The Glamourist (The Vine Witch #2)(54)

“We’re not serving yet,” said a woman’s voice from somewhere beyond the glow of the gas lamps. “Come back this evening.” The sound of shifting bottles followed.

“We’re looking for Isadora Lenoir, the owner of the establishment,” Elena said. “We’d like a word with her, if she’s available.”

A pale face topped with a bird’s nest of red hair showed itself in the lamplight. A cigarette dangled from the woman’s bottom lip as she spoke. “What about?”

“Yvette Lenoir.”

“What about her?”

“Are you Madame Lenoir?”

The woman exhaled. “What’s Yvette done now? I assume since those men outside are still watching the place, she’s not back in jail yet.”

“My name is Elena Boureanu, and this is Monsieur Alexandre Olmos. Please, may we sit? We’d like to ask you a few questions about her family.”

“It’s all right, Tante, they’re with me.” Henri entered from a back room he’d somehow managed to access from behind. “They need to ask you some questions about when Yvette first came here. She’s in trouble. Serious kind this time.”

“What’s new.” Tante smirked before going back to her work. “There’s nothing to say. The girl was abandoned as a child. I took her in out of the goodness of my heart. She decided to bite the hand that fed her, and now she’s an escaped murderer. Haven’t seen her in years. But if you do, remind her she owes me money. Now if you’ll excuse me, Henri, take your friends out. I have work to do.”

Elena removed her gloves and laid them on the bar. “That’s not quite true, though, is it?” she said. “Yvette was here four nights ago and left with a rather unusual little book, which you’d been saving for her until her sixteenth birthday.”

There was a long pause; the silence of a woman’s mind calculating risk.

“Louise? Get the lights.”

“Allow me.” Elena rubbed her hands together and blew the heat from her palms into the air. A moment later the room filled with the smoky yellow glow from the gas lamps affixed to the walls and center chandelier. In the brightness, the red wall behind the bar came alive with a painted scene of a golden cherub shooting a tiny arrow at a pair of lovers in recline. It also revealed the dark-blue half-moon bruise under Isadora’s left eye.

“That’s real convincing,” she said. “You ought to work the séance rooms.”

Her reaction to the magic appeared muted for a typical mortal, thought Elena.

“That’s because we’re witches.” Alexandre raised his walking cane, which functioned as an oversize wand, and pointed it in a manner some might interpret as threatening. “Witches in need of some answers,” he further explained and locked the doors with a manipulation spell to prevent interruption.

Isadora peered at them with the narrowed gaze of a woman who’d had her share of run-ins with troublemakers before and come out victorious every time. Except, perhaps, during whatever incident had caused that nasty black eye.

“In that case, be my guests.” Isadora gestured to the barstools while still holding a bottle of gin in her hand.

Elena took a peek over the bar as she sat and discovered the source of the clanking bottles she’d heard when they entered. The woman had been funneling less expensive alcohol into fancier bottles that could be sold to customers at a higher price.

“I’ll tell you what I told the others,” Isadora said, picking up the funnel again. “I have no idea what the book is for, and I don’t know where it is. I don’t know where the girl is, either, and I don’t care.”

“Others?” Alexandre asked.

The woman exhaled loudly. “You think you’re the first to come by my establishment looking for Yvette and that damn book?”

“Did someone else use force to get answers about Yvette?” Elena pointed indelicately at the woman’s bruise.

Isadora eyed the cheap gin as it trickled into the olive-green bottle with the exclusive label. She ignored the question.

Elena was about to ask her question again when Alexandre rested a hand on her arm. Had he sensed something in the woman’s dull aura? Pain? Deception? There were a few mortal emotions that registered on the astral plane for someone as sensitive as Monsieur Olmos.

“Madame, if I may ask,” he began humbly. “Why did you agree to take the girl in? She couldn’t have been more than a babe. Were you friends with her mother?”

Ah, perhaps he’d seen evidence of a maternal instinct. Some piece of her heart must have flared in his sight despite her facade of not caring about Yvette. She stopped pouring the gin briefly, as if recalling the moment she’d decided to take in another woman’s child. It was an extraordinary commitment, even if the only thing she’d wanted was free labor out of the girl. But no, Alexandre’s tone suggested he was of the belief she’d done it for a more altruistic reason.

“I tried with Yvette. I did. I thought that maybe . . .” She looked at Henri and set the bottle of gin aside. “She’s supposed to be like the two of you. And yet . . . she’s different. Broken. She couldn’t do any of the tricks you do. I thought I could use her talent in the show—something unique, exotic, to get the crowd going. But there’s something about that girl that doesn’t work right. Never did. And yet her mother . . .”