The Glamourist (The Vine Witch #2)(61)
She soon found herself on a grassy slope with lavender and daisies growing nearby. The perfume from the flowers floated on the air as a slim young woman in a gauzy dress walked barefoot through the field. Her laughter rose and fell in song like some incantation in a secret language that aroused bees and crickets, butterflies and birds, to dance with her. Elena looked to her left when a man cleared his throat. He sat on a rock under a pair of trees with a sketchbook and stick of charcoal in his hands. He turned to Elena and lifted his hand as if to wave hello, but then he kept reaching until his hand found a cord running between the trees. He pulled it and a bell rang. A voice spoke: rue de Marchandes.
“This is our stop,” Alexandre said for what Elena guessed was perhaps the second time as she reeled back into consciousness. The train pulled into the underground station. The cross streets were announced, and they exited the carriage with Henri following close behind.
Elena held the vision of the couple tight in her mind as Alexandre led them up the stairs back to street level. With quick steps they rounded the corner to the curio shop, thankful to find the protection spell still holding the place together. The old conjurer removed his athame from his suit pocket and cut the invisible seal binding the spell to the perimeter. Once the energy dissipated, they entered the shop and bolted the door behind them. Henri wiped a sleeve over his face, presumably to rid himself of the sensation of having walked through spiderwebs.
“I saw them,” she said to Alexandre. “With my shadow vision. Yvette’s parents, I’m certain.”
“Good heavens, where?”
Elena bit her lip, forgetting that would be relevant. “I’m not sure. My instinct was more interested in who they were. Cleo, and Yvette for that matter, are unlike any witches I’ve encountered before. There’s all this ethereal, radiant energy, as if that’s their power.” She waited for Alexandre to retrieve the book from a picnic basket buried beneath a life-size taxidermy fox with half its tail eaten away by moths. “Surely you must have been able to detect something unique about her peculiar aura when you saw her?”
“I thought at first Yvette’s odd glow was merely a natural effect of having all that stoppered magic released in a furious burst. I’m no longer convinced that’s the case. She’s a witch, but her energy is scattered rather than concentrated.”
“Do you think they’ll hurt her?”
Alexandre stopped turning pages. “Her kidnappers? Depends on how desperate they are and what’s at stake.”
“Henri?”
His doleful eyes looked up from the clock he’d been studying. “Yeah, they will. Yvie can be brash, but if she doesn’t give them what they want, they’ll do what it takes to get the information out of her. Her mouth won’t help her any, either.”
But if it was Marchand, what could be motivating him after so much time? Enough to kidnap, injure, and perhaps even murder? Money and pride were the likely motivators. Simple hate would have long extinguished itself, or at least disarmed the instinct to act on the need for revenge. Elena knew from personal experience the desire for revenge was unsustainable on its own after so much time. But a lust for money . . . now that was a motivator that could easily stay burning for nearly two decades, greed being the gas that feeds the eternal flame of desire, as it were.
Even as she continued to wonder about the comté and the apparent money troubles Isadora had described during his early marriage to Cleo, the blissful image of the man and woman on the grassy hill wouldn’t leave her thoughts. It was as if they were smiling at her, encouraging her to find them, perhaps so she could find Yvette.
“Would you mind if I took another look at your Book of the Seven Stars?” Elena asked, following a hunch.
Alexandre pointed her toward the picnic basket beside the copper fire extinguisher on the floor. Well, at least the book might be one of the first things to be saved by fire, she mused, if the nearby extinguisher weren’t enchanted to shoot chocolate mousse or whatever other at-odds purpose it had been given.
Four books rested inside the basket. She pulled them all out, surprised to find the first was a blue book with an image of a witch on the cover. But not any witch she recognized. This one was wearing a pointed hat and riding a broom. Above her rose the full moon. Elena “hmphed” and was ready to toss the book aside when she read the title. A shiver coiled up and struck at the base of her neck. A fairy-tale book. There was a blue one, a red one, and another with a green cover. The cover of the green book depicted a fairy wearing a gauzy dress with dragonfly wings on her back. Rays of light shone out behind her.
No, they radiated from within.
“Where did you get these books?”
Alexandre snugged his glasses higher on his nose to better see. “I have no idea. I don’t recall buying them. Complete nonsense on the covers, though I’ve heard they’re rather popular with the mortal readers.”
It wasn’t a coincidence. Couldn’t be. Three books about fairies buried in a picnic basket with The Book of the Seven Stars? Elena sat down and opened the latter, scanning for any mention of the fair ones. Meanwhile Alexandre showed Henri the rest of the symbols contained in Yvette’s book, hoping he might be able to contribute something else about Tulane’s paintings. As they weighed the merit of one curlicue’s meaning over another, Elena struck gold.
“Listen to this,” she said, gripping the book with near violent enthusiasm. “The Fée descend from an ancient magical pedigree of unknown origins. Understood to be creatures capable of traversing between this world and the realm of the Other, they are often endowed with powers ranging from spellcasting to charismatic magnetism, occasionally accompanied by a radiant aura.” Elena looked up to gauge the men’s reactions. Their impassive stares disappointed her, so she read on. “Due to their secretive nature, general disdain for the modern human world, and sometimes fickle nature, their various populations have been difficult to categorize and/or study with any regularity post antiquity. And yet they are known to observe a rigid court life with specific hierarchies of power in the world of the Other. On this side of the veil they enjoy mingling among common mortals, drawn to the extreme displays of awe with which they are received and also to the variety of food, drink, and sexual proclivities associated with mortals. Because of the nature of this attraction, the Fée are considered exceedingly hedonistic and narcissistic creatures by other races. Approach with reserve and caution, as their behavior can be unpredictable.”