The Glamourist (The Vine Witch #2)(41)
“Would you look at that!” Yvette turned her face from cheek to cheek, then leaned closer to the mirror. “What do I do now? Am I a witch?”
“Do you feel anything in your hands? Any tingling or itch?”
Yvette wiggled her fingers. “It feels like quicksilver sliding through my fingers.”
“Try to create a little fire on your fingertips,” Elena said.
Alexandre balked. “In my shop? I think not. I may not carry luxury goods, but I’d like to protect the merchandise, all the same.”
“Right, good point. We still don’t know what we’re dealing with.” Elena eyed the doll Alexandre was holding. “What about a simple charm? I learned to curl my doll’s hair when I was a child using an elementary enchantment.”
Elena handed her the doll and told her what to say. Yvette wrapped a strand of doll hair around her finger and repeated the words, concentrating for all she was worth. “With a twirl or with a swirl, every girl should wear a curl.”
The doll responded by sprouting a vine with curling tendrils that trailed down its back.
“Not quite there yet,” Elena said, but she encouraged Yvette by observing that some kind of magic had come through.
“It is odd, though, isn’t it?” Alexandre studied the doll’s leafy hair. “For the charm to have turned the way it did.” He set the doll on a bookshelf. “At any rate, it’s no misfit in this shop.”
“But I still am,” Yvette said with obvious disappointment.
“You simply need a little training. To learn how to control the flow of energy.”
“Maybe that’s what the book is for.” Yvette brightened and retrieved her mother’s book before handing it over to Alexandre. “Will you keep trying to figure out what it says?”
He seemed at first to want to say no, then gingerly accepted the book and the challenge. “It may take some time,” he warned. “Days, a week, a month.”
Yvette began to have second thoughts, but if this eccentric old man could keep a copy of The Book of the Seven Stars safe in a picnic basket, he ought to be able to protect her little book of spells.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Henri had been in the curio shop once or twice before. Bunch of junk, really. Nothing in there ever seemed to work the way it was supposed to. So, what was Yvie and that other one doing in there? And why was Yvie hanging out with her anyway? Unless they were partners. Two women working together could steal the shirt off a man on the boulevard before he knew what was up. They could maybe get a few coins for a busted pocket watch in a shop like that, though he never heard any rumors about the old man being very generous. And the woman Yvie was with didn’t look like she needed the money either. Of course, that could be part of the con.
“What are you up to, Yvie?” Henri whispered the question to himself as he smudged a charcoal line to soften the angle of her jaw. He’d drawn her a hundred times in his sketchbook. Sometimes from afar, most often from memory, once when she’d sat still for him with the spring sun shining in her hair, and again at night under the soft glow of October moonlight. She inspired his artistic eye like no other. Not even the Mademoiselle Delacourt from the museum excited him the way Yvie did. Which made what he had to do next rise like turpentine in his throat.
Henri looked over his drawing, added a final detail to her head scarf, then closed the sketchbook. He’d finish it later when he was alone. After he sobered up from the alcohol he knew he’d numb himself with later.
The shades went down inside the store, and even Henri didn’t miss the irony of the moment. Something shady was going on behind the shop door. Yvie had gotten herself into a powerful mess to have the sort of people interested in finding her. As soon as news hit she’d escaped prison, there was word of a reward from a private source. Not just for her, though. There was some book too. No deal without the book. Henri couldn’t imagine any book being as valuable as the money being offered. Worth a year’s earnings or more working the high end of the street near the theaters. Or maybe ten paintings when he was famous. If he could ever sell one to anyone besides his mother. “Christ, Yvie, where’d you ever steal a book like that from? Is that what you’re doing in there? Trying to sell it?” She’d be better off turning herself in to the boss. Well, money-wise anyway.
Henri packed his sketchbook and charcoal away and gave up his position outside the door to the epicurean shop. And good riddance. The entire street gave him the shivers with all the palm readers, and painted wagons advertising amulets, and animal feet and tails for sale as good luck charms. People acting like all that occult stuff was normal fascination. Whole city had gone twitchy. If they wanted a real scare, they ought to follow him to the basement in Hell’s Mouth. One trip there would cure them of their need for a morbid thrill. Of course, half of them probably already frequented the damn place on the regular.
The courtyard clock struck the hour. He was late. Worth it, though, to get a glimpse of Yvie in that dress and get to draw her one more time. The wind shifted and he nearly gagged on the nearby stench from the abattoirs, where the slaughter of horses for their meat continued day and night to keep up with the city’s demand. With the reek of blood and excrement caught in the back of his throat, he jumped on the first omnibus going north and took it as far as the base of the butte where the five streets converged in the infamous cabaret district. From there he ducked down an alley most would pass by, thinking it a dead end where only stray cats gathered to screech and howl. But if you walked all the way to the back, turned left, and squeezed around the drainpipe coming off the back of the building—le trou du cul du diable, the devil’s asshole, as the gang called it—you ended up in a second alley that emptied out at the back side of the butte’s graveyard. It also led directly to the back door of Hell’s Mouth.