The Glamourist (The Vine Witch #2)(14)
“But she—”
“I said leave.”
The pink-ruffled witch opened her mouth to protest being tossed from her own room, then thought better of it. Tante had no magic, but one look of displeasure from her could shrivel even the bravest heart to a prune.
The young woman left. Tante closed the door, leaning her back against it with her arms crossed, as if to reinforce the one truth every girl who worked Le Rêve came to know: she controlled who came and went through her establishment.
“I didn’t believe them when they said you might actually show your face here again.”
Yvette stayed seated on the bed, though she inched closer to the open window under the guise of finding a nonlumpy edge of the mattress to get comfortable on. They, she knew, were the Bureau agents downstairs.
“Any chance you have a ciggie on you? I’m dying for a smoke.”
“Mon Dieu.” Tante advanced and pulled a small blue tin out of the beaded reticule dangling from her wrist. “Don’t you ever tire of testing my patience?”
“Missed you too,” Yvette said and took two cigarettes from the case. One she slipped between her lips, and the other she tucked behind her ear. She waited for a match, but Tante nudged her chin toward the vanity, where an Aladdin’s lamp lighter sat. “Well, doesn’t that beat all,” Yvette said and felt for the small bottle tucked between her breasts, still safe and secure.
“Don’t you dare steal it. It was a gift from a generous abonné. He’s quite taken with our Louise.”
“She’s a witch.”
“Yes. Only this one actually knows how to do spells. Brings in the money you never could.”
Yvette lit her cigarette and squinted through the smoke as it stung her eye. Tante leaned in and lit one as well before sitting down on the upholstered bench with the gold fringe in front of the vanity. Yvette had always wanted a seat with fringe.
“Thought there were laws about tricking mortals into handing over money.”
Tante balked. “Did you come here to give me a lecture on the law? Spare me the hypocrisy. Besides, if you’d been any better at the game, you wouldn’t still owe me money.” She raised her eyebrow and blew out a trail of smoke, as if she almost believed it was possible to see the cash materialize.
“And why is that?” Yvette asked. Now that she had survived the initial threat of coming face-to-face with Tante Isadora again, she grew bolder. “Why don’t I know more spells? Why don’t I have a Book of Shadows of my own, or potion jars?” She stooped to pick up the dropped athame. “Or one of these?” She leaned closer to Tante, her grip a little too tight on the handle. “I’m a witch same as anyone. Why didn’t my mother leave me any of these things?” She swallowed before her emotions could well up and make a mess all over the room. “Where did she go that she couldn’t take me with her? Why didn’t I get to learn all that stuff?”
Tante inhaled deeply, as if arming her emotions. “Ah, so that’s why you’re here.” She reached for an ashtray, her eye steady on the knife. “You’ve finally come looking for your maman.”
She didn’t like the glint in Tante’s eye, the familiar calculations going on behind them—pros and cons, profits and loss, truth or dare.
“What happened to her? Why did she leave me to be raised by a—”
“A cabaret whore?”
“Oh là là, I was going to say mortal.”
Tante tapped her cigarette three times, flicking the ash into a tray shaped like a palmistry hand—the heart, life, and fate lines crisscrossing the white porcelain in black paint. It was she who insisted she be called Tante. All the girls who came to work the cabaret were required to think of her as Aunt Isadora, though only Yvette had grown up within the guts of Le Rêve, as near as anything resembling a blood-related niece. Left in the care of a fellow dancer and supposed friend of her mother’s when a mere babe, she’d been given a bed, two meals a day when there was money enough, and, as she got older, a new dress once a year, though always bought second-or thirdhand from the church’s charity shop. In exchange for her room and board, she wiped down the drinking glasses, mended costumes, and mopped up the stomach contents of drunks too off their feet from the absinthe to make it outside.
Of course, there had been “lessons.” At least at first, when Tante still offered rare but regular sugared treats and bedtime kisses. Yvette recalled a spindly fellow in a worn frock coat and scuffed shoes who had shown up three times a week when she was a girl of seven or eight. At first, he taught her the alphabet, followed by reading and writing, and then subtly the lessons shifted to recognizing runes, suits of tarot cards, and working out how to put words in the right order to perform a simple spell. But even then, she could barely control the frenzied energy that would surge into her hands. It would start with the promise of magic and the feeling she could shape the thing forming on her fingertips, only to have it fizzle into nothing, her hands left with the sensation of holding a dripping pile of wet newspaper. After a few short months the man gave up, sneered at her ugly scar, and declared her a stub—a useless witch without talent in the eyes of the All Knowing. Following that proclamation, Tante’s sweets and kisses fermented into sour regret at having taken her in.
No return on investment, it would seem.