The Vine Witch (Vine Witch #1)(75)
Jean-Paul began to protest, but in the end he had no choice but to trust her. He kissed her cheek and said he would wait with the horse. He was learning. Still, she was grateful to know he would be nearby as she opened the door to the seedy tavern.
The main room, normally half-empty on a good night, bustled with customers. There wasn’t a seat to be had. Elena threaded her way through the crowd, ever more aware that it wasn’t the usual locals. A group of sorcerers who looked as if they’d just disembarked a train from the other side of the world shook their turbaned heads and blew smoke into the air as they debated the number and meaning of the dead cats. She gave a wide berth to the cloud of tobacco and gin hovering near them and emerged next to the table by the window, where a sagging cobweb hung precariously low over the patrons’ heads. Two young witches sat across from each other studying their tarot cards. The one with the city accent tapped her finger on the Empress and smugly noted she’d foretold the death of the demon-dancing witch a week earlier. The other pointed to the Wheel of Fortune and said it was pure luck. Elena stood on her toes to look for Madame Grimalkin and ended up bumping into a man whose face was tattooed with black swirls and dots that she was sure contained its own type of magic. He took her measure with a curious glance, one absent of attraction yet fully inquisitive, then inhaled. His eyes widened with excitement. “You’re a winemaker. Like the evil-hearted one,” he said. “Did you know this woman? Is it true she drank the blood of a mortal man?”
He was talking about Gerda. They all were. Everyone in the room, it seemed, had come to revel in the details of her crimes and death. How many doves had been busy flapping their wings over the countryside to spread the news?
“No, I didn’t know her,” she lied, suddenly struck by the realization that any one of the strangers in the room could be the one who had cursed her. And then she saw them. The long ringlets of gold hair and the embroidered jacket with the faded flowers. The Charlatan sisters were there, raising their glasses with everyone else and cheering Gerda’s death. Or perhaps her accomplishments.
She was about to confront them when a bony hand grabbed her by the arm. Before she could protest she was shuttled into a dark corner. Her hand went to her knife.
“Thank the All Knowing you got my message.” Madame Grimalkin checked over her shoulder, then looked straight at her. “It was just like you said. A green dragon’s eye.”
She released her grip on the knife. “You saw the watch?”
Her gray head nodded. “It’s a gentleman that owns it.”
“Gentleman?” She glanced again at the Charlatan sisters, laughing and dancing across the room. “Are you sure?”
“Well, that’s how he presents himself, though I wouldn’t say it of a man who goes around cursing his own kind, if it’s him.”
A man? Of all the times she’d fantasized about this moment, it had never occurred to her she’d be facing a male witch. But who? Why? She felt as if she’d drifted even further from the answers she’d been looking for.
Grimalkin set her serving tray on top of the bar and held up two fingers to her husband as she shouted for beer. “So what are you going to do?” she asked. “I don’t want any trouble. No more than the usual anyway. We’ve got a good crowd tonight on account of that demon witch dying. People are hoping the authorities’ll sell off her bones and ash for talismans. Isn’t that right, Paddy?”
Paddock set two frothing glasses of beer on Grimalkin’s tray. “If they don’t, I’ve a mind to sweep up the coals from the fire and sell ’em as witch bones myself. I’d make a fortune.” He laughed before waddling back to the tap to fill another glass. “About time we had a bit of good luck around here.”
“That’s why I love you, Paddy.” Grimalkin picked up her tray. “So what’s it going to be?”
“I’m not looking for trouble. I just need to know why.”
Grimalkin nodded, understanding in a way only someone living with the cursed could. “He showed up about an hour ago and ordered supper. We’re busier than usual tonight, so it’s taking longer to serve people. He kept pulling that watch out, checking the time, and giving me the evil eye. That’s when I recognized it. Tried to stall him best I could after that. Then the strangest thing happened. I was set to give him his check when a woman joined him. Older lady. Real proper. Came in a few minutes before you and ordered two glasses of wine. Can’t imagine what she wants with the likes of him, but they moved to a private booth at the back.”
“Show me,” Elena said, her curiosity straining against the leash.
Madame Grimalkin delivered the beers to a pair of conjurers spinning coins three inches above their palms. She snatched the coins out of the air for payment, then pointed Elena to the booth in the back with the curtains half drawn. A man’s elegant leg peeked out of the curtain—the trouser perfectly creased, the wing-tip shoe polished to a mirror shine. “That’s him,” she said. “Probably explaining his services to her right now. Bah. Sooner he’s gone, the better.”
Elena felt a supportive hand on her back before she was left alone to stare at the half-open curtain. She’d been delivered to this moment on a seven-year tide of yearning. Revenge had been the sweet fruit she’d craved in her sleep, poison the elixir to deliver the dream. But Bastien’s death had turned the taste for vengeance to rot. Murder was no longer the salve she’d once sought for her injury. Yet as she gravitated right to see past the curtain and finally know the face of her assailant, she had to temper a rising impulse to strike.