“And yet here we are. All alone in the greatest museum in Franchia. Think of all the things we could be doing here, and yet we stand arguing in a hall. You could always kiss me to into silence.”
For a brief moment, I let myself think of all the things we could be doing—against this very wall, on one of the velvet couches, upstairs in the Sun King’s old bed. And yet . . . I couldn’t.
“My life is really complicated right now, Vale.”
“Yes, and that is why it’s good to have someone on your side.”
“You’re already on my side.”
“But I could be on your inside, too.”
A fire burst into life in my belly and radiated outward. I knew what he meant, but it was the double entendre that really caught me. And maybe it would have been easy to give in. But I knew how relationships happened in Sang, and no matter what I had thought about romance from the confines of the caravan, I wasn’t ready to give up my autonomy and start letting him call the shots. Especially when his first demand would be that I stop seeing Lenoir and drinking absinthe.
But I couldn’t tell him that, so I chickened out and went for the cheap shot.
“Maybe once I’ve found Cherie. But until then . . .”
“Until then, you dance on your side of the line.” He dug tight fists into his eyes. “And I dance along with you. From the other side.”
“I have responsibilities.”
“You keep saying that. As if I don’t know. Mon dieu, bébé, do you hear yourself?” He rubbed his head as he paced back and forth, more agitated than I’d yet seen him. “I have halted my life to help you. I have not been back to my tribe since I found you. I haven’t seen my horse. Do you think I am a boy playing a game?”
“I do, actually. You’re using me to avoid your real responsibilities.”
“You are the only thing I’ve ever cared about besides horses! You are my responsibility! So do not toy with me, because I am not a toy.”
His passion shook me, and I was torn between running away and clawing off his clothes to screw him senseless on the floor of the Louvre. But I did neither. “I’m not used to you being serious, Vale.”
“Perhaps I hide my true intentions behind jests because in truth, bébé, the way I feel about you terrifies me. But you don’t wish to hear that.” He pulled out a pocket watch and checked the time. “But for now, let me return you to your giant, lonely bed, as I know you have . . . business tomorrow.”
I snorted. “Oh, so you get to sleep with all the girls at Paradis, but if I don’t fall at your feet and do whatever you say, you get to call me a whore? That’s fair.”
Vale’s jaw dropped, and I’d never seen him look so caught out. “Bébé, no. That’s not what I—”
I put up a hand. “That’s exactly what you meant. You imply it almost every day. And I’ve never slept with any of them, never even kissed them. So let me do my job, and I’ll let you do yours. Which way is the bathroom with the ladder?”
Giving me a long, charged, measuring look, he pointed down the hall. “I might hide behind humor, but you, ma chère, hide behind cruelty.”
I started walking with my back as straight as a curtain rod, and he followed. We didn’t talk all the way through the Louvre, which had lost its midnight luster for me. Down through the hole in the floor, we were silent. Tromping through the sewers, we didn’t say a word.
And I hated it. God, how I hated it. But he hadn’t apologized. And he needed to.
Conveyances were scarce, but at least the one we finally landed had more room in it, which meant we weren’t forced to touch. The air was too thick with resentment for words, anyway. Still, he insisted on seeing me to the back door of Paradis.
“Thanks for a shitty date in a sewer,” I said.
“And thank you for ruining a lovely experience in a romantic museum.”
We stared at each other, breathing audibly through our noses.
“Weren’t we supposed to go see some shady friend of yours and bleed me out?” I spat.
He shook his head, smiling the saddest little smile. “It was only pretense, bébé. Just an excuse to enjoy your company. I was going to take you out for a stroll. There is no way I would put your blud into another man’s hands. Not now.”
“Well, why didn’t you fucking say so? You romantic idiot!” I stormed upstairs, hating the way my hat was bobbing stupidly and even more the way I felt like a spoiled, silly child.
“Good night, bébé,” I heard just before I slammed my door.
There was something on my pillow, and I picked it up with hands still hot with anger.
“Merde.”
It was a small book. “The Elements of Signing with Style” was printed in gold on the cover, along with a hand making the Okay sign.
I ran downstairs to screw his brains out and confess my feelings, in that order.
The hall was empty.
21
It was good to wake refreshed and without a headache, even if I was sleepy and still conflicted over my time with Vale and our troubling good-bye. I was alert enough to slip the book back under my blankets before Blaise entered with my teacup of blood. When he presented a second vial nestled in his tiny blue hands, I shrugged and drank that one, too. Wholesome warmth bloomed in my belly, but when I licked my lips, I longed to taste bloodwine tinged with Lenoir’s special cocktail of absinthe. Tomorrow seemed very far away.
The morning was a flurry of makeup, hot hair tongs, fitting dresses and skirts, and the occasional sting of a pin when Blue wasn’t satisfied with the fit. Fully dressed in my Demitasse costume, I called for a break, taking a quick cup of perfectly warmed blood handed over by the surly bartender. The afternoon belonged to two run-throughs of the chandelier act in my new outfit while dangling high over the stage. Charline and Sylvie knew me well enough now to avoid the fury they would have caused by requesting that I start my practice just a few feet from the floor. I never slipped, never faltered. The confidence and grace of a predator were well suited to performing onstage, and all the high-quality blood had done its work. Even Charline was pleased, and when the curtain went up on a packed house, I was ready.
Every performer dreams of the flawless opening night, and that night I had mine. No one missed a cue. The daimon orchestra’s music was perfection. The girls had never smiled so brightly or kicked so high. The collective gasp as I descended on a giant golden chandelier covered with dripping faux diamonds—well, I drank up their adoration and wonder with the hunger of a daimon. They loved it. They loved us.
They loved me.
And I loved performing for them. This was what I’d dreamed of every night in Criminy’s caravan. A packed house, a sea of tuxedos and faces suffused with red. The hot kiss of spotlights, the breathless exultation of a standing ovation. I was a star, and no one could take it away from me.
The only thing that was missing was Cherie, and as they lowered the chandelier to the stage for our final bow, I felt a stabbing ache deep in my heart. I’d had enough time to become famous, but all I had of my friend were a ragged hairbob, two pulled fangs that might not even be hers, and a jar full of meaningless notes that didn’t give me a single clue as to where she might be. As I bowed and was buffeted by the patting hands of my daimon friends, I swore to myself that after tonight and the insanity of the ball, I would redouble my efforts to find my partner. Stardom was empty without her.
Normally, I hurried to the elephant once the curtain was down, but tonight I let the avalanche of laughing daimon girls carry me back to Blue’s room, where most of them changed every night. Mel and Bea helped me squeeze out of the costume and into the waiting black-and-white ballgown, and Blue double-checked the seams and retied the ribbons before I was allowed to leave. The dress was a wonder; the white organza fit perfectly and spread from the tight corset waist to a wide bell skirt that was so out-of-date as to reinvent fashion in one night. Determined black lines swirled over it like iron scrollwork on a gate, as if one need only grasp my waist and pull to open me wide.
Kohl-rimmed eyes with black feather eyelashes and a slash of bright red in a Cupid’s bow at my lips marked me as a Bludman. My bloomers had become all the rage, I noticed; all the girls were wearing them, albeit in more colorful and ridiculous versions than my plain black ones.
As Blue pinned up my hair, I watched Mel and Bea get dressed at another mirror. They helped each other tenderly, with little touches and smiles. Mel whispered to Bea, and Bea answered in gestures, some of which were becoming familiar after a few hours with the book. They made a lot of sense, actually, the gestures describing the words cleverly. I saw Bea sign the words for scared and nightmare and hungry, and Mel pulled her into a hug and rubbed her back before kissing her gently on the lips. When Blaise ran by, they pulled him into their embrace, and my heart wrenched at how nice it must be to have a relationship of such easy affection and trust.
“Good luck tonight.” Blue’s grumble broke my musings as she slipped a half-mask over my face. “You’re going to need it.”
I thanked her and headed to join the gaggle of girls waiting by the door.
“You go first,” Mel said, dragging me forward a little. “It’s you they want.”
I turned to look at my friends and coworkers. They were so beautiful and bright and sparkling, their half-masks doing nothing to disguise who they were. Their skin and smiles couldn’t be hidden.
“No. Please. Y’all—”
Bea pointed at me and shooed me toward the front.
I smiled and fluffed my skirt and forced my shoulders down proudly. Swinging my hips, I led them down the hallway toward the stage, where a wide, curving staircase had been brought in to cover the orchestra pit and connect the stage to the theater floor. The seats were gone, cleared away and stacked along the wall to leave room for dancing.
I paused in the wings, as I’d been told to. At some unseen signal, the orchestra started up with a grand processional that, to be quite honest, sounded like the “Imperial March” from Star Wars. Head up and wearing my fangs proudly, I sashayed onto the stage and stopped at the top of the stairs. The murmuring crowd went quiet, every masked face in the room turning to watch us in hungry silence. The daimon girls fanned out behind me, and I tried to imagine what it must be like to be in the audience. In front, in shades of black and white and red, the vampire starlet promised paradise with her teeth, while behind her, a harmless, glittering rainbow of dancing girls spread like angel wings, ready to provide pleasure just for the joy of sharing themselves. It was like something out of a movie or a fairy tale, except that I felt less like a star and more like a reluctant bride, bought and paid for.
We took the stairs in time with the music. Charline brought a man to meet me at the bottom stair, a foreigner with a red-dyed beard and shoes turned up at the toes. He performed an elaborate bow, the tiny bells on his unusually colorful suit jingling. Every other man at the ball wore dress whites, but this gentleman wore mauve and plum and bright poppy red.
“La Demitasse, at last. I have traveled the entire continent to meet you, my dear.”
“May I present Prince Seti, the ruler of Kyro?”
I resented the warning in Madame Sylvie’s voice but was too well groomed to hiss near the man who had probably paid a king’s ransom for my time. I only smiled, sweetly. “I knew I was waiting for something special,” I murmured, letting him kiss my hand.
The music segued into a quadrille, and I was soon dancing, surrounded by colorful daimons matched with austere men in black, the opposite of my gawdy partner and me. The air grew hot and humid with lust, and the daimons’ laughter shook the rafters. My feet hurt already in the dainty slippers, but I preferred dancing to doing what the prince expected me to do, considering the price he had likely paid for what he thought was my virginity. I would dance all night if it would keep me from the elephant.
After three songs and many polite compliments and murmured thanks, I begged to sit for a moment.
“I will bring you wine, my dear. I brought a special cask from Egypt. Have you tasted camel blud? I hear it’s quite the aphrodisiac to your kind.”
“I can’t wait,” I said, but inwardly, I cringed. Why did rich men keep trying to cram weird animals down my throat? Then again, if camel was half as good as unicorn, I would have no right to complain.
The prince disappeared, and I darted through the crowd toward one of the niches that had been created using the velvet curtains that hung from the walls. I knew damned well they were there so the girls could discreetly provide their services without leaving the theater, but surely it was too early for one of the small enclosures to be occupied? This one still had the flaps open and drawn back invitingly.
Inside, I saw only a long quilted bench. But before I could duck in to hide, an insistent hand caught my wrist and pulled me back to the floor. I spun, barely turning my snarl into the simper that my patrons expected.
“My prince, I didn’t expect you back so soon.”
But it wasn’t the prince, and my heart leaped into my throat. Scowling at the interloper’s wicked grin, I grabbed his spotless black sleeve and dragged him into the alcove.
“What the hell are you doing here?”
“Enjoying the ball, bébé.”
“They’ll skin you alive!”
“Define they. Define skin.”
Vale strolled to the bench and sat down, knees spread, arms across the back, green eyes glinting like a cat’s in the light of a single lantern hanging from the tent’s ceiling. A rich man’s walking cane was balanced across his knees, and I wondered which tuxedo-clad client he’d stolen it from. I’d never seen him so cocky. I’d never seen him so clean. I’d definitely never seen him so devastatingly sexy. I rushed back to the velvet and untied the thick black tassels that held open the flaps. The curtains closed us in completely, and firelit darkness swallowed me whole. I tied the ropes in a double knot.
I turned to find Vale watching me, his high top hat on the bench beside him. His bare hands were buried in the plush, rubbing absentmindedly as if there was an itch he couldn’t scratch, somewhere just out of reach.
“How’d you get in?” I asked, just to have something to fill the space besides my spooked breathing and his scent, that musky chai that spoke of wildness and wind blowing over a thin veil of respectability.
“The same way I always do, bébé. You know that.”
“But why? Why risk it? What if Madame Sylvie saw you?”
“Hypotheticals don’t interest me, not with you standing there, dressed like that.” He curled a finger and smirked. “Viens sur mon coeur . . . Tigre adoré.”
My body jerked toward him like a puppet on tight strings, as if Baudelaire’s words in Vale’s dusky voice were a command in a language I didn’t know I knew. Tiny steps in satin slippers carried me whispering across the ballroom floor, until the rounded skirt of my gown brushed his knees like a satin jellyfish.
“That’s more like it.”
He whipped his cane around me, holding me caged with both arms tight against my corseted waist and the polished wood at my back. His black tuxedo pants dented my dress, the distorted black-and-white designs briefly reminding me of a zebra that had lost the game and twitched under a lion’s heavy paws.
“But aren’t we fighting?”
“If you wish, bébé. Use your claws to punish me. I don’t mind.”
“The prince—” I started lamely.
“Forget him. He’s been detained.” He looked up, winked at me. “I am a bit of a prince myself, you know.”
“Prince of the brigands?”
“Prince of the Brigands of Ruin. Prince of the wild moors. And my palace is a hell of a lot bigger than his.”
I raised one eyebrow, suppressed a smile. “And how big is it?”
He chuckled. “Enormous, bébé. I’ll show you one day. My palace is as big as the sky.”
“Then why don’t you claim it?”
He shook his head when I broke an unspoken rule of our flirting. But he recovered quickly, a golden fi
re dancing in his eyes. “Maybe you’re right, bébé. Maybe I should start claiming the things I see as mine.”
He jerked the cane forward and dropped it, and I fell into his open arms as it clattered to the floor. His hands were clever as he spun me, and I ended up sitting across his lap in the black-and-white cloud of my dress, his arm around my back. My mouth was still open in surprise, and before I could close it, he was kissing me, his other hand firm on my chin to hold me, just so.
Oh, God, that kiss. I’d had plenty of blood since yesterday’s absinthe, but I felt suddenly as drunk and dizzy and reeling as if I had just completed a wild tarantella dance, spinning and spinning and spinning. He had kissed me before—rough as the brick in the hallway, soft as the swing of a trapeze in the breeze. But this kiss matched the cozy, heart-red velvet lair that held us, a little world outside of real life.
If Lenoir’s absinthe was glitter and fairies and sunbeams, Vale’s kiss was the opposite: endless star-strewn skies and the intimacy of turning your face away from eternity to steal a moment, dark and secret. His mouth tasted of spices, of cinnamon and chai and mint, of uncut cocoa and bourbon vanilla and not-quite-blood-but-close-enough. I was careful of my teeth despite the furious passion he called forth, desperate to keep the kiss, catch the moment, intent on its path like a comet blazing a sure arc through the night.
He kissed me slowly, and I understood that he knew it, too, knew that it was precious as only stolen things could be. The prince had bought my time and, so far as he knew, my body, but Vale knew his business and would take what others didn’t watch closely enough. He turned his head, his tongue dipping deep to taste me, caress me, heat me from within with the branding burn of cherry-hot iron. But he didn’t taste of metal and blood to me; he only tasted of himself. And I wanted more.
The hand around my waist stroked down to explore my curves through the airy layers of tulle and satin. He groaned but couldn’t reach me, even though he pulled me tighter against his body. My fingers were tangled in his cravat, pulling it untied of their own volition as I gasped into his mouth. The starch of his collar made my fingertips gritty, and I made a little growl as my talon caught in the knotted silk.