The Glamourist (The Vine Witch #2)(38)

A revelation was about to devour her.

“Not all your life, I’d wager.”

“What is it? What do you see?” Elena swung around so that she stood behind the shop owner’s right shoulder.

Alexandre sorted quickly through the items atop the display table beside him. “Ah, this will do, if memory serves,” he said, picking up the stethoscope. He hooked the earpieces around his neck and aimed the bell end at Yvette’s face. Oddly enough, a purple light shone out of its enchanted end.

Elena gasped and covered her mouth. “It’s shimmering under the ultraviolet light.”

“Shimmering?” Yvette rubbed her hand against her jaw and looked at her fingers. Nothing. “You mean like glitter?”

“More like those pulsating electric lights on that monstrosity of a tower.” Alexandre rummaged through a third source of books stashed within a picnic basket. He pulled loose a black leather tome with seven brass stars embedded in its cover. “I suspect your scar was not caused by any childhood injury but by magic. Now, let’s see if we can sort out what kind and, if we’re lucky, perhaps even why.”

“You keep a copy of The Book of the Seven Stars in a picnic basket?” Elena asked.

“Safest place for it.” He shrugged and began scanning the pages for the information he was after.

Yvette ran to an ornate mirror hanging above an umbrella stand, desperate to see what they were talking about, but the antique’s unfortunate enchantment reflected back the face of a horse. “Merde, what’s happening in this place?”

Alexandre traced his finger over the sentences in the book until he slowed and tapped on a single satisfying word. “Ah, yes, an étouffer, mademoiselle, that is what is happening.”

Yvette looked to Elena for an explanation. “Is that bad? If it’s in that book, it’s bad, right?”

“Don’t worry,” Elena said. “It’s not a curse or hex or anything. An étouffer merely means someone has muzzled your magic. Your scar may prove to be the place where they sealed the spell. Like a stopper in a bottle. Honestly, I could kick myself. I should have seen it from the start, the way the magic can’t seem to find a proper way out of you.”

“Muzzled?” Yvette collapsed in an overstuffed chair. “So, I really am a witch?”

“Without question you come from a magical bloodline.” Alexandre rubbed an itch above his bushy eyebrow. “Though there is something peculiar about the way your energy swims within your humors. It’s trapped because of the étouffer, yes, but the flow is . . . erratic, to say the least.”

“But I’m a witch.” Yvette perked up. “So, is that my spell book? Is it my mother’s grimoire? Can I start learning spells?”

“Ah, yes, the book. That I cannot say. Not yet.” He returned to the coded pages, giving them another glance. “One has to ask, if this were a mere family spell book, why hide the incantations? Why make a daughter wait until she turned sixteen? And why has your magic been muted?”

“Is it malefaction?” Elena asked with a look Yvette had seen before when they’d faced off against a three-hundred-year-old demon-loving witch in the depth of a creepy wine cellar.

“I cannot honestly say. There seems to be a confusing haze in the room on that topic,” he said pointedly at Elena, to which she demurred. Then choosing to hunt down his own line of thought, he asked Yvette, “Why didn’t you receive the book when you were sixteen? You are beyond that age, I presume.”

“I . . .” Yvette exchanged a glance with Elena, who nodded, despite her face going pale as if she might be sick. “I had to leave the city before I got the chance.”

“On account of?”

“On account of killing a man so he wouldn’t kill me. Only the law sees it one way. Murder. So, I got the hell out. Don’t you read the newspapers?”

Alexandre ignored her question. “Did this by any chance occur near your sixteenth birthday?”

“Night of. How’d you guess?”

Alexandre moved closer, his eyes squinting behind the pince-nez. “Tell me, what did this man do? How did he approach you?”

“He . . . I don’t know, he paid, you know, to go to my room at Le Rêve.” Yvette reached for the ashtray on the table beside her. “Can I smoke?”

“Absolutely not.”

Mon Dieu, these straights and their rules.

“What do you mean he paid?”

Elena interceded. “She grew up in a cabaret that apparently doubled as a brothel.”

“Ah. Go on, then.”

“I did the usual stuff, took his hat, offered him a drink, and then, I don’t know, he went nuts. Pushed me down on the bed, but instead of coming after me he starts tearing through my vanity table and wardrobe. Figured he was a white-powder fiend or maybe chasing the green fairy for the first time and he thought I had money stashed in the room. I don’t know many spells, but Rings—he’s a thief who works the right bank—”

“Yes, yes, I’m aware of who he is.”

“Someone taught him a spell to open locks that for some reason always worked for me and no one else, so I tried writing a few spells of my own. When this guy didn’t find what he was looking for, he came at me again, demanding I tell him where I had it hidden or he’d kill me.”