The Glamourist (The Vine Witch #2)(51)
Henri closed up his portfolio and ran after her. “What are you doing?”
“It’s safer and more reliable than sending a telegraph,” she said, stopping beside the tallest tree she could find. A pair of mourning doves cooed on a branch above. She called them down and whispered her message as they walked in a circle at her feet, their heads bobbing in all seriousness as they listened to her detailed instructions.
“I don’t . . . I don’t understand.”
“I imagine not, Henri. But the birds do, and that’s all that matters.”
The doves flapped their wings and off they flew, soaring over the rooftops, heading for the heart of the city.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Yvette opened her eyes. Orange flames from a single torch flickered in the darkness. The air was cool and musty like a cellar, but there were no casks of wine. A cave or tunnel, then? She sat up. Her head pounded and her tongue furred in her mouth for want of water. She’d been knocked out, and good. The lightness that had nearly lifted her off her feet had dimmed. Her limbs felt heavy as lead, but at least her hands and feet were free. She squinted into the dark to see if she was alone. That’s when she spotted the first bones—ribs and femurs piled up as dry and weathered as stacked driftwood, with the occasional skull stuffed between to form a wall. Oh la vache, that sick son of a bitch dragged her into the Maze of the Dead? It had to be, though in some faraway corner. The bones were not so neatly stacked here as they were at the entrance where the tourists gawked at the two-hundred-year-old skeletons of plague victims. No wonder she wasn’t tied up. She could wander for days in the abandoned tunnels and never find her way out.
Panic punched her in the throat, stifling her scream so it came out as a muffled squeal. The noise she’d made was enough to attract attention. A figure approached from farther down the tunnel. As he stepped into the circle of light, she saw he was a middle-aged man with a pointed beard and mustache that curled up at the ends. His suit looked expensive, though the hems on the trousers were beginning to fray. His shoes, too, might have cost more than a few coins when new, but they’d been buffed so many times the leather was wearing thin. Following behind was an obvious flunky wearing a flat cap and a pair of baggy trousers, a small iron hoop slung over his arm. The same rotten fellow who had tried to mug her on the butte a few days earlier.
“Hello, Yvette.” The middle-aged man lit a cigarette. “May I call you Yvette, or do you prefer Mademoiselle Lenoir?”
“What the hell is this?”
He raised a brow at her swearing. “Don’t be vulgar. You are in the Maze of the Dead. A forgotten section of it at least. Show the dead the respect they deserve.”
Yvette didn’t yet trust her legs to hold her up, so she wrapped her arms around her knees protectively as she took in her surroundings with new understanding. “You aren’t les flics, so what do you want with me?”
“You possess something I’ve been waiting a very long time to see.” He casually slipped one hand in his pocket and blew out a long stream of smoke rings, a move too smooth for a stiff like him. This man wasn’t a typical street thug. Not quite one of the bon chic with those worn shoes, but a well-to-do straight all the same. So what was he doing mugging and kidnapping young women on the butte?
“I don’t have anything you could possibly want,” she answered, but she knew her eyes betrayed her.
“The book, Yvette. I want the book with the gold lettering,” the man said. He knelt in front of her, moving slowly like a predator watching for the slightest hint of flight. “So, I’m going to ask you nicely this one time. Where did you hide it?”
“I didn’t steal the book. It’s mine. My mother gave it to me.”
Yvette swore the bone pile rattled as the man’s nose flared and the muscles in his jaw clenched. “Your mother doesn’t give anything. She only takes. Or perhaps you hadn’t noticed how she stole your life from you, abandoning you to live like a common mortal.”
“You knew her?”
The jaw clenched again. “Unfortunately, she’s my wife.”
The breath went out of Yvette.
This pompous ass was married to her mother? But then . . .
“Wait, are you saying you’re my father?”
“Blessedly, I am not.” The man stood and checked his pocket watch. His mustache twitched in response to the time.
Thank the All Knowing, she thought. But then what was this about? “Look, I don’t know how much you know, but that book is a bunch of gibberish. Makes no sense to anyone.”
He snapped the pocket watch shut. “The degree of your ignorance is astounding. But one shouldn’t be surprised given your upbringing and dubious mongrel bloodline.” He stared at her with eyes devoid of sympathy, tracing the features of her face as if hoping to recognize something he once found interesting. He pivoted away in disgust, but then something made him stop and turn. He bent and viciously gripped her jaw in his hand. “Your scar is gone.” He twisted around and glared up at the flunky. “You didn’t notice that?”
“Sorry, boss. It was dark when we got here.”
“So that’s how she hid you.”
He released her jaw with a jerk and stood. Yvette stretched her mouth wide. How did he know about her scar?
“I imagine you’re not feeling so light and airy down here in the gloom and damp, are you?” he said. He stubbed out his cigarette and removed a small tin from his trouser pocket. She thought he might offer her a ciggie, but instead he dug a fingernail into the tin and raised it to his nose, inhaling a white powder. “One of the weaknesses of your kind,” he said. “Luckily I know how to take advantage of it.”