Wicked After Midnight

8

It was the last thing I expected but the first thing my body wanted. With damnable quickness, my arms wrapped around his neck and pulled him closer. An electric current shot through me, making me quiver with heat that pooled low in my belly. When his mouth opened, just slightly, I moaned for more and ran my tongue between his lips, frantic to gain entry.

This, this was what had been missing. This this this.

With Luc, with the boys on Earth. This mad, insane passion. The way his fingers tightened at my waist, the way my hips sought his, the way my heel dragged up the back of his calf as if pointing out the right road on a map. He felt it, too—I could tell by the frantic curling of his tongue, the hardness in his arms as I slid my hands down to his wrists, struggling not to dig in my nails. Everything inside me went liquid and hot, like molten chocolate. He tasted like masala, like chai, like spices both hot and sweet that were too fiery to savor undiluted.

I dipped deeper, chasing his tongue, frantic to remove the taste of Monsieur Philippe from my lips. I was so hot, so hungry, so avid, that I completely forgot I had fangs. Until he pushed away roughly, almost tripping over the leg I’d wrapped around his thigh.

“Come back here,” I growled. He shook his head no, his eyes burning golden in the low lights of the hallway.

“Can’t. You nicked me.”

He stuck a finger to his lips and pulled it away barely painted with blood. My breath caught on instinct, but then I smelled it. Half-tainted. Wrong.

How easily I had forgotten that Abyssinian blood would drive me mad—and not in a good way. Although there were no germs and therefore no diseases in Sang—which, honestly, I still couldn’t quite believe—it would appear that insanity here could be chemically induced in a way that sounded a lot like rabies. Bludmen who drank any Abyssinian blood at all were said to foam at the mouth and bleed from the eyes, nose, and ears, all while running around, blind and screaming and clawing at whatever their talons encountered. It was an ugly way to go that often resulted in the death or dismemberment of anyone else nearby. This made the Abyssinians undaunted warriors, much respected and somewhat feared all over Sang, especially considering that many of them painted their weapons with their own blood.

Vale had said he was half Abyssinian, but I didn’t know if that meant his blood would make me only half-mad, or if it would take longer to kill me, or if it would just make me sick for a while. And I definitely didn’t want to find out after I’d just been offered a job and was one step closer to finding Cherie. I would have to be more careful, more controlled, the next time he kissed me.

Because yes, I realized, I wanted there to be a next time. I’d never wanted there to be a next time before.

“Why are you smiling, bébé?” He was leaning against the wall directly across the hall from me, mimicking my posture with one leg kicked up against the bricks. He looked as dazed as I felt, his eyes unfocused and wide. I hadn’t realized I was grinning until he asked, and that only made me grin wider.

“I was thinking about something funny.”

“You think going half-mad is funny? Or you think me kissing you is funny?”

“Neither.” I tried to control the grin and failed. “Definitely neither.”

“Mademoiselle? The ladies will be back soon. Please hurry.”

Blaise’s voice carried, faint and nervous, from the top of the stairs at the end of the hall. I didn’t want to get him in trouble, but I wasn’t ready to be without Vale. He was strange and dangerous, but he was the most familiar thing I had in Paris and also my main link to finding Cherie. And more immediately, I wanted him to kiss me again. After my first taste of passion, I felt open for more, like a book with the spine cracked, waiting for more ink. Just staring at him from five feet away made my heart speed up. Damn, but chemistry is a demanding bitch.

“I guess I need to go.”

He nodded sadly. “If you don’t, Blaise will get beaten. Madame Sylvie is kinder than most, but she doesn’t care to be crossed. And neither does her choreographer. Be careful—they’re two halves of the same serpent.”

“When will I see you again?” The words rushed out of me so fast I felt like Liesl in The Sound of Music and mentally cursed myself for acting like a sixteen-year-old idiot instead of the stylish cabaret girl I was bound and determined to become. The way his searing gaze roamed over my mouth made me feel slightly better.

“I will go around to the other cabarets. Spread the word about a kidnapped girl who’s worth a great deal of ransom. Small and blond, yes?”

I nodded. “Curly hair, gray eyes. Last seen in a salmon-pink dress and bludbunny skull fascinator.”

He stroked my hair gently, his smile going sad.

“Oh.” I touched the polished skull myself; I’d forgotten I’d pinned it on after nearly losing it in the catacombs. “Never mind that last part.” Then, more softly, “It was her favorite.”

“I’ll do my best, Demi. Keep your ears open, eh? The daimons are good at keeping secrets among themselves, but perhaps you will hear something useful. I’ll be back sometime tomorrow. I have a delivery to make.”

“Another cabaret girl?” I said, trying to put on a brave face.

“Oh, I only deliver those once a week. This would be wine. Cabarets always need wine.”

“But where do you get it?”

He shook a finger in my face, tsked, and grinned, his teeth looking, for a moment, as sharp as mine. Something in my heart thrummed like guitar strings, seeing that wicked look in his eyes. When I’d crushed on the knife thrower in the caravan, I’d been told he was too dangerous for me. Maybe Vale was just dangerous enough.

“I’m not a daimon, but I know how to keep secrets, too, ma petite. À demain.”

With a swift kiss that bypassed my glove to send tendrils of fire up my hand and arm and straight to a blush in my cheeks, he spun and walked down the hall with a delicious amount of brigandine swagger.

“Mademoiselle! Hurry!”

I glanced toward Blaise’s voice in consternation, not wanting to miss a moment of Vale’s retreating form. When thunderous applause shook the boards under my feet, I picked up my skirts and hurried up the narrow stairs toward the daimon-shaped shadow on the top steps.

“Forgive me, mademoiselle. I thought you would wish to be in your room before the ladies arrived for intermission.”

His blue tail danced in the orange gaslights as I followed him past narrow wood doors, each bearing a sliding name plaque. Some of the names I recognized from my art history studies, but others were clearly stage names. Melissande had to be Mel, whose sign had an added “et Beatrice.” I also saw Victoire, Calliope, Charmagne, Edwige. And then there were the earth-famous names like La Douce, Chi Chi, and La Goulue. And, of course, Limone. The door Blaise opened for me had an empty placard, and I had a brief vision of “La Demitasse” written there in curling letters. Monsieur Philippe had given me the name, and I would do my best to get it onto everyone’s lips.

“Dang. Is this it?”

My dreams of opulence fluttered sadly to the floor with the dust bunnies. The room was a quarter of the size of the wagon I’d shared with Cherie and contained nothing but a narrow wooden bedstead with a sagging mattress, two ratty old chairs, a bedside table, and some hand-carved hooks for hanging clothes I didn’t own. The walls were a sorry, washed-out blue with a cracked mirror hanging dispassionately in a corner, and the sea-green floors were bare and dusty, in some places so gappy that I could see top hats moving below like shifting herds of cattle. My thighs clamped together instantly, just in case one of them should happen to look up. The lone window opened onto a dark alley.

“It could be worse, mademoiselle. You could be sharing a room with Limone or La Goulue.” Blaise shivered, his skin going over with dark blue spots like a pox.

“Are they that bad?”

I had always loved Toulouse Lautrec’s painting of La Goulue, the saucy can-can dancer who had ruled the Moulin Rouge, high-kicking the hats off her ensorcelled fans. Maybe she wouldn’t make the best roommate, but I still couldn’t wait to meet her in the flesh. Being here in the Paris of Sang was almost like traveling back in time on Earth and witnessing firsthand the larger-than-life historical celebrities from my art history books.

“La Goulue is all too real for my taste, mademoiselle.” The boy shook his head. “They do not call her the Glutton for nothing.”

“What does she feed on, then?”

“There is nothing she will not devour, mademoiselle.” He paused at the door, although I hadn’t seen him move across the room. “If you have everything you need?”

I spun around, which took almost all the space in the tiny chamber. Empty. So empty. “I don’t have anything. Do I get a nightgown or a blanket or . . . anything?”

The small boy shrugged his narrow shoulders. “You must earn it first, mademoiselle.”

He made to dart out the door, and I snatched him by the collar. “Wait.”

He half trembled, half sneered, waiting as if I might strike him. Instead, I sank down to my knees and gave him the closed-mouth smile that made me look sweet instead of dangerous.

“Please call me Demi. Mademoiselle is way too long.”

“Oui, Demi. But you know, La Demitasse has just as many syllables.” And before I could ask him how he had managed to listen in on that conversation, much less how he knew what a syllable was, the impish blue daimon was gone.

There was nothing more to see in my room, of course. I would have to earn a blanket soon or freeze to death at night, if Franchia was anything like Sangland. As the hallway was still quiet, I went out to see if any other famous cabaret dancers called Paradis home. The fanciest door placard by far belonged to La Goulue, and I was certain I recognized the names Jeanne La Folle and La Cascadeuse. All the other names were Franchian, the same names my French teacher had assigned to us in high school.

As I traced La Goulue’s name with a finger, the long bout of applause far below ended, and footsteps sounded on the stairs like a herd of giddy wildebeest. For girls who were light on their feet onstage, the dancers of Paradis were noisy as hell when they were off the clock. As they appeared over the top stair, I felt very much like Simba in The Lion King, about to be run over by a gallumphing herd but without a tree to cling to.

“Attendez. Who are you?”

The woman at the head of the colorful flock stopped halfway down the hall, and I whipped my hand behind my back as if the letters I’d been tracing on her sign had burned me. I knew her instantly, of course. La Goulue as a daimon was very similar to La Goulue from the paintings: thin, sharp, bendy, and with a head of golden hair. As I struggled to find words, her skin shivered over from sunny yellow to the same angrily striped red that I’d seen earlier on Mademoiselle Caprice.

“Bonjour. I’m Demi Ward, but they call me La Demitasse.” I sketched the curtsy Criminy had taught me in the caravan, a courtly gesture that showcased my litheness and made my skirt fan out behind me. After a moment of silence, the entire coterie of daimons broke out in laughter.

“I wouldn’t be too proud of being a cup, if I were you.”

I recognized Limone’s neon green skin and matching acidic tone.

“If you are not a daimon, why are you here?” asked another girl, this one bright orange.

“She’s new, aren’t you, doll?” Mel rushed forward, her skin the cheerful green of four-leaf clovers. She put a bare arm over my shoulders and drew me close in a sisterly side hug. “Vale brought her up from the catacombs tonight. And if you’re up here, I suppose you got the job?” I nodded, and she pulled me into a real hug. “Good for you, darling. And this is your room? Ah, bon! But it’s empty, isn’t it?”

La Goulue shrugged as if she’d seen a million girls come and go. She walked past us and into her room, slamming the door. Everyone else pushed toward my open door and peered inside.

“You have nothing? But that is so sad, chérie. Where is your trunk?”

“Were you robbed?”

“Paris was so nice before all the humans showed up, non?”

As if on cue, they gave a collective sigh.

“Except for you, Demi, darling,” said a purple daimon as she patted my arm.

I was boggled, yet again, by the fact that daimons, so sensitive to every emotional change in a person’s heart and mind, could fail to see or smell the difference between a human and a Bludman, a predator and the prey, until they got very close, as Mel had, or saw the telltale fangs. But I wanted to start out here as myself and avoid the sort of lies that might make the daimons hate or resent me later. I wouldn’t tell them I was a Stranger, but I would let them know exactly what I was.

“Oh, I’m not human,” I said. I grinned, showing off my fangs, and the daimon girls drew back with a gasp.

“A Bludman?”

“It can’t be.”

“She’ll eat all the customers!”

“Will she eat us?”

“I don’t think so. We don’t taste so good, on the inside.”

Mel let out a piercing whistle, and the other daimons stopped sidling backward and chattering and instead stared at me as if I was a bludbear walking on two legs in galoshes.

“Silly things. Do you think Madame Sylvie would let her into the cabaret if she was dangerous?” She turned to me and put a hand on my shoulder as if to help me prove my point. “Demi, darling. Have you ever killed anyone?”

“Never. I’ve never even drunk from a live body. And Bludmen don’t care for daimon blood.”

The girls began whispering again, and Blaise stepped out of their throng.

“It’s true. Madame Sylvie tested her against Monsieur Philippe. She kissed him on the cheek.”

The purple daimon let out a glittering laugh. “If you can get close to that buffet of flesh without drawing blood, you can withstand anything.”

“I almost killed him just last week, and I can’t even eat him,” added a pink daimon.

They all laughed and crept forward, and I closed my lips over my fangs to smile.

Limone pushed her way past the girls and stood to face me. Her cheekbones were hard-cut, her face pointed and austere. Hers was a cruel beauty, and in a way, I envied her. Even after being bludded, I still felt too soft, too curved, too pink-cheeked. No one would mess with Limone.

“Just because a dog licks your hand does not mean it won’t turn on you.”

I showed my fangs, my posture as straight and aggressive as hers. “I don’t plan on licking you or turning on you,” I said. “I’d rather be friends.”

Her nostrils flared, her eyes narrowing to glittery green slits like cracked glass. “I don’t have friends. And I don’t keep dogs. And if you ever try to lick me, I’ll cut off your tongue.” Her long fingers waggled in the air, their wicked points even more dangerous-looking than my actual talons. “You don’t belong here, Demi. Go back to Darkside where you belong.”

My human instincts told me to cower. My Bludman instincts told me to murder. I fought them both and took a step toward her with a steely smile. “Oh, I belong here.”

She snorted and shoved past me, knocking into my shoulder in a way that made me bite back a hiss. “Not for long.”

After her door slammed behind her, Mel pulled me close again by my shoulder. “Here, Demi. I think I have a spare blanket. And Leola, didn’t you keep one of Mireille’s night shifts?”

With nods and murmurs, the other daimon girls disappeared into their rooms, returning swiftly with small gifts that I didn’t know how to repay, considering I had nothing but what was on my back. The talents that would earn my keep in Paris were no good to them.

Tears filled my eyes, and I clutched the worn old nightgown to my chest as Mel fluttered her hands at two girls carrying pillows and blankets. A blue daimon with a cheerful smile made the bed carefully, tucking the ripped quilt as if it were made of finest silk and fluffing the old pillow.

“I can’t thank y’all enough,” I stammered. “Your kindness is too much. I can’t repay—”

Mel held my face in her hands and closed her eyes, breathing in deeply. “You already are, chérie. We can taste your thanks on the air. Your heart is sweet, like flowers in the spring.”

I noticed that the other girls had set my bed to rights and were also smiling dreamily, their mouths open as they breathed.

“It will be good to have you around. Like a midnight snack, yes?” Mel said.

The violet daimon nodded eagerly. “Lads below bring only lust and the smallest bit of amazement. But you’re still fresh, you see.” Her short, curly hair reminded me of Emerlie, and I gave her a wobbly smile.

“I’m Lexie,” she said with a curtsey. “Even if the door says Alexandra.”

“And this is Beatrice, though we call her Bea.” The blue girl who had made my bed nodded and gave a little wave with long, elegant fingers. Mel slung an arm around Bea’s waist, and Bea put her head against Mel’s shoulder. “She can’t talk, but you’ll pick up some signs pretty quickly.”

Remembering a few simple bits of sign language I’d learned in elementary school, I signed Thank you, hoping that the gestures carried the same meaning. Bea’s face lit up, a shiver of sky blue rippling over her skin. Her fingers flew excitedly with a flurry of signs, but I didn’t recognize anything else, except something that looked like crabapple, which wasn’t helpful.

“I’m sorry. That’s all I can remember. But I’d like to learn more.”Bea waved a hand, and I didn’t need to wait for Mel to translate Don’t worry about it. Thanks is enough.

A gong rang below, and most of the daimons scurried out my door. As they disappeared, I felt the warmth go with them.

“You’re leaving?”

Mel turned around, her grin quirking up like it had when she talked to Vale. “It’s only intermission. We still have the second half of the show. And after . . .”

Lexie snorted, and Leola sighed heavily and blew a puff of air into her bangs.

“What happens after?”

Mel rolled her eyes and shook her head. “Nothing you need to worry about tonight. Get some sleep. Tomorrow we’ll teach you the ropes.”

“Oh, I’m from a caravan. Shouldn’t be a problem.”

All three of them burst into laughter.

“Oh, la,” Mel said. “You have no idea what you’ve gotten yourself into.”