Hotel Magnifique(81)

“Alastair was beginning to look older than the suminaires. He thought the hand mirror might work the same way he assumed the signet ring would. He brought it to me and I naively tried it on him. Instantly, he felt more youthful and he discovered he could use some of the weaker artéfacts. But the amount of magic I’d transferred to him was so small, he only noticed the effects for a few days. The transferred magic doesn’t last. It wears off.”

“Did you try it again?”

“Never,” she said. Her eyes caught mine. Slowly, she pinched the fingertip of one opera glove and peeled it away.

At the sight of her hand, I jumped back, stumbling into Zosa’s cage. My sister made an angry chirp, but I didn’t look down. I couldn’t tear my eyes from Céleste’s palm—what was left of it.

“Using the hand mirror isn’t like using magic yourself. The magic you transfer to someone else doesn’t replenish. This is what giving away that miniscule bit of magic did to me.”

A hole went clean through the center of her palm, the size of a dublonne, surrounded by graying flesh.

I yelped when she snatched my hand. My thumb slid into the grotesque hole. Faint wisps of smoke curled off the edges, as if she were turning incorporeal before my eyes. She let me go and replaced the satin glove.

I gripped the counter and relished in its solid feel, my solid skin.

Céleste’s face tightened. “Alastair promised me he would return the hand mirror and never use it again, but he lied. Then he told her about it.”

“Des Rêves?”

“Nicole is vicious, and my brother was a fool.”

“He still is.”

“Figured as much. Shortly after I’d tried the mirror on him, Nicole convinced her roommate to use it on herself, gifting both Nicole and Alastair with a rush of magic. The act, however, left a gaping hole in the poor roommate’s arm, leaching her of color.”

A chill slid over me. All those suminaires in the aviary, the dull feathers. The pieces were clicking together.

“Alastair later told me the roommate looked gray around the edges, her lips and eyelids the color of dust, like a corpse. She begged for Nicole to reverse it. She even tried to fight back with her artéfact, but because of that hand mirror, her magic was gone. Permanently transferred. Nicole didn’t want the girl to escape, to tell anyone what happened, so with her stolen magic, Nicole used the poor girl’s artéfact against her.”

“What was the roommate’s artéfact?” I asked, even though I could wager a guess.

“A silver talon.” Céleste shook her head. “I didn’t know what had happened at the time. No one did. The head of the society conducted a search. They found the roommate’s suitcase missing, along with some of her clothes. Everyone assumed she’d taken off. Later, I learned Nicole had locked her in the aviary while my brother staged her things to look like she’d left. Had I known . . .”

Céleste’s lips quivered. I couldn’t begin to understand the guilt she felt. This whole time Alastair and Des Rêves were stealing magic from suminaires then getting rid of the evidence right under guests’ noses.

Under my nose.

I knew how desperate Alastair must feel. I felt that desperation daily. I was forged in it. But he had taken it further than I ever dreamed.

“I’ve been inside the aviary,” I said. “I’ve seen all the birds leached of color. All that magic—”

“Stolen. By my brother. By Nicole. Both of them needed an endless supply of it to continue the lies they’d built—for my brother to remain youthful and powerful, and for Nicole to continue to use the silver talon. Luckily for them, it was easy to hide holes with feathers.”

“But there are so many birds.”

“How many are there now?”

I felt nauseous thinking of the hundreds I had seen. Céleste must have read the answer in my eyes because she said, “Never mind. I don’t want to know.”

“So he stole from every suminaire he could get his hands on?”

“Not everyone. If you were a suminaire who connected with an artéfact useful in running the hotel or finding the ring, Alastair didn’t turn you into a bird. But those suminaires were few and far between. Most suminaires he found were turned. It worked in his favor. He liked to keep a queue of still-magical suminaires in the aviary because as birds, they couldn’t access their magic. It remained dormant, safe, ready for when my brother and Des Rêves needed to steal more for themselves.”

She was right. I’d seen a handful of birds inside with bright feathers. They must still have their magic. But not for long.

I’d thought suminaires were rarer now than the days when the hotel began. There hadn’t been one discovered in Durc in decades. It must have been because they were all trapped inside that aviary, their magic stolen. “What will happen when your brother runs out of suminaires to steal from?”

She held up the wooden signet ring.

Of course. If he could bestow himself with magic, he wouldn’t need to steal it.

“My brother and I were born well over a century ago. If he stopped stealing magic, I imagine he would age and die almost instantly.”

I blinked, remembering that day in the magic hall. “Once, the skin on his hand looked rippled. And I’ve seen him with a limp from time to time.”