Hotel Magnifique(23)
Lights flickered. The Magnifique stepped onstage wearing white gloves and a cape. I’d pictured a gentleman with a waxed mustache, but this was only a brown-eyed young man with a key dangling from a chain, a key I’d touched.
The Magnifique was Bel.
Last night, he locked the door. I didn’t realize he was the suminaire responsible for moving the hotel. Bel had said powerful suminaires were practically immortal.
He’d meant himself.
No wonder he seemed surprised when I’d called him despicable in the salon. No one would dare speak so candidly with a powerful suminaire. I buried my face in my hands. I’d fought with him, spit on him. I’d even threatened him with an old kitchen knife.
Reaching behind the orange tree, Bel pulled out the same book he’d paged through last night. The spine cracked as he flipped through it.
“Two minutes to midnight,” whispered a guest. She held an itinerary where one filled-in destination glimmered purple.
Guests knew where the hotel would appear, but this was more thrilling than any speck of ink. To think, we were all about to blink through the world in a century-old building, and I could barely see.
I elbowed my way forward until I could tell that the book was a strange atlas filled with cobbled-together maps, some on smaller pages, some scribbled on newsprint.
Bel stopped at a large map and dragged his hand down it with a reverence similar to how I’d treat Bézier’s atlases. Then he pushed his key inside the door’s lock, turning it clockwise. A second passed, then another.
“Here we are,” Des Rêves said. She elbowed Bel out of the way and opened the door. Outside wasn’t a beach but an expansive city, glittering and vast. Tiny snowflakes fell through the air. My lips parted.
Alastair and Des Rêves bowed to deafening applause.
Bel stood behind them and gazed outside with the same enthusiasm I witnessed on the guests’ faces. Once you’ve seen one destination, you’ve seen them all, he had said. Clearly that wasn’t the truth.
After a minute, he shut the door and rubbed the back of his neck, tired. Understandable considering he moved this place every night. At least he only had to make a ridiculous show of it for the soirée crowd every seventh night.
When Alastair and Des Rêves took another bow, Bel quietly slipped away.
The following morning, I woke alone in a bed for the first time in my life.
It felt like some of the magic of this place had fluttered away with my dreams. Zosa wasn’t beside me, and I didn’t like it. She’s probably still tucked in bed, snoring away, I tried to remind myself, to put her out of my mind. But after the information I’d learned last night, it was impossible.
My fingers fumbled with my buttons as I dressed, my mind too preoccupied with everything Bel had told me. But there was one crucial detail he’d left out: he never actually answered me when I asked about visiting southern Verdanne. The ma?tre’s guarantee that we could depart whenever we wished meant nothing if we didn’t travel closer to Aligney than Durc. I couldn’t bear it if we were dropped off even farther away from our home, and yet I didn’t ask about it.
I should have questioned Bel more about the places we stopped, but I was too distracted by all the magic. Part of me wanted to corner a worker and demand answers, but I’d promised Bel I wouldn’t speak to anyone else. As tempting as it was to ignore him, I knew I couldn’t. Not only was he a powerful suminaire, but he’d saved Zosa; I at least owed him enough to keep my promise. My only option was to watch for him as I started my shift.
This morning, Béatrice gathered all the new maids then led us through a maze of dim halls dotted with guest rooms titled like poetry. We passed the To Tangle in a Labyrinth Suite and A Taste of Sin and Chocolate Suite.
“Are the rooms themed?” asked a maid behind me.
Béatrice nodded. “The ma?tre tailors each suite for our more prestigious guests. He shifts the colors, the décor, even the scents and sounds behind each door.”
A fragrant smell wafted from an open door labeled A Breath of Blooms Suite. The scent calmed my nerves. I peeked inside.
Dahlias formed clouds across the ceiling. A bed frame made of delphinium stalks somehow supported a mattress. Along a dressing table were glass-domed cloches with enchanted floral scenes. In the closest cloche, moss swans bobbed on a forget-me-not pond.
I spotted a golden button the size of my pinkie nail on the wall. Beside it, an equally dainty Verdanniere sign read Press for Champagne.
Curious, I lifted my hand.
Béatrice popped over. “Unless you want to clear away a bucket of champagne the size of a bathtub, I wouldn’t touch that.”
I didn’t believe it. “An entire bathtub?”
“At the press of a button.” She stepped back to address all the maids. “Each guest room is filled with surprises. Especially the one you’re all about to clean.”
We lined up as she barreled her laundry cart through the most massive suite door of all.
“Voilà, the Ode to a Fabled Forest Suite.”
The suite was aptly named; the room could have been sculpted from my childhood storybooks. I swept my hand across a dressing table carved with horned beasts. Lichen bloomed where my fingers touched.
A purple velvet box sat on top. I flipped the lid revealing guest paraphernalia: a pair of filled-in itineraries and a series of luggage tags. I unrolled a scroll of paper with A Packing List for Elsewhere printed along the top. The list called for items like cravats and dinner jackets and things I’d never heard of: a fog umbrella, hosiery for bathing in salt water, a trundletvist.