Hotel Magnifique(25)

“Where’s that?” someone asked. I’d never heard of the place.

“It’s only the most famous ladies’ store in Champilliers. Where Des Rêves purchased all her wigs. Madame re-created the famed dressing rooms here.” Béatrice stroked a tufted pearl. “I’d love to see the real ones.”

“You haven’t been?” I asked. Champilliers was the largest city in Verdanne, renowned for its canals on the river Noir. Surely the hotel visited.

Béatrice shook her head. “There’s a list of places we don’t travel. Champilliers is on it. Ma?tre’s orders, unfortunately. If we ever visit, I know exactly where I’ll spend the day . . .”

She smoothed her hands along the doors then pulled them open to a plush pink space filled with dress forms and curios stuffed with silks. In the center, workers fussed around a guest.

“L’Entourage de Beauté.” Béatrice gestured to workers. “Suminaires skilled at amplifying a guest’s beauté.”

The tawny-skinned suminaire with the citrine feather was a member of the entourage. She inhaled color from her feather, then blew puffs of yellow along the guest’s bodice, while another suminaire smoothed a bobbin of thread around the guest’s waist. The thread wove itself into a pattern of embroidery, while a third suminaire pulled a porcelain brush through the guest’s hair, creating perfect curls from nothing.

Everything was magical, and shades of pink. Even the members of L’Entourage de Beauté wore pink livery.

When I was younger, Maman assumed pink was my favorite color for no reason at all. I didn’t hate the color. It just wasn’t me. I preferred jewel tones, emeralds and sapphires as deep as oceans, colors captains wore when they helmed ships and heroines when they sneaked away to meet their secret lover in the dead of night. Blazing peony pink was Zosa’s favorite color. She’d probably burst into a giggling fit at the sight of all this.

I tensed at the thought of her. Béatrice had said she’d be warned of everything that might get her in trouble. And after the strange behavior from the other workers, that was all I could grasp onto to keep from panicking. I’d look for her room this evening. Knowing Zosa, she’d hunt me down first.

“The top latch broke again.” A worker waved her pale, chapped hands at a towering glass cabinet, its top door hanging crooked.

Béatrice twitched her wrist. A tiny tin canister dislodged from her sleeve. She popped the lid. We all took a step back as a glinting cloud of gears shot from her tin toward the cabinet.

“You’re a suminaire,” I said.

I’d suspected it, but aside from the steel butterfly she wore that occasionally flapped its wings, I hadn’t seen a speck of her magic until now.

“I am, and skilled at repairs. Since the ma?tre doesn’t like to be bothered with matters like these, I’m always called. It’s why I’m head of housekeeping.” She waggled the canister. “All suminaires are put in higher positions based on their specific abilities.”

“So your ability is fixing things?”

“Usually. But these cabinets are tricky.” She twitched her wrist again and again. The gears shifted, clattering against the cabinet’s handle, but nothing else seemed to happen. “The cabinet door is quite stuck.” She sighed and the gears streamed back into her tin.

I stared at the tin—another magical object, just like Bel’s silver key. The pink-liveried suminaires with the spool of thread, the brush, the feather—more objects.

“How does your tin work?” I asked. She had to be enchanting it somehow.

Béatrice opened her mouth then closed it, her expression turning guarded. “You know, it’s not wise to concern yourself with suminaires and their magic.”

End of discussion. The workings of magic must be an off-limits topic.

The worker waved at the broken cabinet again. “What’s taking so long?”

Béatrice gave us a sidelong look. “Why don’t you all head down to the laundry room. This will take longer than I’d hoped.”

With quick curtsies, we dipped out. The other maids turned back the way we came, but I halted. Down the hall, a maid stood pinching her temple. It was Sophie, the maid from the guest suite.

I rushed over. “What’s wrong?”

“Headache. Poor thing.” A brown-skinned guest walked over trailing a turquoise fur coat. She waved around a glass of champagne. “I get terrible bouts of them myself.”

“Have you had headaches before?” I asked Sophie.

“I—I don’t know,” she said.

“You don’t?”

“I can’t remember.” Her lips trembled. “I think I’ll go lie down for a bit.” She wandered off clutching her head.

“I told her to go outside,” the guest said. “Fresh air always does the trick, but she refused. Said she doesn’t like to go out.”

“What?” There were Bézier girls who worried the sun would ruin their complexions, but the hotel didn’t always travel to sunny places. In fact, everyone in the teahouse line in Durc spoke nonstop about where they wanted to visit if they were hired. That was part of why we all wanted to work at the hotel: to see far-off places. The biggest perk of the job, aside from the magic. But that maid didn’t like to go outside—didn’t want to experience Elsewhere.