The Glamourist (The Vine Witch #2)(56)
The man smacked Yvette on top of the head. “Where is it?”
What had his boss said about the dank and dark and “her kind”? Did he know something about her magic she didn’t? She’d been so completely filled with the light of life, it had practically shone out of the top of her head when she’d left the flat to find Henri at the café. But that was hours ago, and now that energy had been drained away, siphoned off by the darkness and fear.
She tried uttering a spell, the same one that had saved her once before. “Scissors, knife, or broken sword. Fly to my aid, heed my word.” Yvette strained to see if the man was still hovering over her or if he’d actually keeled over from a sharp object embedding itself in his throat. But no, he was still there, sucking food from his teeth with his tongue. The vibration rattled through her body again, making her wilt like a flower out of water. Drooping, dying, burning.
Her abuser stood. He turned on his heel and paced in front of her face with his thick-soled boots. She’d give them the book. She knew she would. If he asked her one more time, she would tell him. Anything to be done with this pain of withdrawal. From what substance she did not know, but it was possible she’d had a taste of her true magic and now it was gone and she would never have it back again.
The shudder ended, and she knew it was coming. The question. The kick. The squat and wait. But then a light flickered in the dark. Someone was coming. The boss. The man married to her mother but not her father. Cuckolded, she thought, and managed a dim smile as he shone the light in her face.
The man stood over her. A second thug toting an iron chain flanked him on his side. Come to take the second shift of kicking a helpless young woman in the dark?
“Nothing?”
Flat cap shook his head.
The boss knelt. He set his palm-light on the ground near Yvette’s head. She could feel herself curling toward it, craving the radiance. “You should know I’m a very patient man,” he said, stroking her cheek as he pushed aside a limp strand of her damp-with-sweat hair. “My patience will outlast your resistance. I don’t think your mother ever fully appreciated how persistent I truly am. Don’t make the same mistake she did.”
She grabbed his trouser leg when he began to stand. “Wait. Tell me something about her. Something real. Something I can keep. And then I’ll give you the book.”
He shook loose of her weak grip. After straightening, he stood in silence, breathing, thinking. And then he ordered his thugs out. Obeying, flat cap and his disappointed partner fumbled through the darkened tunnel, disturbing what sounded like a pile of bones. When they were gone, the boss gazed down at Yvette.
“You’re nothing like her, you know.”
“No, I don’t know. The only thing I ever had of her was the book. And now you want to take it from me, and you won’t even tell me why.”
“Very well,” he said and took a sniff of powder from his tin. “I first saw her on a Sunday. She was standing on the steps of the Palais Opéra under a halo of sunshine. She’d just been made principal dancer. Sleeping Beauty was to be her showcase performance. She was the epitome of poise the moment she stepped onto the stage. I knew then I would become her abonné. A patron to help guide her career and maturity.”
“Wrong. My mother was a cabaret dancer.”
“Is that what that woman told you?” he asked, followed by a cynical laugh. “I suppose there’s some poetic justice in the great Cleo Marchand being remembered by her only daughter as a high-kick girl,” he said with a smirk.
Cleo Marchand?
“The famous ballet dancer who used to be on all the posters? You think she’s my mother?” Yvette laughed as well, even though it caused the pain to swell inside her. “You’ve got the wrong girl,” she said. “Which means you’ve got the wrong book.”
The man knelt and spitefully doused his palm-light so all that remained again was the flicker of the distant torch. Yvette writhed on the ground. That small ball of light had been sustaining her, but only just. The tremor returned, shaking her body from her bones to her skin.
“No, I don’t think so.” He narrowed his eyes and leaned in. “Do you even know what you are, Yvette? Why you’re in such pain?”
“You drugged me.”
He shook his head. “Merely a chloroform-based spell. The effect is temporary.” He held his hand out and cast a new palm-light. The radiance immediately eased her craving.
“How’d you do that?”
“I didn’t. Your magic merely responds rather predictably to luminescence. Your mother was the same.” He tossed the ball of light in his hand, turning it into a plaything. Much like her life at the moment.
The trembling stopped. She endured the burn of the metal as she asked, “What kind of witch am I?”
“Tell me where the book is,” he demanded and tossed the light so that her heart soared and fell with it.
“The book’s hidden in the Palace Cinema,” she said, desperate for the answer. “There’s a catwalk above the balcony. They store old junk on the landing outside the projection room. It’s there, hidden in a movie-reel case. The one for Le Voyage dans la Lune. Now tell me.”
“That wasn’t so hard, was it?” He bounced the light in his hand one last time before crushing it in his fist and walking out, leaving Yvette alone once again without answers.