The Glamourist (The Vine Witch #2)(35)
“Hair coloring is all the rage in the shops on the boulevard,” she answered. “At least if you believe the advertisements in the shop windows I pass on my way to and from the Metro. Seemed just the trick we needed to change your looks, so I induced a hair stylist to offer me the kit, saying I could do it myself.”
“You mean you put a spell on him. Jiminy, I wish I could do that.”
“I used a good old-fashioned bribe, actually. Now, let’s see how well the color worked.”
Yvette tossed her cigarette out the window, then bent her head over a bucket. Elena poured a pitcher of cool water through her tresses, thinking this new hair-coloring kit couldn’t have hit the market at a better time. It was a shame to cover the girl’s lustrous blonde hair with the artificial brown, but those golden locks were like a neon light drawing attention to her. Elena gave the hair a second rinse, then wrapped a towel around Yvette’s head.
“Let’s see how it took,” she said and removed the towel.
The hair had turned a deep shade of chestnut. If the inventor wasn’t a witch, he ought to be. There was obviously nothing to be done about the girl’s scar, but the transformation was still impressive. Elena handed Yvette a hand mirror as the cat preened his fur with his tongue.
“Would you look at that.” Yvette genuinely smiled, and a spark of radiance emanated from her aura for a split second.
“Do that again.”
“What?”
“Look at yourself in the mirror and smile.”
The young woman seemed to doubt the reasoning behind the request but obliged. She gazed at her reflection, smiled, and then stuck out her tongue. The aura didn’t change. But something else did.
“Wait, there’s something wrong.” Yvette did a double take in the mirror. “The dye didn’t work. My hair’s changing back.”
The brown dye receded right before their eyes, retreating from the roots and exposing Yvette’s bright golden hair an inch at a time. The artificial color drained completely away, like water repelled by the oily feathers of an odd duck. Yvette stood once more with a head full of yellow locks.
“Why’d it do that?” Yvette reached for the empty bottle and took a sniff, as if the harsh smell might hold a clue. “What’s in this stuff?”
This time, however, it was Elena who smiled. “Possibly the sign we’ve been looking for,” she said, knowing her eyes hadn’t deceived her. That was no trick brought about by chemistry. It was magic, pure and simple. And it had come from Yvette.
Now if they could only figure out what kind of magic it was.
“So, this wizard fellow is some kind of expert in weird things like my hair?”
Yvette adjusted the end of the head scarf over her cheek for the fifth time since they’d gone underground, repositioned the hatpin holding it in place over her hair, and hopped on the train running south. After checking on the progress of her portrait, Elena had borrowed a rather smart green silk dress and matching head scarf from Pedro’s new live-in bohemian girlfriend. The fit was almost perfect on Yvette’s lithe frame. On reflection, the young woman cut a striking figure once attired in properly fitted clothes. But she’d forgotten about shoes, so the girl was forced to continue padding around in her carnival footwear. In fact, she seemed to prefer them, walking lightly in her high-wire, pixie way.
“He’s a shop owner interested in all kinds of phenomena,” Elena whispered when she noticed an elderly woman across the aisle paying much too much attention to them. “I’m very curious to see what he has to say about you.”
“Oh là là, if he tells me I’m a stub witch who can’t control her own magic like everyone else did, I’m walking out.”
“You’ve been examined before?”
“Just some old guy Tante hired to show me the basics. Gave up after a couple of weeks on account of me being a hopeless case. I think she was expecting me to bring in money for her by doing a few exotic spells or something.”
Yvette turned her face to the window. It couldn’t be easy for her, after the life she’d lived. Abandoned as a child, brought up in a cabaret by a mortal woman who cared little for her—is that where the scar had come from?—and then forced to go on the run after being accused of killing a man. Elena didn’t know the details, but she found it hard to believe that the young woman she’d come to know was capable of cold-blooded murder.
Then again, the girl had never denied it.
The railroad car rocked steadily as it hurried down the tracks in the claustrophobic tunnels beneath the city. The old woman across the aisle from them continued to stare. And mutter. She seemed to be reciting something over and over again under her breath—possibly a spell of some sort—the intensity of her attentions going beyond acceptable curiosity in her fellow passengers. Elena stared back, ready to utter a spell of her own, when the woman stood, splashed the contents of a vial of presumed holy water at her feet, and spit out the accusation of “venefica” before relocating to a different car.
Yvette stood and flicked her fingers under her chin at the woman before she was able to get the carriage door shut. “Mind your own business, beldam!” The encounter seemed to pump the life back into the girl. She practically bounced on the seat next to Elena. “What the hell was that about? Why’d she call you that? Crazy old woman.”