The Glamourist (The Vine Witch #2)(36)
Elena looked down at her hands folded in her lap. Her fingers, normally stained red this time of year from cleaning the lees out of the vats, were as clean as freshly pressed linen. What spot of filth had the woman seen that she herself could not?
The train slowed as it approached the next station. “This is our stop,” she said, letting Yvette’s question go unanswered.
They emerged onto a busy street on the right bank of the river not far from the university. After turning left and left again, they found themselves in a narrow urban canyon on a lane as old as the city itself. Elena knew if she put a hand to any one of the stones beneath their feet, she would hear the roar of centuries gone past, to the time of kings and courtiers, peasants and tyrants. And witches who had plied their trade for as long as the walls had stood.
Up ahead Elena spotted the epicurean shop on the corner that specialized in ingredients she added to certain fragrant spells to ease winter’s gray days, like dried bergamot, patchouli oil, and the shaved bark of the agar tree. They’d come to a part of the city where a witch on the prowl could find just about any requirement she needed for a spell. A craving inside her to find a pinch of dried hemlock or a sprig of nightshade spurred her to look through the glass of the market shop. She had no spell she used for those, but her heart told her she could devise one easily enough.
Blood will tell, blood will remember.
The thought startled her. She’d always had a talent for poison, yes, but her curiosity about the art had never risen inside her like a craving. And yet she could feel it tugging at her, pulling her down. Had the simple clerical act of revoking her status as a vine witch done that? Was it possible to change a person’s constitution with the mere mark of a rubber stamp? Is that what the old woman on the train had sensed?
She stepped back and hooked her arm through Yvette’s for courage, as much for herself and the strength to walk away as for the young woman and the precarious trust she had in Elena to do the right thing. With a sigh of relief, they came next to a little shop with a lock and key flanked by two crescent moons painted above the door. As they stood on the threshold of their destination, Elena made a silent plea to the All Knowing to repel the creeping seduction of poisons taking hold inside of her as thoroughly as Yvette’s golden hair had rejected the bottle of dye.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
“What is this place?” Yvette could see movement inside as dark silhouettes passed behind the exposed portion of the window beside the door.
“It’s a curio shop. Mostly.” Elena opened the door.
“It doesn’t look like any shop I’ve ever seen.” She’d been expecting more of a bookstore, something akin to the kiosks that set up shop by the river, only with walls and a door. Not a fancy gentleman’s shop that appeared as if it required an invitation merely to walk inside. Of course, now she understood the change of clothes Elena had insisted on. Even in the silk dress and matching head scarf they’d found for her to wear, she’d still be a common pigeon among the sparrow hawks in a place like this. And she knew how their sharp eyes always kept a lookout for new prey.
“Trust me,” Elena said, nudging her at the elbow. “The place isn’t as fancy as it looks. It only pretends to cater to the city snobs on the outside.”
Trust. Not a word she’d hang around most people’s necks, but Elena was different. She was counting on it.
The scent of faded perfume and upholstery infused with lingering pipe smoke met Yvette’s nose as she stepped inside. Though it proved a curio shop as Elena had said, there were a large number of books. Piles of them, really, scattered around the chairs and ottomans for sale. Several were titled in languages she didn’t recognize. Others, their pages coming loose from their worn bindings, served merely as end tables on which to display a lantern, or gravy boat, or pair of snuff boxes, and in one case a walking cane with an onyx stone dragon affixed as a handle. On another pile rested a brass compass and a doctor’s stethoscope. Above them a sign on the wall stated: ALL MERCHANDISE GUARANTEED.
Yvette pointed and asked Elena, “Guaranteed to do what?”
“Everything here has been enchanted in one fashion or another,” she said. “But that doesn’t mean the proprietor guarantees the functionality of any of the objects, only that they’ve been magicked at some point in the past. Buyer beware.”
“Right,” said Yvette, careful not to bump into anything too suspicious looking.
She had just picked up a small perfume bottle with a glass stopper, wondering how a bottle could be enchanted, when a short man in a black frock coat stepped through the curtains from the back room. A tiny moth fluttered out from beneath his lapel as he dabbed at the corners of his mouth with a napkin, as if he’d moments ago finished his midday meal.
“Ah, Mademoiselle Boureanu, is it not?” The man adjusted the pince-nez on the bridge of his nose to get a better look. “It’s been a long time since we’ve seen you in this end of the city.”
“I’d been away for a while, Monsieur Olmos.”
Yvette thought Elena was uncharacteristically nervous, the way she fiddled with the marble chess pieces assembled on top of the front counter. He was just a frumpy old man who ate alone, for goodness sake.
“Eh, curses. They’re the worst infestation of the soul, are they not?”
Elena blanched as Yvette questioned the remark with a pointed look and raised eyebrow.