Hotel Magnifique(82)

She nodded. “You probably caught him right before he had to steal more magic.”

The cruelty of it all took my breath away. “I can’t believe he can do such terrible things and still look himself in the mirror every morning.”

She grunted. “Oh, he has no problem with that. He told me once that magic did more good keeping him alive than it did inside the suminaires he stole it from. He’d convinced himself the resulting holes in their arms were nothing compared to his own life. He also promised to reverse everything he’d done, gift back the stolen magic, once he found the signet ring.”

“That ring is his answer to everything.”

She gave me a weak nod. “I should have noticed what my brother was doing with Nicole, but I was too busy drawing maps to pay attention to him.” Céleste put her head in her gloved hands, blonde hair spilling over the counter.

“It’s not your fault,” I said as calmly as I could. When I touched her arm, she pulled it away and shot up.

“It is. He’s my little brother.”

The look on her face made my stomach clench. She blamed herself like I did every day for not keeping Zosa in Aligney. “You only did what you thought was best.”

Tears spilled down Céleste’s cheeks. She wiped them away then went back to the hatboxes, talking as she packed. She told me Alastair could use some artéfacts with the stolen magic, but he couldn’t get a feel for as many as Céleste.

“But the inkwell was enough,” she said. “Its written enchantments can be spectacular and addictive. Later, Alastair told me he tried penning a couple enchantments himself at first, but with each one, he felt older, which caused him to steal more magic. An endless cycle. After Nicole’s roommate disappeared, four other suminaires mysteriously left, followed by the old head of the society. Apparently when the old man questioned Nicole, my brother used the hand mirror on him.”

So that was how the society dismantled. Except everyone had to have known that Alastair had no magic. “So your brother took over the society and people blindly followed him without suspecting anything?” I didn’t believe it.

“Not by himself.”

“He took over with Des Rêves?”

“No,” she said, a sour note in her voice. “Alastair and I took over the society together.”

“You?”

“I thought he looked more youthful than he had, but I didn’t realize what that meant. I never suspected what he was doing.” She began pacing. “After the leadership vanished, the other suminaires grew edgy. I was the most powerful suminaire left. They chose me to lead. Me! The responsibility terrified me. So when Alastair came to me with a plan to run everything as a team, how could I refuse? How could I do anything but what he asked of me?”

I could picture it. The society heads out of the way. Endless supplies of suminaires. “But didn’t you realize right away what was happening?” She could have stopped him.

“No,” she said with a twinge of bitterness. “I was too busy. Alastair took over administrative duties and catalogued all the artéfacts, while I performed any task that required magic, like dealing contracts to new suminaires.”

I froze. “You mean the society used contracts before the hotel?”

“It was how everything was kept a secret.” Céleste ran a finger over the advertisement’s purple ink. “When a suminaire misbehaved, their artéfact was taken away, their contract voided so when they stepped out of the society’s building, they’d forget everything they’d experienced inside. They’d forget the society completely.”

“That’s nearly identical wording to the guest contracts.”

“My brother is clever,” she said. “He expanded on the society’s contracts when he came up with those guest contracts. Then he drafted the staff contracts to be nearly the opposite, removing the outside world from the minds of the staff as soon as they came inside. But that wasn’t until he decided to start the hotel.”

“So the hotel was his idea?”

“Eventually. Finding the ring was his obsession. When we first took over the society, he used its resources to search. But it wasn’t enough. He needed more resources, the ability to visit places where it would be impossible to hide. He thought if he could make the building public knowledge, a dazzling spectacle to draw in crowds, he could bring in money to pay his way into countries that wanted nothing to do with magic. The hotel was the perfect solution for everything he desired. Without realizing it, I helped him turn the building into what it is today. Have you seen the infinite ledger?”

I nodded slowly.

“I penned most of the enchantments inside.”

“What?”

“Enacting the inkwell’s enchantments uses less magic than penning them. Penning them requires a lot of magic, magic my brother couldn’t spare. So he told me it was my duty to help him make the hotel as spectacular as possible. I thought his ideas for enchantments were clever. Necessary. I was blinded.”

“But the hotel is filled with enchantments. There has to be thousands. You mean to tell me you penned them all?”

She shrugged as if it were nothing. “There were some left over from the society days, but it wasn’t enough. I’d sit hunched over that ledger for hours until my fingers would cramp up. But I transcribed his ideas, one after another. I penned enchantments allowing Alastair to shift walls and lock doors with a simple spoken word. I designed more magical guest rooms than you can imagine. I even added my voice to things, all with the ink.” Céleste took a sip of tea with trembling fingers and cleared her throat. “Greetings, traveler!” she chirped. “Still got it.”