Hotel Magnifique(59)

“Why?” asked Sido.

Slowly, Alastair turned to Sido, the vein in his forehead visible.

The twin shrank back.

“The girl knocked off an orange and your brother nearly threw her out. I almost lost her because of him. He’ll have to be punished.”

Sazerat was a suminaire with one eye removed. He’d already gotten his first warning. Surely Alastair wouldn’t kill him over me.

“Now out of my sight. Both of you.” Alastair waved his hand. Stunned, Sido took his brother and trailed after Yrsa.

A circle of staff appeared with brooms and dustpans. They ushered upset guests to their rooms and cleaned up the broken oranges. The lobby marble swallowed any pieces they missed.

I didn’t move. My legs felt rooted in place while Alastair’s pale eyes studied me.

“Miraculous that a kitchen maid can cause so much trouble in the span of a single day,” Alastair said. “Did you know?”

“I suspected.”

I whirled around at Bel’s voice. Just like inside the guest suite, I couldn’t read his face, but something in his eyes appeared hollower than they once had, like a bit of himself had shattered along with the oranges.

“You suspected, yet you bargained with me to send her back?” Alastair twirled an orange shard between his fingers. “The marvelous orange trees are unique to the hotel. Long ago, before the hotel existed like it does now, a suminaire created them by enchanting normal orange trees.”

Before the hotel existed. I thought of the society handbook from the map room. The suminaire he spoke of could have been a member.

Alastair’s mouth flattened. “I tried cutting the trees down once. But they simply spring back up, straight from the marble floor.” He turned to me. “The fruit rarely releases, and only for a suminaire.”

I blinked at the word. No way.

It simply wasn’t possible. I’d never once felt magic flaring up. Never had any power leak out of myself, injuring those around me, like suminaire children did. Before the hotel, I’d never felt that beguiling hum of magic at all. Yet the ma?tre thought I was a suminaire. Bel thought it.

The idea was ridiculous. Silly, even. I shook my head. “Impossible,” I said. “The oranges are clearly misinformed.”

I waited for Bel to agree with me, to laugh and make a joke at my expense. But he remained silent, avoiding my eyes.

Slowly, realization began to dawn on me. Bel wouldn’t act like this . . . unless it was true.

I was a suminaire.

For the briefest moment, I felt like something shifted inside me and locked into place, changing me irrevocably. I looked around me, as if with new eyes. The sinister darkness of the lobby seemed to expand, calling out to me, to my magic.

My magic.

I’d seen many miraculous things inside, from that first soirée to the escape games, to the raining umbrellas and magic halls. If I were a suminaire, it meant I had the same potential building inside of me for years.

I glanced down at the tops of my hands, studied my small knuckles, the hangnail on my index finger, callused skin curving over bones and sinew. These hands looked ordinary. They were the hands of a tannery worker in Durc, a kitchen maid, a sister, a daughter from Aligney. But if Alastair were right, then these hands were also capable of wielding magic—terrible, beautiful magic—and I’d had no idea.

But Bel did.

Shock gave way to anger, rushing forth, filling up every empty space inside of me until I could barely breathe. I faced him. He straightened, his jaw set and his eyes narrowed in that calculated look I knew so well.

He knew! This whole time he knew what I was, and yet he kept it from me. He lied to me, even. I thought he was a confidant, a friend. My lips trembled. He was a friend. Probably my best friend here, and now—

Now the betrayal felt like a punch to my gut. I wanted to scream, to question him endlessly, but my throat tightened to a painful knot.

I stalked toward him and grabbed his collar. He jerked me off and held me at an arm’s length away, his features carefully blank.

“You knew,” I hissed through clenched teeth. Wretched tears gathered in my eyes. “Why did you keep it from me?”

“You need to calm down. Now.” He gestured over my shoulder. Alastair walked over.

The sight of him turned my anger to ice, and I began to shake.

Alastair’s smile was sharp-toothed. He slipped the orange shard into his pocket and placed his hand at the crook of my elbow, like I was his prize.

“This way,” he said. “It’s nearly midnight and the Magnifique has a job to do.”



* * *





Alastair brought me to his office. I wanted to bolt from the room. It took every bit of will to remain standing, to confront what I was, what I’d always been.

I rubbed my hands together and ran my thumb over the veins on the inside of my wrist. I’d heard stories of how colorless and terrible magic was. I pictured it thrashing in my blood now, like a pitch-black snake hissing to get out, and I didn’t know how to feel.

“Over here,” Alastair said. He walked to his curio cabinet and took three artéfacts off a top shelf, placing them one after another on his desk.

When I stood unsure and unmoving, he snatched my hand and dragged me forward, forcing my fingertips against each one: a hazel branch divining rod, a small stone pendulum, and a bronze compass with a jade needle.