The Glamourist (The Vine Witch #2)(15)
“Your mother and I were friends,” Tante said. “I’ve told you that before. Better you were placed here with me than left in the orphanage with the filthy urchins running up and down the streets like rats. And in the end, what difference did it make if a mortal raised you? You’ve no more powers than a common country charlatan.”
“Maybe if my mother had been around to teach me what she knew, I’d be different.”
Tante shrewdly narrowed her eyes. “Something’s changed. You never cared about these things before. You always managed with your limitations. And yet you risked coming here when you know the police are looking for you. And for what? To find some lost magic that will never be yours?”
It’s true she hadn’t cared before. She hadn’t thought there was any point in working at something she obviously wasn’t any good at. There was more money and exhilaration to be had in enabling the whims of men’s desires. And then she saw a real witch work serious magic and felt the sizzle rise in her blood to know more. To be more.
“You’re not a witch,” Yvette said, thinking of her conversations with Elena, the only proper witch she’d ever known. “You wouldn’t understand how important a mentor is to learning the craft.”
Tante answered with a cynical laugh. “No, I’m a businesswoman, and I have a cabaret to run.” She stubbed her cigarette out on the ashtray’s heart line and stood. “So, if you’re not here to pay me what you owe, I think it best you hop back out that window, my dirty little harlequin.”
“Wait.”
Tante picked up the train of her gown, ready to leave, then paused, imparting one last ounce of patience.
Yvette sucked in a breath. “Tell me if she’s still alive. If I can find her somewhere in the city.” She would not cry and beg in front of this woman, but she had to know. She reached out and gently touched the pale, freckled skin of Tante’s forearm. “Please, where can I find my mother?”
Tante’s eyes, glistening ever so slightly, flicked from her arm to Yvette. “There was a time, in the beginning, when I thought I could be a mother to you. But even as a child you were different from most girls. You see it in dogs sometimes, too, the way one pup gets culled from the rest of the litter. A runt.” Tante sighed. “With your mother’s genes, I thought there might be a chance . . . but it simply wasn’t meant to be.”
“You mean to be a dancer like her?”
“Your mother wasn’t merely a dancer,” she said, twirling away from Yvette so that her skirt swept the floor with a flourish. “She was a star. She commanded the room. The stage was her domain, the audience her subjects. Oh, how the men adored her. She had the face of a gilded angel. All done by magic, of course, but she wielded it with such grace it never took on the tawdry hue of the common witchcraft you see on display from so many these days. Like those slatterns in the street selling their potion bottles while lifting their skirts.” A moment passed, and the dream of shadows past drifted from her eyes. She looked again at Yvette, her gaze shifting to the unfortunate scar. Something in Tante finally softened. Relented. As if she’d grown weary of keeping up her resistance. She reached toward Yvette’s face, tentative at first, as if petting a stray dog for the first time, uncertain if it would bite, then lightly touched the ridge of scar running along the cheek and jaw. “Such a shame,” she said before taking her hand away again. “I don’t know where your mother is. Or if she’s still alive. To my knowledge, no one has seen or heard from her since the day she left you in my care. She simply vanished.”
Left? Not abandoned? Yvette’s heartbeat sped up, that racing speed that said something in her life was on the verge of either disaster or miracle.
The former dancer walked across the room, seemingly floating above the rough wooden planks with her light, rhythmic steps. “However . . . ,” she said, stopping before the wardrobe closet.
Yvette lifted her chin. Her life always seemed to be hanging on the hope of a “however” or a “but” or a “maybe.”
Tante opened the closet door and took down a pair of hatboxes that had been stored on the top shelf. “So dusty,” she said, setting them aside and waving a hand over them to clear the air. She returned to the closet, reaching up even higher this time. She gave a quick glance over her shoulder, shrugged as if to say everyone had their secrets, then slid open a panel in the ceiling of the wardrobe. Her arm stretched to feel for something in the deep recess of the hiding place, then came away with a packet the size of a deck of cards tied up in faded blue ribbon.
Yvette gaped. All the years she spent in that room and she’d never once discovered the hidden compartment. The contraband she could have hidden!
Tante blew on the packet to clear away a tiny cobweb clinging to the ribbon. She tested its weight as if there might yet be a stack of money inside, double-checking the balance against her sharp instinct for things of value, before handing the envelope over.
Yvette turned the package around, inspecting it from all sides. “What is it?”
The flick of a dismissive hand. “I opened the wrapping once. Just to see. I don’t know why she wanted me to save it. A bunch of nonsense, if you ask me.” Tante replaced the hatboxes on the shelf, then delicately brushed the dust from her hands. “But your mother insisted I keep it safely hidden away for you. Even gave me a gold coin to ensure I do so. Mind, it was never enough to cover the cost of feeding you all those years.”