The Glamourist (The Vine Witch #2)(78)
“Are we in a dream world?” Marion asked.
Sidra shushed the mortal and led them down a hall lined with columns the size of tree trunks and a great overhead arch from which a row of dimmed chandeliers hung. The walls featured life-size murals of famous battles done in heavy oil paints and mounted in gilded frames. Turning down another corridor, they walked among hazy water lilies, golden haystacks, and a vase full of droopy sunflowers. Henri and Marion both sighed and stared in wonder, modern disciples before the canvas altars. Finally, Sidra walked them up a carpeted flight of stairs wide enough to drive two Metro trains side by side. On their right, they entered a square room with a single electric chandelier, a velvet bench, and a rope line strung in front of three paintings shimmering from the precious metals infused in the pigments.
“It’s Tulane’s room,” Henri said and slipped his hand inside Yvette’s. He pulled her away from the others to show her the first of the three paintings. “Here she is, Mademoiselle Delacourt,” he said. The woman in the painting was kneeling in a field of flowers, her face tipped up and smiling as a man in a fanciful robe kissed her cheek with the passion of someone in the throes of love. Beside it was another painting featuring the same woman, but where the other showed passion, this one depicted the serene love of a mother and child lying on a bed of green grass. Flowers sprouted like halos atop their golden heads.
“Do you think that’s my mother?” Yvette asked. “And . . . and me?”
Henri squeezed her hand and took her to stand before the third painting. This time the woman’s eyes were closed as golden tears streamed down her flawless face. As with the others, a hint of crushed gemstones glittered within the painting.
“It’s a spell,” Elena said. “To mesmerize the eye.” The vine witch held her hand out as if testing the air. “I’d wager it’s the same shimmering energy as at Le Maison Chavirée.” Elena looked at her then with a strange expression of concern. “We didn’t have a chance to tell you yet. Tulane. He’s your father, Yvette. He and your mother ran to get away from the comté.”
“My father painted these?”
Seeing the paintings in person made the hollow space inside Yvette’s chest sink with longing. She wanted to run her fingers over the gloss of the paint, feel the texture of the canvas, sense the magic on her skin, and know that her parents had once held the same picture in their hands, but Henri held on tight.
“There’s an incantation in the instructions,” Alexandre said. Behind him the jinni sealed the entrance to the room with a smokescreen, making them invisible to any mortal passersby. “I believe you are meant to speak it before the paintings.”
“Me?” Yvette took the paper Alexandre had transcribed the message on. “Now?”
“There’s no time to waste. Simply read the words out loud as written.” Elena spoke softly, with an aura of reverence. “Visualize your power as you speak. Open your heart. The All Knowing will see your intentions and help you attain the thing you seek.”
The thing she sought?
Yvette stepped up to the painting of the couple in the midst of their kiss. She studied the faces, imagining the people behind them seeing her as a grown woman for the first time. For a moment she lost her nerve, her knees cut out from under her by shame at the things she’d done to survive as a child left behind. Resentment began to show its teeth, but she shuttered the emotion away. She hadn’t come this far to turn heel at the first sign of discomfort. She faced the painting, opened her heart, and read the words on the piece of paper.
“Feather, flower, quarter moon, offered with a mournful tune. Dragonflies and threads of gold, messengers of the gods of old. Affix your wish and let it soar, crack wide the light beyond the door.”
She waited expectantly, her heart racing and her palms sweating. She listened for a presence in the room, for a voice to speak.
But there was nothing. No whoosh, no tingling, no instant parents. Just one more disappointment.
“Apparently I can’t even do a spell that was written for me,” Yvette said, grinding her jaw to keep from crying.
“If I may.” Alexandre asked to see the paper again. “It’s possible in our rush to interpret the words, we missed the meaning.”
Elena joined him and then slapped her forehead, cursing her limited vision. “Yes, of course. It isn’t merely an incantation. It’s also a list of elements for the spell.”
“Precisely.” Alexandre tapped his finger on the first line. “I believe in addition to speaking the words, you are to gather the items and present them. Fairies do love an offering.”
Yvette took the paper back, studying it. “But I haven’t got any of this stuff.”
Marion spoke up first. “I believe it called for a feather,” she said and plucked the ostrich plume from her hat. “You may have mine.”
“And I have something that should do for the flower.” Elena reached in her purse and produced a handful of dried rose petals she’d collected on her first day in the city.
“A promising start,” Alexandre said.
Jean-Paul spoke up next. “Hold on. I may be able to provide a suitable moon.” The others cast a doubtful eye, until he unclasped the moon-and-star cuff links that had been his father’s.
Could they truly have all they needed to cast the spell? Yvette felt a flutter of optimism sail into her heart. But what of the other items? Music, a dragonfly, and a golden thread? Surely, they were out of grasp. Or so she thought, until Henri stood, grinning like he’d just stolen a fresh loaf of bread.