The Glamourist (The Vine Witch #2)(10)
The man’s nose flared in disgust as he noted the scar on her jawline, then ignored her as he walked up the steps and disappeared behind the great mahogany doors of the Palais Opéra. Their decorative windows glared like sigils, warning those who didn’t belong to stay away.
Yvette cursed her grumbling stomach, but she had no choice but to journey down one of the many darkened streets that radiated out from the center of the city. It was something she’d done a hundred times before. Proper magic had always evaded her, but since she was old enough to remember, she felt she had a secret ability to make herself invisible, to fade into shadow and not be seen. Not truly invisible, but a street sweeper could pass right in front of her with his broom and dustbin and not pick her out among the cobblestones if she willed it. It was a talent that had served her well in her years working the streets as well as on her last day inside the city three years earlier. After she’d washed the blood from her hands.
An hour later, footsore and weak with hunger, she stood under a shedding elm tree, staring at les escaliers leading to the top of the butte. A string of streetlamps ran up the center of the stairway, their globes aglow with orbs of soft white light that seemed to float in the air. A sudden breeze whooshed down from the top, sending a rustle of warning through the leaves in the trees. A sliver of doubt burrowed under her skin. The jinni had been right. More than right, really, about her stolen wish. She had wanted to come back to the city. But it wasn’t just about finding her mother’s magic. There was something else riding on the currents in the ether. One wish sewn to the other. A wisp of hope that she, too, could somehow clear her name and start her life over.
Oh, she was guilty of killing the man, no question. But there was murder and then there was murder.
Yvette stood contemplating whether she should turn around and give up when a black cat slunk by with his tail in the air. She couldn’t remember if it was a good omen or a bad one for a witch to have a cat cross her path. One more thing she ought to know but didn’t. She twitched her finger at the cat to see if he would tell her which sign to obey. The animal paused, green eyes narrowing as he apparently recognized her for what she was. He dropped his head and trotted off without a second glance.
Even the cats knew her for a failed witch. But the snub only made her want to know even more what was wrong with her and why she’d been abandoned to fend for herself in a world of mortals. The pain she normally stuffed deep in her psyche ballooned to the surface, fueling her legs forward toward an answer one way or another.
She scaled the stairs in one extended effort, emerging at the top of the butte where the great white dome of the new basilica asserted its squatter’s rights. “Mon Dieu,” she whispered, catching her breath. “They’ll never finish that beast.” Skirting west around the wooden scaffolding that flanked the church’s base, she was reminded again how easily they could have provided food for every soup kitchen on the butte for a decade for what one shiny dome must have cost to build. But even Yvette knew the real reason monuments were built was to outshine and outlast the bodies of the men who built them.
She walked one street over, remembering to avoid the busy square at the heart of the hilltop village where the smell of the vendor’s fried potatoes would drive her mad with hunger. As she did, a couple strolled in her direction, the heels of the woman’s ankle boots clicking against the sidewalk. Yvette lifted the velvet drapery over her head and shrank back under the overhanging branches of a chestnut tree to let them pass before she walked on. The man donned a top hat and frock coat. The woman wore a black straw hat with a large red flower pinned to the brim. When the woman spoke, her hands played with her black feather boa, punctuating her drunken words with a flounce of her wrist. It was like watching a ghost from her past life walk by.
She waited for the couple to duck into a street where the café chatter was beginning to bloom. Once their laughter trailed off, she continued down the lane on the left where it quietly angled toward the backside of the butte. The streetlamps were farther apart here, and the people moved differently than the bustling, proud city below. No grand parades, no contrived pivots on high heels to show off the fashionable cut of a dress. The men were drab in their corduroy jackets and scuffed boots and the women almost shrunken under their petite hats and thin shawls. No automobiles, no bicyclettes, no clattering omnibuses. Only the steady one-two rhythm of slow horses being led over worn cobblestones.
She was close now. As the lane dropped, she could make out the amber glow of the gaslit globe above the door that illuminated the cabaret’s hand-painted sign. LE RêVE. Skulking along a line of trees, she made a move to step out of the dark when a shiver like cat’s claws needling her spine stopped her in her tracks. Beneath the halo of light appeared a man in profile. He wore a three-piece suit in gray flannel and a derby hat with a distinct dent in the top. He leaned back against the wall and took a bored puff of smoke from a cigar as he bent one leg up to prop the sole of his shoe against the building. Definitely with the Covenants Regulation Bureau. So, les flics were still watching for her. Which meant there’d likely be a pair of agents inside as well, sitting at the back tables where the stage lights didn’t reach the men’s faces.
She retreated a step to consider her options. It was still too early for the bread-and-butter cabaret crowd—the absinthe drinkers, cocaine sniffers, and spell-fetish types who returned as often as three or four nights a week. The building wouldn’t be bustling with their manic energy for hours yet. Even if she could slip past the stiff at the door, she’d have to cross in front of the stage to get to the apartments upstairs. Yvette would be spotted in a flash among the well-behaved early arrivals quietly sipping their warm-up glasses of champagne. She could wait it out until the crowd was drunk and rowdy enough to create a distraction, but by then Tante would have her hands full watching the movement of money and girls, making sure everything was flowing in the right direction.