her, and I will give you a gift.” Reaching into his black waistcoat, Vale pulled out a tiny glass vial that glistened metallic gold. “An antidote.”

“No antidote.” Lenoir hissed. “For what you are.”

“But of course there is. We just keep it a secret so bloodsuckers like you will avoid us.” He held up the vial, just within snatching reach of Lenoir, who made a clumsy grab for it. Vale danced back. “Talk first.”

Lenoir’s legs buckled, and he fell to the floor, curled around like a dying centipede, legs twitching.

Vale kneeled over him, wiggling the little bottle back and forth.

Finally, Lenoir sucked in a long breath and exhaled two whispered words. “Burn it.”

He reached for the glass antidote bottle, but Vale ignored him completely and grabbed a paintbrush from Lenoir’s jar of spirits. An evil stench went up when he stuck it in the fire, and it got even worse when he held the flaming brush to the painting of me. Lenoir let out an unholy wail as bright blue flames licked over the canvas and caught, the entire thing suddenly alight and crackling.

“Antidote,” he hissed. “Antidote!”

But Vale was by my side, taking my cold hand, rubbing it between his own. “Still in there, bébé?” he asked, his pinprick pupils telling the truth of his concern.

For all his jaunty swaggering, the boy was so scared I could smell the fear rolling off him in waves, although, strangely, I couldn’t smell him. I took a shuddering breath and felt my fangs dig into my lips. A few seconds more, and I was able to nod my head, just a bit. My eyes blinked and reopened on a vision of myself, a work of ultimate beauty, aflame and dripping paint and belching smoke. He must have turned the easel to face me so I could watch it burn. Vale touched my face, stroked my hair, flexed each of my hands, and ran thumbs down the soles of my feet until they feebly kicked. The ice that had run in my veins ebbed, leaving me warm, as if I’d been breathing in the cold and was finally indoors again.

I sat up straight and stared down at Lenoir. Vale nodded once and turned to him with the antidote, but I finally found my words.

“Don’t give it to him yet.”

All eyes locked on me.

“Demi?” Vale asked gently.

“Tell us where the Malediction Club meets.”

Lenoir was foaming at the mouth now, red bubbles leaking from his dry white lips. He laughed, his head spasming and his eyes going mad and glittery. “Wasn’t. The deal.” He wheezed a laugh. “Antidote!”

Vale sighed and kneeled. “I did promise him.”

I was too tired to protest and leaned on the chair’s arm, too drained to hold myself upright. Surely there would be some way to compel Lenoir, if we kept him alive. Vale unstoppered the vial carefully and used the dropper to squeeze a stream of golden liquid into Lenoir’s mouth. The once-handsome painter lapped at it like a starving dog but quickly spit it back out, coughing up red foam.

“You said. There was an antidote.”

Vale grinned. “Oh, there is one. That’s just not it.” He licked the stopper and scrunched up his face. “Oh, la. It would seem that’s my aunt Merle’s famous hot-pepper sauce. We consider it the antidote to poor cooking. Spicy, n’est-ce pas?”

Lenoir uncurled and straightened in a creepy rictus dance that resembled an exorcism. His trembling hand went for his pocket, but Vale stomped on it, grinding it into the floor.

“None of your blud magic, monsieur.”

After clenching his teeth and trembling for a moment as he fought to get his hand from under Vale’s boot, Lenoir pinned him with his indigo eyes, the veins bloody and wet and starting to seep into the white. “Going to curse you. For lying to me.”

“Think back carefully, monsieur. I did not lie.”

Lenoir breathed out, spewing bloody froth. His eyes went lucid and crafty then, and he began speaking in Sanguine, slurry and slow. Before he could get out more than a couple of words, Vale kicked him in the throat, and he choked and fell onto his back.

“Of course, if you’ll tell us how to find the Malediction Club, I have the real antidote right here.”

A twist of paper appeared in Vale’s fingers, but Lenoir was past caring. With the last of his energy, he pointed at the smoldering painting, then at me, then drew his trembling finger across his own throat. His hand fell on his crushed neck as his head lolled sideways on the carpet, blood spilling from mouth and eyes and bubbling from the holes in his stomach, which would have healed themselves quickly if not for Vale’s half-Abyssinian blood.

“But—how will we find it now? If he’s dead?” I shuddered and sobbed. “How will we find Cherie?”

With an angry growl, Vale rushed to a heavy desk in the corner, flicking on the green banker’s light and shuffling through the drawers and papers, throwing everything he found onto the ground. “There must be something here, somewhere. An invitation. A bill. A card. Something.”

I tried to stand, to hurry to his side, but I could barely move. As it was, I was able to pull myself up holding the back of the chair, then collapse against the windowsill and shuffle along the wall, grabbing each warm sconce like Tarzan reaching for vines. Vale had pulled all the drawers out of the desk by the time I got there, and I fell gratefully to the ground in a puddle of skirts to paw through the spilled papers.

Vale took his search to a series of deep shelves that held rolls of canvas. As he pulled them out and threw them onto the floor, I untied the leather thongs to let the fabric unfurl. I saw fruit, dogs, creepy dolls, cathedrals, haystacks, dead rabbits, piles of bones, people on trains. It was as if he’d plundered an art history book and copied every painting ever, trying out styles from van Gogh, Monet, and even Picasso. They had irregular sides, as if maybe he’d sliced them out of frames. None was signed; hell, maybe they were originals of Sang versions of the artists I revered. With Lenoir dead, there was no way to know.

As Vale moved through the shelves from left to right, the paintings got better and more nuanced. Finally, the figures began to appear, graceful daimon bodies caught in repose or ballerinas holding their legs aloft. There were nudes sprinkled in, too. The first few daimon girls had tails, but after that, the tails disappeared, and the paintings graciously neglected that part of the daimons’ anatomy, perhaps to avoid the inconvenient scars that must have remained after removing so large a limb.

“Oh, mon dieu.” Vale held an uncurled canvas in front of him so that all I could see was the blank, khaki-colored back.

“Did you find something?” I asked, trying to stand and barely making it to my knees.

“Not something. Someone.”

He turned the painting around to show me, and the breath caught in my throat.

It was Bea.

The painting had never been finished. The background was washed in red with hastily sketched-in details, and it was a more intimate portrait than I was familiar with, based on his work. His name in Sang was Lenoir, so close to Renoir. But most of his famous paintings were based on those by Toulouse Lautrec, bright and messy visions of cabarets and dancing girls and ballerinas. This one showed Bea dancing in a feathery ivory ballgown, her hair coiled up and one arm raised. The look on her face was more dreamy and relaxed than I’d ever seen her, not at all guarded and jumpy. In fact, now that I considered it, many of Lenoir’s paintings shared the same unfocused gaze.

It had to be the drink.

For me, it was blood and absinthe. For the daimons, perhaps he mixed his powders into one of their fiery brews. But I understood instantly that Bea had once stood before Lenoir, just as I had, and fallen under his spell. The only difference was that her painting had never been finished, while mine now smoldered on a stand. What I didn’t understand was why she’d never said more about him than her vague, general warnings. Her fear had been real, but she should have told me the truth. I glanced at my portrait; I’d totally forgotten that a fire burned across the room. It was merry and crackling, just about to reach his bottles of turps and tubes of paint lined up along the easel’s edge. The painter himself lay on the floor, huddled up like a smushed bug, his hair fallen to a pile on the floor around his head and his black lips drawn back over ivory fangs set in shriveled gums.

Vale rerolled Bea’s painting, stuffed it down the back of his collar, and reached down to collect me.

“Fire’s working fast. Time to go, bébé.”

I waved him away. “I know. Get his pin first. We might need it.”

Vale gave me a determined nod and snatched away the damning bit of gold from the painter’s jacket. I half expected Lenoir to bolt upright like Lestat and try to strangle the brigand to death, but there was nothing left in the shell of his body. When I held out my arms, Vale gently gathered me to his chest and hurried away from the growing fire. As he rushed down the stairs trailing my chocolate dress, I caught a last glimpse of the Siamese cats on the landing, curled together like parentheses, dead. Their downy white fur had fallen to the floor, their black lips twisted back over fangs, just like their master.

Instead of heading for the front door where I had always entered, Vale plunged into the darkness of a spare kitchen, nearly banging his head on hanging copper pots.

“Where are we going?”

“Into the alleys, the same way I came in. Trust a brigand, bébé, you don’t want to be seen stepping out a rich dead man’s front door.”

The courtyard out back was far less fancy than the sidewalk in front, and Vale neatly sidestepped rubbish bins that rankled of turpentine and neatsfoot oil. He navigated the back alleys like a streetwise cat, keeping us entirely away from gaslights and gendarmes and conveyances, carrying me as if I weighed nothing. I tried to speak once, but he quieted me with a quick peck on the lips and a wink.

“Brigand rule two: if you don’t wish to get caught, be silent,” he whispered against my ear.

I didn’t recognize the route he took to Paradis, not until we entered the elephant’s empty courtyard.

“Vale, I can’t go in. I ran away from the prince after he’d . . .”

“Paid for you?” He gave me a dark look as he scooted sideways down a narrow alley. “I know. I watched. You were magnificent.”

I drew back, which was hard, considering he was carrying me and I was still nearly numb. “You were eavesdropping?”

He shook his head. “I was coming to your room to visit, but then I saw you dressed in that . . . scrap, pacing around like a bludrat in an oven. When he arrived, I watched to make sure he didn’t hurt you.”

“But I went out the window and didn’t see you.”

“I can be rather quick when I need to be.”

Placing me gently to lean against the alley’s bricks, he tapped a broken edge, and to my great surprise, a knee-high door swung open on a crawlspace. I breathed in, always distrustful of small places, but all I caught was the scent of cold stone, old wood, and, oddly enough, hard liquor.

“Can you crawl?”

I flexed my arms and knees. “I think so. Blood would help.”

“Crawl to the end of the tunnel, and you can have all the blood you want.”

My mouth watered, and I dropped to my knees and wiggled into the hole with Vale’s face pressed against my bustle.

“It’s a straight shot, bébé. There is one turn-off that goes to the main hall of Paradis, but that hatch is probably sealed. Just keep going.” I nodded, knowing he couldn’t see it, and focused on forcing my sluggish limbs to move. “Best view on Sang, and I can’t see a damn thing,” he muttered behind me.

My muscles limbered up with movement, although my knees and skirts were suffering against the rough boards. When Vale murmured, “You should be able to stand up now,” I pulled myself up the wall and leaned for a moment, catching my breath.

“You’d better not be lying about that blood.”

“I never lie about going to the bar, bébé.”

A dim light appeared up ahead, and then I realized we were in part of the tunnel Bea had taken me through that first morning at Paradis when they had neglected to feed me. I almost drooled, thinking about the supply of blood they’d brought in once I’d proven myself a star. When I found the familiar door, I unhooked the latch and peeked into the bar and the empty theater beyond. My keen Bludman’s senses came in handy; there was no one there at all, but I could feel the warmth just beyond, the girls snoring in their beds upstairs. But one thing still bothered me.

“Why can’t I smell you?”

Vale chuckled. “Magic, bébé. A brigand’s secret among telling noses. Now, drink.”

So I finally knew how he’d managed to sneak up on me. But considering it had just saved my life, I wasn’t about to pick a fight.

Breathing deeply, I went straight to the low hum of a brand-new, still shiny blood warmer. Dozens of vials waited inside, each labeled with a fancy parchment tag showing the vintage. I couldn’t have cared less about quality and grabbed the first two, popping their corks with both thumbs and guzzling them like a baby with a bottle. It was gourmet stuff, probably taken off virgin blue bloods, and it washed away the spicy funk of magic and anise from Lenoir’s potion. I tossed the empty vials onto the counter and grabbed two more while Vale watched, bemused. I eyed the bowl of oranges I’d noticed on my first trip back here.

“Those aren’t blood oranges, are they? I could use something sweet as a chaser.”

His grin deepened. “They aren’t oranges at all.”

I dropped the vials and stared at him.

“Wait, what?”

He plucked an orange and held it up. When he rapped on it with his fist, the sound was hollow. He held it out to me, stem first, and I noticed a circular etching in the peel. When I pulled the stem, it revealed the orange as hollow.

“If a gentleman wishes to spend the night with a lady, he comes to the bar and buys an orange. If he offers it to a girl and she accepts it, that means she has agreed. When the deed is done, she keeps the orange and brings it back here to get paid.”

“But I’ve never seen a girl carrying an orange . . .”

He chuckled. “Would you keep a symbol like that where anyone could see it? Or steal it? No, they mostly hide them until they cash them in in the morning. Most likely, you are still asleep when that happens.”

“How much do they cost?”

His eyebrows rose significantly. “I wouldn’t know. I have never paid.” He jerked his chin at the pile of vials on the bar. “You have had enough?”

I stretched, cracked my neck, and gave him a wicked grin. “I could always use a little more.”

“And I would be glad to take you up on that soon. But for now, I think we must wake Bea and discover what she knows. As soon as the world understands that Lenoir is dead and his studio burned, the Malediction Club might move headquarters. Because after what Lenoir said, you agree that Cherie is there, yes?”

I could only nod.

“Come on, then. There is still time, if we hurry. Something tells me this club stays wicked long after midnight.”

I was curious about whether he knew a secret way up to the bedrooms, but we took the usual hallway and stairs.

“What about Charline and Sylvie?”

“They’re both absinthe addicts. Hence why it’s forbidden. Probably collapsed in one of their rooms next to a bottle. Sisters, you know.”

Upstairs, the low-burning gaslights revealed a new sign on the door where my own name had hung just a few short hours ago. Looked like La Goulue would get her chance to rule Paradis next, and she was welcome to it. No sounds came from Mel and Bea’s room, and I hesitated to knock, knowing that whatever Bea had to say, she was going to be even more upset than she had been earlier, when Mel had asked us to leave.

Before I could get up my nerve, Vale knocked gently. There was rustling inside, and the door opened just a sliver.

“It’s late,” Mel said, worried eyes darting from me to Vale. “And we’re not allowed to talk to her.”

“We must speak with Bea,” Vale said. “It is imperative.”

She chewed her green lip, still streaked with red paint. “Oh, la. I think that’s a bad idea.”

“Is Blaise with you?”

“No. He’s with Blue tonight.”

Vale nodded to himself and pulled the canvas tube from his collar and unrolled it. I held out the gold pin.

“I know it is bad, Mel, and I hate to ask. But Lenoir tried to kill Demi tonight, and we killed him instead. We have only a few hours to find the Malediction Club and shut it down. Permanently.”

Mel’s skin shivered over to a pale and sickly light green, her eyes going wide and scared as she stared at Lenoir’s painting of Bea. Finally, she took a shuddering breath and stood back to let us in. Bea was a blue smudge by a bedside lamp turned low, her arms spotted under a colorful afghan. Before she could sit up enough to withdraw her hands and sign anything, Vale held up the painting. She slumped to the side, pale blue against her white pillow, her shoulders heaving as she shook her head back and forth in useless negation.

Mel crossed the room on bare feet and curled around Bea, stroking her gently and murmuring to her in Franchian.

Vale’s voice was gentler than I’d ever heard it, as if he stood over a newborn foal, something spindly and easily snapped. “Bea, we’re so sorry, chère. We need to know about Lenoir and the Malediction Club.”

She shook her head, her eyes squeezed shut. No no no no no.

Mel caught her hands and held them up. “Yes, love. Yes. You have to. Did they do this to you?” One green finger gestured to Bea’s throat.

Bea’s hands went up and clenched, and her face screwed up as if she were were caught between trying to throw up and trying to hold something in. Her teeth chattered and clacked, her eyes starting to bulge as some secret, silent battle raged in her chest.

Vale exhaled hard beside me, his pale eyes filled with grief and worry. His hands went to fists at his sides, as if he could feel Bea’s pain. And then his fingers snapped open. “Wait. Let me try something.”

He looked from Bea’s painting to her tortured face, then thrust the canvas into the banked fire in their grate, where it caught with the same blue sparks as mine had. Bea’s eyes flew open, her hands to her heart, and Mel wrapped her arms firmly around Bea’s shoulders, their skin merging into teal.

The room was silent but for the painting’s crackling, all of us transfixed as the dancing figure dissolved into ash. When it collapsed into the grate, Bea let out a silent but massive sigh, shook Mel off, and sat up against the headboard with a determined set to her chin and a spark to her eyes I’d never seen before. They exchanged a glance, and then Bea’s hands began to fly, fast and furious, Mel’s voice soft and halting at first, then hurrying to keep up and shaking with rage.

“She could not say it before now, could not communicate anything about Lenoir and the Malediction Club. There was magic in the painting to stop her, imperfect but clever. She is sorry that she was unable to tell you.” Mel stroked Bea’s arm fondly, tears in her eyes. “Oh, la. Mon amour, of course.”

Bea flapped her hand at Mel, who said, “I’m sorry. I know it’s important. But you’re important, too, love.” Mel chuckled and dashed away tears. “Bea says it happened eight years ago. She had just come to Paris, still had her voice. She had no plans to join the cabaret, was talented enough to perform on the true stage. Lenoir heard her practicing in the Tuileries one day and came back another time to sketch her and listen to her sing.” Her hand landed on Bea’s knee, soft as a dove. “She had a beautiful voice, then, and was going to be a star in the opera. Lenoir sent a card, invited her to sit for a painting. He wasn’t famous yet, just rich and mysterious. She went, and he gave her daimon drinks and told her she was beautiful. She felt homesick and alone and enjoyed the peace she found in his atelier.”

Something twisted in my gut. I knew exactly how she felt.

Bea stopped a moment, her hands fallen in her lap. As she gazed into the pitch-black night, beyond the window Mel’s fingers traced her shoulders and neck and back, one going lower to rub what I suspected was the large, painful scar that had once carried a tail.

“Then, one night, he put something strange in her drink. She fell asleep. When she woke up, she was in a . . . a dungeon. Somewhere deep underground, cold, all stone. Looked as old as the catacombs, maybe older. There were skulls everywhere, and it was very dark, and she was so scared. She could hear bludrats eating something and the sounds of women crying and screaming. Soon men in strange, pointed masks and long black cloaks came. They took her down, they . . .”

Mel trailed off, let out a few hiccupping sobs. Vale’s eyes met mine; we knew exactly who those men were. But Bea was intent, her signs angry and forceful.

“I’m sorry, ma chère, I just can’t . . . it hurts me to think of that happening to you.” Mel scooted closer to hug Bea, but Bea shooed her away and gestured. “Okay. Okay. I’ll finish,” Mel said.

“Bea feeds on comfort and joy. When she was hanging in the dungeon, she was starving. There was no comfort or joy. So when the men took her down—she could smell they were men, you see. Human men. Didn’t have to see their faces or bodies to know they used the same soaps and colognes as the cabaret clientele. But they took her down and used her, and the only way to stay alive was to feed on their lust and passion for hurting her.” She shook her head, her eyes pleading with us. “It was barely enough. You can’t understand how awful that is, for a daimon. For a woman. It’s the worst kind of torture.”

I nodded numbly.

And Vale stepped closer. “How did you escape?”

Bea tapped her throat as Mel translated.

“She had singing magic, but the men kept her gagged and her tail bound. They didn’t amputate for the opera. One night, she managed to work the gag loose. She sang the bludrats to her, had them fetch powders and potions from the men’s laboratory. She was able to dissolve her manacles and get a few other girls down before someone came to check on them—one of the dark daimons who worked for the wealthy humans. When she started singing her magic, he took her voice.” Bea’s slender blue hands circled her throat, her mouth opening and closing like a fish. “He knew what she was. They fought, and he killed one of the other girls. Bea wounded him and managed to escape with one other daimon. They wandered the catacombs for days, trying to keep each other alive. Bea found enough comfort in being away from her captors and having another girl with her. But without her voice, Bea couldn’t do enough to sustain the other girl, who needed lust and happiness to survive. She starved and withered before they could find sunlight.”

Bea doubled over, sobbing silently, her shoulders heaving and the white of her chemise splattered with tears. But her fingers kept moving, even as they trembled.

“She had to leave the other girl’s body in the darkness. The next day, she stumbled into the ladder to Paradis. Blue was the one who found her and took her in and found the books on sign language so she could talk. I went with her to have her tail removed so she could stay here. And when we found out Bea was pregnant a few months later, everyone helped out. We never knew . . .” Mel pulled Bea close. “She wouldn’t tell us where she came from, who Blaise’s father was, why she couldn’t talk. I had always assumed she was born mute; it never mattered to me. But I understand, ma chère. I understand why you wouldn’t tell.” Because of the magic. Because they would kill me, Bea signed. They would kill Blaise.

“How would they know?” Vale asked.

Bea sat up very straight, eyes burning. Her fingers spelled one word. Auguste.

“Auguste is one of them?”

Her hands moved jerkily, as if she was tearing flesh into strips.

“Auguste was the daimon who tried to stop her from escaping. A few years after she arrived here and had Blaise, he showed up to sweep the floors and tend bar. He never spoke to her. But he watched her. And he . . .”

Mel’s jaw dropped, and she grasped Bea’s hands. “He uses her when he wants to. In return for not telling the Malediction Club she’s here. Oh, Beatrice. Oh, why didn’t you say?”

The girls fell on each other, crying, one loudly and one silently.

Vale stepped closer, slipped an arm around me, and pulled my body against him as if I, too, fed on comfort. And it did help. Even with the blood I’d guzzled downstairs, I still felt wobbly, especially after hearing Bea’s story. We now knew we had a unified enemy: the Malediction Club was behind Cherie’s abduction on the road, my attempted kidnapping in the elephant, Lenoir’s plot to steal my soul, and Bea’s abuse and the theft of her voice.

“You know we will kill Auguste when we find them, yes?”

Bea gave Vale a wobbly, determined smile and signed something short and sharp.

“She says.” Mel cleared her throat. “ ‘Kill them all.’ ”

I couldn’t be silent anymore. “We killed Lenoir and couldn’t find anything in his studio that had an address or a map. And we couldn’t hunt through Fermin’s lab. Do you know any other members? Can we question Auguste?”

Bea snorted and shook her head no, and my hopes fell. But then she signed something

In a very quiet voice, Mel said, “She knows where they meet. She couldn’t tell us, but she has always known.”

“How?”

Bea tapped her throat again.

“Because she left her magic there.”

“So you could lead us there?” Vale shifted, stretching his shoulders and twitching his fingers as if longing to feel his claw in his fist.

“She says . . . you don’t understand. They’re too powerful. The richest men in Paris. Barons and chirurgeons and gendarmes and barristers. They’re everywhere. They have money and magic and weapons and servants, and they’re accustomed to taking what they want. By force.”

Bea’s slender arms gestured to each of us in turn. Sitting there, raw and empty of tears, she reminded me of a plant that had been crushed but kept growing anyway. “The four of us against the Malediction Club? It’s laughable,” Mel said for her.

All I could think about was Cherie, shackled to a stone wall, deep underground, maybe dying. Broken bodies, crushed minds, empty hearts, all kept like pets by men who’d forgotten that women were people, if they’d ever known at all.

“I bet every girl in this cabaret has lost a friend or someone she loved,” I murmured.

Mel nodded. “Oh, la. So many girls disappear. We never know what happens to them.”

“We know now,” Vale said.

“And if we hurry, before they know we know, maybe we can do something about it.”

They all stopped to stare at me.

“Get up, and get dressed. Put on your thickest corset and heaviest boots. I’ve got an idea.”