Wicked After Midnight

3

I intended to punish my companions with my silence, but Mademoiselle Caprice spoke enough for all three of us. As elegant and aloof as she’d been in the caravan, the daimon changed utterly once we were over the first hill. She was an endless font of dry stories, anecdotes about life in Toulouse, and tips for not getting drained by big-city gendarmes, the Franchian version of police. In Sangland, the Coppers had evolved to keep the Bludmen down, but in Franchia, the gendarmes worked to promote peace among the daimons, the humans, and the few rare Bludmen within the city walls. But they still carried seawater guns, just in case.

“Such fortunate girls you are, to have a champion like Monsieur Stain. The university is beautiful—lovely buildings and soaring windows and the very best professors. You can study art or music or dancing.”

“Or business or bone setting or law,” I added, bristling for the twentieth time since she’d opened her mouth. No matter that I’d been in Sang for more than half a decade, I still had trouble swallowing the misogyny with a polite smile. And considering that my livelihood no longer demanded that I play nice with customers, I didn’t have to take it anymore.

She laughed brightly. “Oh la la. Luc did say you were a bold little thing.”

“What’s the city like?” Cherie asked.

The trunk conveyance stopped just then, and Caprice hopped gracefully down to rewind it with arms corded with muscles. When it was ready again, Cherie made a move to take her turn. But Caprice beat her to it, hopping back up to ride sidesaddle as we took off again.

“Ruin is like all Franchian cities: built with order and loveliness in mind. White stone, stained glass, statuary. We daimons require that things be beautiful, you know. Not like those wretched Pinkies behind their walls, living lives of fear. Although I do hear the Bludmen’s cities of Muscovy and Constantinoble are equally beautiful. How fortunate that your people and mine need not grub in the dirt for sustenance.”

“Do you not eat anything, then?” Cherie asked, before blushing and looking down. “If the question is not too personal.”

Caprice flapped an elegant hand at her. “Eating is a messy business, is it not? As plants derive nutrition from the sun, so do we daimons draw energy from emotions. There are different classes of daimon, but you can’t tell by looking what a daimon requires for health. I feed on passion. Some depend on comfort, happiness, awe. The dark daimons hunger for sadness, hopelessness, rage, pain. They cannot help craving such things, but it does tend to turn them to malevolent pursuits. Unfortunate, really, but they are the exception. Most daimons feast on forms of happiness and lust, of which there is always plenty. And we do drink, as you do, to relax and cavort. Our drinks are mostly made of fermented flowers and magic. But we don’t need it. It’s more like liquor is to the Pinkies.”

“How very fascinating,” Cherie murmured, and I realized I’d never asked Luc what he fed on. Considering his lackluster skills in the bedroom and the way he followed me around mooning, it had to be comfort. Before she’d hooked up with Marco, Jacinda once told me about an affair she’d had with a daimon in Paris, and it had given me high hopes for the dancing mistress’s son. But Luc had been a complete disappointment.

I had to find one of these daimon men who fed on passion.

“So the cabarets are as much for the girls as for the audience, then?” I asked.

Caprice leaned back to gaze at the airships bobbing over Dover as they played hide-and-seek with the low-hanging clouds.

“You would think that. But they are often required to do more than they originally bargained for. The wealthiest and most powerful men of Franchia are humans, for what daimon cares for all that work and responsibility? We have ways of keeping the laws in line with our ways, but the cabaret audiences are mostly Pinky gents. And that sort of man, so accustomed to taking what he wants, will not pay to be teased again and again unless he eventually gets his reward, non?”

“That sounds wretched.” Cherie crossed her arms and shivered. “At least Criminy keeps us safe.”

“Ah, yes. Monsieur Stain is a truly unique creature. You would not find such care in Mortmartre, no matter how delightful the show looks from the outside.”

“How do you know?” I asked.

Her skin had always appeared red, but now it shivered over briefly into an angrier, glowing burgundy shot through with stripes like a tiger’s. Luc had explained to me once that every daimon was born a certain color and wore it when resting or not concentrating, but they could change colors and patterns like chameleons to varying degrees, both on purpose and when particularly affected by emotions. Luc himself had changed to a bizarre fuchsia every time he’d kissed me, which startled the crap out of me the first time.

Caprice closed her eyes, concentrating until the furious stripes melted back into velvety red. “I know because my father sold me to a cabaret when I was only sixteen to pay for his gambling debts. It happens often, when a daimon hungers for anticipation and chance but isn’t rewarded with luck. Let us say only that I was fed well but heartsick, and I will stay with Monsieur Stain as long as he will have me.” Her face was pointed toward the airships, but her mind was clearly in the past and troubled. She lay back on the trunk and closed her eyes, trusting the conveyance to carry her down the straight lines toward the port.

“See, Demi? I told you Paris was horrid.”

I flapped a hand at Cherie, just as Caprice had. “You forget: we’re not daimons. It would be different for a Bludman.”

“Everything is,” Cherie grumbled.

I slung an arm around her waist and walked in step with her. Speeding up the pace, we hurried ahead of Caprice, who was emitting soft snores. “You’re looking at it the wrong way, honey. We’re out of the caravan. We have a little money. We can do anything we want to. The world is our oyster.”

Her gray eyes went wide and shocked as she stopped and pulled away from me.

“Demi, no. No! I don’t know what an oyster is, and I don’t want to. You’re the one who’s looking at it the wrong way. We’re being given the chance of a lifetime. Do you have any idea how rare it is for girls like us to go to university? I didn’t want to be part of this plan, but now I’ve never felt so grateful. Don’t botch it up just because you always want more.”

“Of course I always want more. A hungry animal lives longer.”

Her gloved hands went reflexively to her stomach. “I almost starved to death as a child in Freesia. I don’t want to be hungry ever again.”

Just ahead, at Dover, all the possibilities in the world waited, tethered to the docks by long ropes. Mademoiselle Caprice would soon haggle our passage to Callais, probably on one of the large, fast passenger airships, where we’d huddle on the open deck and try to keep hold of our hats. Then we would spend our first night in Franchia at an inn before taking a carriage to Ruin. I dreaded spending more than six hours trapped in a tiny, airless, jouncing box with humans, even if Criminy had given us a vial of salve to rub on our collars to lessen the smell of their blood. The bottled goo stank of Vicks VapoRub mixed with perfume, and for me, at least, hunger would be less painful. I was better at controlling the blood hunger than Cherie, who’d been raised far away from humans and, unlike me, had never been one of them.

The trunk’s clockwork key had worn down, and it slowly rolled to a halt behind us. Caprice sat up like a zombie coming awake, rubbing her eyes with red fingers. She hopped down from the trunk with a dancer’s flair and stretched, cracking her back and settling her voluminous skirts.

“We will all walk from here, my dears. Demi, pull the trunk along manually. We cannot have the people of Callais eyeing our goods until they’ve paid, non?”

I was glad to pull the handle and lag behind Caprice and Cherie. As I watched their skirts sway and listened to the sort of polite conversation that bored me to blud tears, the airships played peekaboo with my hopes. We were so close to freedom. And I didn’t want to go to Ruin. No matter what Caprice said, my heart hungered for the cabarets of Paris.

Cherie never liked my ideas at first. But eventually, she always admitted that I was right.

She’d thank me later.

The airship ride was exhilarating, even if we weren’t allowed to stand up for fear that our skirts would fill with air and carry us over the railing and into the fatally salty sea below. Cherie buried her face in my shoulder, and I wrapped my arm around her and inhaled the brisk, briny air. I’d loved the ocean before becoming a Bludman. Now it could kill me. Half my senses wanted to suck in the sea spray, and the other half wanted to hold my breath until we were safely on the other side of the Channel.

No one seemed to have noticed that we weren’t human, which was helpful. I’d seen a couple of Bludmen being abused in the streets of Dover, and it took everything I had not to bare my fangs and come to their rescue. Thanks to Criminy’s ability to forge papers and Antonin’s costuming prowess, we were safe from being flogged by some shaky-legged old Pinky man with a monocle. But it was hard for a Bludman to pretend to be anything less than an apex predator, and I was glad to get off the streets and into the privacy of the boardinghouse Caprice had selected for us. Not too fancy, not run-down, and just a block away from the depot, where carriages would line up in the morning to take us to Ruin. The daimon certainly served her purpose as a chaperone, as I still had trouble converting coppers and silvers into francs in my head and had no idea how to tell an inn from an apartment until she explained what the daimon symbols painted on the signs meant. I paid special attention to her lessons.

Upstairs at the inn, I fell onto one of the three narrow beds and kicked off my boots, grateful to be horizontal. Cherie went straight for the train case of blood and downed two vials, handing me a third. I sipped it carefully without sitting up.

“I’m going down for supper, mes filles.” Mademoiselle Caprice smoothed her glossy hair and straightened her dress. “Drink your blood, and get some sleep. We shall leave at dawn.”

“Yes, mademoiselle,” Cherie said.

“Good luck finding some sexy victims,” I added.

Caprice shot me a glare. “You should take care to curb your attitude before you reach university, my dear. The professors have been known to strike deserving miscreants with a cane. Bludmen are not exempt from manners.”

As soon as she was gone, I sat up and held out my hand to Cherie, so she could see what nestled in my palm.

“Demi. You didn’t.” She poked the pile of coins with a finger.

I grinned. “Criminy taught me well.”

“We can’t use it. Even if I agreed, even if I wanted to go to Paris, all the carriages in Callais leave from the same place. She would find us in a heartbeat.”

Tucking the coins back into my pocket, I sighed deeply. “I guess you’re right. No point in trying to give her the slip. Oh, well. Good night, Cherie,”

She looked me up and down. “You’re not going to change into your nightclothes?”

“Of course not. Good Pinky girls don’t change in inns. Who knows if they have bludrats?”

“Excellent point. You’re finally starting to be sensible.”

She lay down on the bed beside mine, fully clothed, and blinked sleepily at me.

“It’s strange, going to bed this way. I’m so used to being in the top bunk with you below me. And now you’re staring at me. And we’re in Franchia.”

I rolled over, showing her my back. “Creepy staring problem solved. Don’t worry, honey. Everything will be better in the morning.”

But I hadn’t shown her what was in my other pocket. And I wasn’t going to sleep yet, either.

“Cherie, wake up. We have to hurry.” I rolled her shoulder gently and glanced over her at Mademoiselle Caprice, who let out a roaring snore.

“Why? Are we late for the carriage?”

“We will be.” I slipped a vial into her hand and guided it, uncorked, to her lips.

She chugged it agreeably and blinked at me. “Where’s Mademoiselle Caprice?”

I stifled a giggle. “Sleeping off too many daimon drinks, I suppose.”

But Cherie knew me too well. Her eyes went to slits. “What did you do, Demi?”

“Well, Cherie, I might have brought a bag of Criminy’s famous sleeping powder. And I might have used it on her after she went to sleep. And I might have grabbed our papers and carriage tickets from her reticule. And she might be sleeping for another day, at least, because I might have used more powder than was necessary.” I held up our forged papers in one hand and a sack of coins in the other and waggled my eyebrows.

Cherie groaned and stood, looking down at our insensate chaperone with her usual concern. “Oh, dear Aztarte. You are a horrible person and a bad influence, and Criminy is going to kill us, and we’re just going to sit right here and wait until she wakes up and pretend like nothing ever happened, because I really don’t want Criminy to kill us.”

“Criminy has to find us before he can kill us, and he’s not going to find us.” I smiled and patted her shoulder. “At least, not until we’re the most celebrated act in the cabarets of Mortmartre.”

“No. No no no no no. I’m going to Ruin. I’m going to university. I am not, under any circumstances, going to Paris. And I’m definitely not going to the cabarets. Did you even listen to Caprice yesterday? It’s dangerous. Even for us.”

“And it’s the only way to be a star.”

“I. Don’t. Want. To. Be. A. Star.” She punctuated each word with a little slap on top of my head.

“I don’t want anything else but to be a star. Besides, you’re going to live to be three hundred. You’ve got plenty of time to make youthful errors. You can always use your mad cash from the cabaret to go to university later, after you sow your wild oats.”

Cherie sat down and put her head in her hands.

“What are oats, and why should I sew them? I hate sewing. Honestly, Demi, I feel like a mother with an out-of-control child. You won’t listen to anyone. Not me, not Mademoiselle Caprice, not even Criminy and Letitia. Why can’t you just be happy with what you have?”

I stared into her cloudy gray eyes, begging her to understand, as pink-tinged tears spilled down my cheeks unbidden and unwanted. “Because I’m not happy, Cherie. I’m hungry. Why are you so ready to be complacent? Why don’t you want more?”

She scooted over to me, folded our black-scaled fingers together. “I don’t know how to get through to you. You’re my best friend, and you’ll never be happy until you’ve destroyed us both.”

I shook my head. “It’s not destruction. It’s reinvention. Trust me. It’s going to be the biggest adventure of our lives. We just have to reach out and take it.”

She sighed deeply and reached to pull the coverlet over Mademoiselle Caprice’s shoulder. “You’ll never give up, will you?” she asked quietly. “No matter what?”

“Not until I get what I want.”

“So my only choices are to join you on this mad caper to Paris or stay here alone and explain to Mademoiselle Caprice why I let you go?”

“Pretty much.”

She took two more vials from the train case and twined her arm around mine. We uncorked the vials and sipped them at the same time, a Bludman’s pinkie promise. Her eyes were sad and rueful, maybe the tiniest bit amused.

“Then I guess, yet again, I’ll give in to you.”

“It’s going to be amazing, Cherie. I promise.”

She tossed her empty vial at my chest. “If you’re wrong, I’m going to kill you myself.”

“Fair enough. But I’m going to be right.”

We slipped out the door with nothing but the train case of blood vials, our papers, and a pocket full of dreams.

And by dreams, I mean money I nicked off our sleeping chaperone.

Little did I know how quickly we would lose them all.