Hotel Magnifique
Emily J. Taylor
For Eric
PROLOGUE
The courier was given a single instruction: deliver the boy before the stroke of midnight. Simple—except, usually, she delivered packages during the day, not little boys in the dead of night.
The job paid handsomely, but that wasn’t the reason the courier agreed. She took the job because she was curious.
She wondered why a well-to-do couple came to her of all people. Why the boy’s father refused to write the address down and instead whispered it into her ear, why the boy’s mother wept. Most of all she wondered who might receive this boy, considering the delivery location was not a home, nor an address to any physical structure, but the space in between two—an empty alley on the other side of town.
The boy seemed ordinary enough, with unblemished copper skin a shade deeper than her own. However, he hung his head as they walked, as if the thick night air pressed upon his shoulders.
The courier thrust her lantern at the gloom, beating back shadows with a growing sense of unease. Her grandfather’s stories came to her: whispers of magic hiding in the corners of the world, and young children met with terrible fates.
She was too old to believe in stories, and yet she quickened her pace.
One block from their destination, the boy dragged his feet. Gripping his bony shoulder, she tugged him down the final street, and halted.
The alley was gone. A strange, slender building stood in its place, squeezed into the narrow space, fitting in seamlessly with the crumbling structures on either side.
A figure peeled away from a shadow near the entrance.
The courier drew the boy behind her. “Are you the person I’m supposed to meet?”
Whoever it was raised a slim object. A blood-red taper candle flared to life, illuminating a young man’s blue eyes and pale face.
The courier searched for a match to explain the flame; no one could light a candle from nothing. Unless—
Shimmering golden smoke billowed from the tip. It spilled onto the street, snaking around the courier. Tiny globes buzzed and flickered like fireflies or dust motes catching moonlight. Or something else. Scents gusted by: peppermint oil, then burnt sugar, as if caramel were bubbling too long on a stove, followed by a whiff of citrus left to rot.
The man strode through the golden smoke and took the boy’s hand, like a father would do. For a brief moment, the boy stumbled, unsure, but then he willingly walked with the man toward the narrow building.
The courier clutched her chest and felt her heart pound in an erratic rhythm—harder than it ever had before. This was all wrong. She lunged to stop the man, but golden smoke twined around her ankles, restraining her. She opened her mouth to scream, but no sound escaped her lips, not even a whimper.
Her hands wrapped around her throat as the man halted at the doorway of the building. She watched in horror as he smiled, sharp-toothed, then brought his striking face level with the boy’s own. “Come along now,” he said. “I have the perfect job for you.”
The man opened the door and jerked the boy inside.
The moment the door shut, the smoke dissipated. The courier strained until she could move her feet. She hurled herself toward the building, skidding to a stop as the entire thing vanished before her eyes, leaving nothing but an alley covered with overgrown weeds and cast in shadows.
I often heard my sister before I saw her, and tonight was no exception. Zosa’s supple voice spilled through the open window of Bézier Residence, sounding so like our mother’s—at least until she began a raunchier ditty comparing a man’s more delicate anatomy to a certain fruit.
I crept inside, unnoticed in the crowd of boarders. Two of the younger girls pretended to dance with invisible partners, but every other eye was fixed on my sister, the most talented girl in the room.
A special kind of girl rented rooms at Bézier Residence. Almost all worked jobs fitting of their foul mouths: second shifts as house grunts, factory workers, grease cooks, or any number of ill-paying positions in the vieux quais—the old docks of Durc. I worked at Tannerie Fréllac, where women huddled over crusted alum pots and wells of dye. But Zosa was different.
“Happy birthday,” I shouted when her song ended.
“Jani!” She bounded over. Her huge brown eyes shone against a pale, olive-skinned face that was far too thin.
“Did you eat supper?” I’d left her something, but with all the other girls around, food had a tendency to disappear.
She groaned. “Yes. You don’t have to ask me every night.”
“Of course I do. I’m your big sister. It’s my life’s greatest duty.” Zosa scrunched her nose and I flicked it. Fishing in my sack, I pulled out the newspaper that had cost me half a day’s wage and pressed it into her palms. “Your present, madame.” Here, birthdays weren’t dusted with confectioners’ sugar; they were hard-won and more dear than gold.
“A newspaper?”
“A jobs section.” I flipped open the paper with a sly grin.
Inside were advertisements for jobs in fancy dress shops, patisseries, and perfumeries, positions that would never belong to a thirteen-year-old who didn’t look a day over ten. Luckily, they weren’t what I had in mind.
Skipping past them, I pointed to a listing that had appeared in papers across town an hour ago.