The Glamourist (The Vine Witch #2)(55)
“What about her mother?” Alexandre leaned in on both elbows, as if listening to the confession of a friend.
The woman made a show of having said too much, but after another soft nudge from Alexandre, she relented. “Her mother was grace itself. A dancer. A model. And now dead for all I know. And probably for the best she never had to see what became of that girl.”
Elena had to restrain herself from pointing out the less than ideal conditions Yvette had grown up in, raised in a cabaret that catered to lustful drunkards.
“And her mother was a witch?” Alexandre asked. “I apologize for being so straightforward, madame, but why would she leave Yvette in the care of a mortal?”
The woman’s face shifted. The eyes tightened, the jaw clamped tight, and the lips puckered slightly so that the deep lines around her mouth grew even more exaggerated. “No one else would take the child in. It was as simple as that.”
Alexandre folded his hands over his cane’s handle. “And yet, madame, everything about your spectral energy says you’re lying.”
Isadora stuffed the cork back in the gin bottle. “I dare you to accuse me of that again,” she warned.
“You are deliberately misleading us, madame. For what purpose, I don’t know, but you’re hiding something.”
“You’re right. I am.” Isadora reached under the bar and produced a silver handgun with pearl handles just small enough for a woman to tuck in her purse. “I think it’s time for you to leave,” she said, raising the barrel so that it was level with Alexandre’s nose.
“Here we go,” Henri said, shaking his head as if he’d seen it all before.
“Perhaps we should leave,” Elena said, knowing the answers they sought weren’t worth possible bloodshed. Besides, the woman wasn’t giving them the information they needed.
Alexandre merely tapped his cane twice against the floor. The old witch rose from his stool and crossed behind the bar to where Isadora stood trembling, as though confused at the gun in her hand. “You don’t want to hurt anyone,” he said with a calm yet authoritative tone, using what Elena recognized as a mild hypnotic spell to put her at ease until she lowered her arm a few inches. He took the weapon and patted her hand. “That’s better. Now, madame, I need to know the truth about the girl’s mother and father.”
“No, I can’t. I won’t,” she said, pleading. “I promised.”
“Yes, tell me about that promise.”
She shook her head, resisting, fretting more and more like a trapped bird in a cage rather than the fierce tiger that had wanted to shoot them moments ago.
Isadora shoved her refilled bottles under the bar. She attempted to storm out, her will stronger than Alexandre had likely counted on, but the door to the back hallway was still locked by his magic. “Louise, open this door.”
“I can’t,” said Louise from the other side. “His spell is stronger than mine.”
Isadora banged her head against the door once before turning around and marching straight for Alexandre and Elena. “You’ve interfered in things you know nothing about,” she hissed, jamming her finger into the old man’s chest. “Private family matters,” she yelled at Elena. But once she got the initial heat of rebellion out of her system, her rational mind seemed to respond. She exhaled loudly through her nose. “What’s happened to her? Where is she?”
“She was taken off the street,” Elena said before glancing at Henri. “Possibly by the same person who gave you that black eye.”
Henri confirmed it with a nod.
Tante Isadora absorbed the news as if it were the worst they could have delivered. Her eyes glossed over from genuine concern. “If he’s found her, then she truly is in danger.” She clapped a worried hand over her mouth, as if rattled by the heavy sound of consequences hitting the floor. “You have to find her. You have to help her.”
“That, madame, is why we’re here.”
Tante Isadora nodded, then relented before pouring a round of cheap gin and sitting at one of the cabaret tables. Her body slumped into the chair as if the burden of standing had become more than she could bear. “I’ll tell you,” she said. “I’ll tell you everything, and then you have to promise me you’ll get that girl back.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Logically Yvette knew the metal was cool to the touch, yet every time she moved, the hoop they’d slipped around her body burned her arms as if it had been stoked in an open flame. Unlike the carefully crafted rune cuffs they used in the witch’s prison, with their glowing blue energy that severed prisoners from the source of their magic, this damn thing was made of common mortal iron. The band shouldn’t be hurting her, but already she could feel the blisters rise on her skin.
“For the tenth time. Where is the book?” The thug in the flat cap gave Yvette a kick in the backside as a punctuation to his question.
“I lost it. Threw it in the river. Set the damn thing on fire.” She tried to put as much defiance in her words as she could muster, but she’d fallen over onto her side, too tired from fighting pain to hold herself upright anymore. She could barely lift her head once a strange, offbeat vibration had begun humming inside her body.
Flat cap came around and squatted in front of her. His face looked like someone had molded it out of a block of clay and then shoved their fist into the botched result when it disappointed—nose squished to one side, droopy eyelids, and a mouth shaped like a knife slit. And this one had to be a real charmer with the ladies with that body odor of his.