Hotel Magnifique(80)

On instinct, I shoved the metal disk down my pocket.

“If you created maps, what did your brother do?” And please hurry, I almost added.

“What did he not do? My brother is brilliant. The head of the society took a liking to him. He gave Alastair the job clerking along with cataloguing artéfacts. But not initially.” She frowned. “It’s my fault he’s there, you know. I begged for him to stay on because I couldn’t bear the thought of leaving him behind.”

“Surely they would have seen your brother’s potential and brought him on.”

“They didn’t bring him on, or even want him at first.” She leaned forward, suddenly fearful, as if Alastair himself could hear her every word. “You see, only suminaires were allowed past that little lobby, and although he’s done an admirable job convincing the world otherwise, my brother doesn’t have a single drop of magic in his entire body.”





The wooden ring tumbled from my fingers onto the marble. Alastair had no magic. “But he’s the greatest suminaire in all the world.”

“He’s the greatest liar in all the world. Hard to believe, I know.”

But I’d seen him move walls. I’d watched as he crafted flowers from air. He erased minds like plucking overripe peaches. “Your brother has magic.” He had to.

“I assure you that’s not the case,” Céleste said solemnly. “Our parents were dead. I couldn’t leave him in Champilliers by himself, so I talked the society heads into letting him come on with me.” She lifted her teacup, staring at the steaming water like it held futures. “Once inside, Alastair saw suminaires old enough to be his grandfather appear no older than me. And everything was magical. Even the oranges were enchanted.”

The marvelous orange trees. “Your brother said he’d tried to cut the trees down once.”

“He hated them,” she said. “The oranges are quite unique. Did you know their juice tastes like a special food you’ve eaten? For me, the juice always tasted like the fraisier cake from my tenth birthday. When I sipped it, everything I remembered sensing at that birthday party would come alive around me. I could even smell the smoke from freshly blown-out birthday candles.”

A marvelous orange must have been the main ingredient in the juice Yrsa had given me on my first afternoon at the hotel—where she hid the drop of Truth.

“Only suminaires can pick the oranges, you know. After we’d first arrived, Alastair had hated how the trees reminded him of what he wasn’t. In fact, at the mention of anything to do with magic, he would shut down. I couldn’t bear to see him like that, so I began keeping things from him.”

I knew exactly how Céleste felt. Often, I regretted not telling Zosa how sorry I was for bringing her to Durc. Now there were too many things I wanted to tell her and I couldn’t.

Céleste tossed a couple more things in her hatboxes. One of them was nearly full and I still needed answers. “So Alastair was lonely.”

“Not exactly,” she said. “He had a friend, Nicole, a suminaire with barely any hint of power.” She snarled the woman’s name. “Nicole’s artéfact was a copper spoon that could heat water one cup at a time and nothing more.”

Céleste lifted the wooden signet ring. She slipped it on and off her gloved finger then held it up. Carved wood caught the light.

“One day, Alastair came across the entry for the signet ring in the society’s catalogue. He brought it straight to me. He’d convinced himself that if the ring could bestow magic, it could also bestow the benefits of magic. He could be powerful and live forever—everything he wanted. He begged me to draw a map to it.”

That was it. That was why he wanted the ring.

He wanted to cheat death by becoming a suminaire.

“Then did you find the ring?” I asked.

“At first, I couldn’t get a feel for the ring’s catalogue entry. There wasn’t enough to work with. But that didn’t stop Alastair’s obsession. The ring gave him ideas, and he soon found another artéfact in the society’s vault. A mirror.” Her expression darkened.

“A tarnished hand mirror?”

“You’ve seen it?”

“A few times. I’ve even seen Madame des Rêves fan herself with it.”

Céleste made a face at the mention of Des Rêves. “She worked as a chamber maid for the society when Alastair and I first got there, you know. Gave herself that ridiculous title and made everyone address her as Madame. I never discovered Nicole’s real last name.”

I couldn’t believe it. “Des Rêves was the suminaire who befriended Alastair? With the copper spoon?”

Céleste nodded. “Her power was weak. It was the only artéfact she could get a feel for.”

“But if Des Rêves could only heat liquid, how does she use the talon to turn people to birds?”

“The same way my brother pretends to be a suminaire. The mirror.”

“I don’t understand.”

Céleste continued to grab things from shelves and toss them into her hatboxes, telling me the history of the mirror as she packed. I soon learned that after they’d been at the society for a few years, Alastair found an account of the tarnished hand mirror in an old journal. Apparently a Verdanniere ship captain created wind from a different artéfact to sail her ship. When her magic waned halfway across a still ocean, she used the hand mirror to get a boost from a crew member who wasn’t powerful enough to use the wind-creating artéfact himself. The hand mirror transfers magic from a suminaire to another person temporarily.