The Glamourist (The Vine Witch #2)(76)

Charm. Guile. Glamour. Yvette’s body pulsed with the magic of the fair ones. She knew, if she desired it, she could lead a mortal down any path she chose—to greatness, to folly, even to death if she willed it. What kind of power was that? The sensation chilled her, and she had to go sit under the streetlights beside the others to settle her thoughts.

“If we’re lucky, they’ll let us go after giving our statement,” Elena’s man said as he leaned against a lamppost.

And then what? Could she leave the city? Escape and never return? Was her stolen wish fulfilled because her magic had been revealed? But what about her mother’s book? The message inside? There was so much more to discover; she could feel it. The wish wasn’t done churning its magic.

The cat, who had waited for Yvette at the back of the club after she’d climbed through the upstairs window to get inside Heaven, trotted out from behind a mailbox. He sidled up to her, rubbing his fur against her leg and purring like mad. His green eyes stared, insistent.

Alexandre, seated cross-legged on a bench, studied the animal from behind his spectacles. “That is a most unusual feline,” he said.

“He’s a stray, but he follows me everywhere.”

Alexandre adjusted his position to get a closer look. “Out of curiosity, have you fed it?”

“When I can. Mostly I think he fends for himself. Why?”

“Any unusual good luck lately?”

Yvette smirked and shook her head slowly, waiting for the old man to catch up.

“Right, of course. It’s been a challenging week for you, no doubt.” He continued to stare as Yvette petted the cat. “A stray, you say? And yet he seems to be wearing a collar. An unusually decorative one as well.”

With everything going on, Yvette hadn’t given it much thought. He must have belonged to someone at some time, but the way he followed her around, she assumed he’d been abandoned like so many other strays that roamed the alleys and bridges of the city.

Moonlight caught on the silver collar. Just for a second, whether because of their talk or some other force, it glittered as if infused with magic. The old man noticed too.

“May I?” he asked and unclipped the collar’s fastener. The cat purred softly in Yvette’s arms as the shopkeeper inspected each link under the glow of the streetlight. “Good heavens,” he said at last, the color draining from his face. “Elena, you need to have a look at this.”

Alexandre waited for her to walk over, then let the collar dangle from his fingers to display each twinkling link under the streetlamp. Elena’s mouth fell open at the sight.

“What? What is it?” Yvette strained to understand what they were seeing.

“Your friend has been hiding a secret.” Alexandre pointed out the swirly decorative marks on one side of the link and a corresponding letter of the alphabet on the other. He pulled a lead pencil from his pocket and licked the tip as he set to work.

“You could have spoken up earlier,” Elena said to the cat, who merely swished his tail.

“But what does it mean?” Marion asked, leaning in.

“It’s the key,” Elena said, opening the book between her and Alexandre. “It means we can translate the message Yvette’s mother left her.”

Yvette held the cat’s face in her hands. “But how did he get it?”

“I’d say someone very much wanted for you to discover the message contained in that book and then sent this handsome whiskered fellow to make sure it happened.”

Yvette added the idea to the pile of things already knocking her for a loop.

Meanwhile, Alexandre took the glass cake knife out of his pocket and glanced through it as he began marking out words to test the cipher. “It begins with ‘Dearest One,’” he said.

It was happening. A message from her mother. Yvette began to glow with anticipation. Elena had to tell her to tone it down lest she attract the wrong sort of attention.

Down the street, firefighters carried the comté out of the cabaret on a stretcher. They’d soon confirm there’d been no fire, only smoke. Afterward they’d simply have to let everyone go. And then she could spend the rest of the night holding the book and rereading the message from her mother. Her mother! She wasn’t a stray left alone in the world after all. She had a mother who cared enough to send her a letter.

Elena and Alexandre had jumped ahead to the pages with the gold lettering on them, thinking they’d been highlighted for a reason. With the aid of the cat’s collar, they were able to work quickly and determine they were instructions of some sort.

Yvette was half listening to them argue over the direction of a curl of one symbol versus another when a man approached the comté’s stretcher just as he was being loaded into the back of an ambulance. There was something familiar about the slouch of the man’s hat, the shortened height, the full-moon face. When it came to her, shards of ice backed up in her veins.

Yvette turned away quickly. Behind her hand she pointed in the man’s direction and whispered to Elena, “He’s here.”

Elena followed the direction of her finger and blanched at the sight. Inspector Aubrey Nettles of the Covenants Regulation Bureau. They were directly in his line of sight. If he recognized Yvette, she’d never be free again.

“What is it?” Jean-Paul asked, seeing Elena tense.