Wicked After Midnight (Blud)

  Bea doubled over, sobbing silently, her shoulders heaving and the white of her chemise splattered with tears. But her fingers kept moving, even as they trembled.

  “She had to leave the other girl’s body in the darkness. The next day, she stumbled into the ladder to Paradis. Blue was the one who found her and took her in and found the books on sign language so she could talk. I went with her to have her tail removed so she could stay here. And when we found out Bea was pregnant a few months later, everyone helped out. We never knew . . .” Mel pulled Bea close. “She wouldn’t tell us where she came from, who Blaise’s father was, why she couldn’t talk. I had always assumed she was born mute; it never mattered to me. But I understand, ma chère. I understand why you wouldn’t tell.” Because of the magic. Because they would kill me, Bea signed. They would kill Blaise.

  “How would they know?” Vale asked.

  Bea sat up very straight, eyes burning. Her fingers spelled one word. Auguste.

  “Auguste is one of them?”

  Her hands moved jerkily, as if she was tearing flesh into strips.

  “Auguste was the daimon who tried to stop her from escaping. A few years after she arrived here and had Blaise, he showed up to sweep the floors and tend bar. He never spoke to her. But he watched her. And he . . .”

  Mel’s jaw dropped, and she grasped Bea’s hands. “He uses her when he wants to. In return for not telling the Malediction Club she’s here. Oh, Beatrice. Oh, why didn’t you say?”

  The girls fell on each other, crying, one loudly and one silently.

  Vale stepped closer, slipped an arm around me, and pulled my body against him as if I, too, fed on comfort. And it did help. Even with the blood I’d guzzled downstairs, I still felt wobbly, especially after hearing Bea’s story. We now knew we had a unified enemy: the Malediction Club was behind Cherie’s abduction on the road, my attempted kidnapping in the elephant, Lenoir’s plot to steal my soul, and Bea’s abuse and the theft of her voice.

  “You know we will kill Auguste when we find them, yes?”

  Bea gave Vale a wobbly, determined smile and signed something short and sharp.

  “She says.” Mel cleared her throat. “ ‘Kill them all.’ ”

  I couldn’t be silent anymore. “We killed Lenoir and couldn’t find anything in his studio that had an address or a map. And we couldn’t hunt through Fermin’s lab. Do you know any other members? Can we question Auguste?”

  Bea snorted and shook her head no, and my hopes fell. But then she signed something

  In a very quiet voice, Mel said, “She knows where they meet. She couldn’t tell us, but she has always known.”

  “How?”

  Bea tapped her throat again.

  “Because she left her magic there.”

  “So you could lead us there?” Vale shifted, stretching his shoulders and twitching his fingers as if longing to feel his claw in his fist.

  “She says . . . you don’t understand. They’re too powerful. The richest men in Paris. Barons and chirurgeons and gendarmes and barristers. They’re everywhere. They have money and magic and weapons and servants, and they’re accustomed to taking what they want. By force.”

  Bea’s slender arms gestured to each of us in turn. Sitting there, raw and empty of tears, she reminded me of a plant that had been crushed but kept growing anyway. “The four of us against the Malediction Club? It’s laughable,” Mel said for her.

  All I could think about was Cherie, shackled to a stone wall, deep underground, maybe dying. Broken bodies, crushed minds, empty hearts, all kept like pets by men who’d forgotten that women were people, if they’d ever known at all.

  “I bet every girl in this cabaret has lost a friend or someone she loved,” I murmured.

  Mel nodded. “Oh, la. So many girls disappear. We never know what happens to them.”

  “We know now,” Vale said.

  “And if we hurry, before they know we know, maybe we can do something about it.”

  They all stopped to stare at me.

  “Get up, and get dressed. Put on your thickest corset and heaviest boots. I’ve got an idea.”

  30

  We went from door to door down the hall of Paradis, knocking until the sleepy-eyed daimon girls answered, clutching thin shawls and rumpled sheets around their shoulders against the spring chill. Vale and I gave each girl the same message: “We’re taking down the Malediction Club tonight. They have hostages. If you’ve lost someone you loved and don’t wish to live in fear, bring every weapon you have, and come fight with us.”

  Most of them nodded, their eyes going sharp and hard. In ones and twos, the hallway filled with dancers turned assassins, standing tall in their steel-boned corsets paired with leggings and boots and skirts slit for fighting. Some were armed with knives or claws; some had only letter openers or hammers found lying innocently around the theater. A few had small crossbows or strange leather satchels, rigid and hinged like an old-fashioned doctor’s bag, and I was curious about what they hid inside. Criminy had one like that in his wagon, tucked tidily under his desk. There was so much I still didn’t know about my coworkers.

  One of the newer daimon girls had shyly handed me a pile of my own clothes, given to her a few short hours ago, after the prince had left the cabaret in a petulant storm. I thanked her and ducked into her room to trade Lenoir’s hateful heavy gown for leggings, a thick corset, a buttoned jacket, and scuffed boots. Considering that we were on our way to fight, I left off the bustle and skirts, as did many of the daimons. There was no sign of the posh star of Mortmartre in the spitfire Bludman hissing at me in the mirror. And I liked myself better this way.

  “Where’s Auguste?” I whispered to Vale while we waited for Mel and Bea to emerge from their room.

  “His shift ended at midnight. After that, who knows? Perhaps he is at the club now.”

  I nodded. That made sense. As many times as the daimon had delivered me to the elephant or to Lenoir’s doorstep, I’d never seen him when I returned from my assignations or on that delicious night when Vale had found me on the trapeze.

  “I can’t believe he would do that to Bea. To anyone.” I shivered, and Vale slung an arm around my waist, grounding me. I still hadn’t fully recovered from Lenoir’s potion.

  “Other species do not share your moral code, bébé. Daimons who feed on lust think monogamy is a laughable idea, and dark daimons don’t care any more for their prey than bludrats worry over a crying infant. But if Auguste is there and the girls find him, he will be ripped to pieces. He has most likely been acting as a spy, tipping off his masters. And betraying a daimon to help a human is unforgivable among their kind.”

  I searched around my emotions like a tongue pressing around a rotten tooth, hunting for the pocket of pain. Nope. I felt no regret for Auguste. He’d known exactly what he was doing, delivering me to Lenoir’s studio.

  Finally, the door opened, and Mel and Bea stepped out, their hands firmly clasped and glowing turquoise. Bea’s eyes were wet and tear-stained, but her dimpled little chin was set in determination. With one hand, she pointed to the stairs. We didn’t need a translation to know it was time to go and fight.

  Bea led us down the stairs, through the hallway, and straight to the trapdoor in the stage, the very one through which I’d entered this twisted cabaret of mixed beauty and grotesquerie just a short time ago. It seemed as if a lifetime had passed, as if I’d shed my skin and now longed to have it back as easily as my clothes. Vale pulled open the trapdoor as the girls lifted old-fashioned kerosene lamps from a shelf behind the bar and lit them with long matches. Even the bartender was with us, her human mask gone to reveal speckled skin that matched the oranges she’d once guarded. She handed me a vial of blood and held up a softly glowing lantern.

  “Best drink up, pet. It’s about to get dark.”

  I gulped the blood and flopped onto my belly, sliding my legs into the square of darkness and poking around with my boot toes to find the rungs. Ever since we??
?d visited Monsieur Charmant, the catacombs below Paris felt sinister, coiled like a sleeping snake and waiting to devour me after any wrong step. The underground of Paris had vomited forth the bludhounds and driven tortured daimon girls to death. What would it do to me, where we were going? But the blood settled in my belly and radiated outward, giving me new strength. And when I realized that I was finally on the right track to Cherie, I moved faster down the rungs with a fierce grin on my face.

  Finally, a real enemy. Finally, something to fight.

  Strong hands gripped my waist and steadied me as I stepped to the uneven ground, enveloped by darkness.

  “Did you bring your pendant, bébé?”

  I flooded red with shame. “It broke. My first day at Paradis, when Limone pushed me off the catwalk. I was fine, but it shattered.” Strong fingers urged my chin up; I couldn’t see his eyes, but I could feel them, probing and gentle. “I’m so sorry, Vale. I saved the pieces. I know it was special.”

  “I am the one who’s sorry. I wanted to give you comfort, not bits of crystal.”

  “You did. You do. Don’t we need to hurry?”

  His hands didn’t budge from my hips. “Stay with me in the back, bébé. At least until we get close.”

  “Why?”

  “So I can do this.”

  He lifted me, twirling me around and pressing my back against the cold stones. I gasped, and his mouth settled over mine, catching me wide open. I had to hold myself carefully back, mindful of my fangs but filled with an animal hunger for him, for his strange taste, for the hot hardness of his knee rammed between mine and whatever instinct told animals to rut before a battle. His hands slid under my jacket and stroked the curve up and down my corset, his thumbs brushing hard over the nipples exposed by his sweeping fingers. I moaned and pressed against him, arching my back off the bricks.

  As I changed the angle and pulled his face closer, I heard an answering moan that most definitely wasn’t Vale. My eyes flew open. Three daimon girls stood behind him with lanterns held high, their faces on us and dreamy yet focused like birds waiting for a worm to surface from rain-wet ground. I pulled away from the kiss and snapped my knees together, forcing Vale away.

  “Can I help you?” I asked.

  One of the girls, a violet-skinned daimon named Lexie, shrugged unashamedly. “Little snack before the fight can only help, non?”

  I scowled over Vale’s shoulder as he held in a chuckle. I could only suppose he was more accustomed to being daimon fodder than I was.

  “Please don’t . . . I don’t know. Don’t eat me. Or whatever you call it.”

  “Pfft. We don’t eat people.” She gave me a significant look that made me blush. “But love and lust are free game.”

  I grabbed Vale’s hand and stormed down the corridor, following the bobbing lights up ahead.

  “Try some anger, then,” I growled as we passed.

  Vale allowed me to pull him along, but he stayed safely silent. Which was good, as I couldn’t think of anything he could say that wouldn’t annoy me. Still, he slowed down as we approached the bigger group of determined girls stomping on bits of bone as they marched down the tunnel, shedding fluttery bits of feathers in the dank water.

  “Love and lust, bébé?” he finally asked, giving my hand a squeeze.

  I ignored it and hurried faster.

  “You have nothing to say?”

  He stopped walking but didn’t let go of my hand, and I was forced to halt or jerk my shoulder out of the socket. So I stopped, because I couldn’t kill people with a bum shoulder. But I didn’t turn around. I didn’t want him to see my face flushed red. The three daimon girls hurried past on the other side of the water trough, giggling. One left a lamp at our feet; another carried a large ball of yarn that she’d tied to the ladder rungs, and the bright red string unfurled behind her, leaving a path.

  “Let’s go, Vale. We have an evil cabal to destroy.”

  “They’ll keep five minutes. And what is the point of vanquishing evil if you are not sure you will get what you want afterward, anyway?” He wiggled my arm until I turned around, chin firmly down.

  “I don’t want to talk about this now. I can’t. I need to fight. I need my head in the game. Lenoir almost . . . I don’t know. Killed me? Paralyzed me and raped my soul? I don’t know what that was. But you saved me from it, and I haven’t thanked you. So thank you.”

  His fingers lit on my shoulders, crept on moth feet down my arms to my hands. “There. That wasn’t so hard, was it, bébé?”

  “I’m fine at gratefulness.”

  “But commitment is another story?”

  “A completely different book. A library on a different planet.”

  His finger grazed my cheek, a hot brand I felt all the way down to my toes. “Bébé, you are talking to a nomad. I have never lived in one place longer than a couple of months.” He stepped closer, tipped up my face. I could barely see him in the low light, but I could feel his breath on my lips, feel a tense tremble in his muscles. “Here is the thing about brigands: when they see something they want, they find a way to take it. Sometimes by force but most often by patience and cleverness. Following, studying, waiting for the perfect time to swoop in.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “Swoop.”

  He kissed me again, softer this time. As I always did whether I wished it or not, I melted into him, opening for him. Kissing boys on Earth and in the caravan had always been exciting but taxing, as if it took work, took something out of me. But kissing Vale was a gift, filling me with strength and comfort. I guessed the daimons were right; love and lust were free game, as far as sustenance went.

  “Oh la la,” I muttered as he drew away.

  “Then it is settled.” Entwining his fingers with mine, he started back down the corridor.

  I didn’t move. “Nothing is settled, Vale. Nothing.”

  “But—”

  “I mean, is that how brigands do it? One kiss, and everything’s done? I feel like I know you so well, but I don’t know what you want for the future. I don’t know what you dream about, if you want kids, how your career as a brigand would support us, what parts of you they would cut off if they caught you stealing. Are you going to challenge your father or get in a cage match with your brother? If he didn’t slice you in half, where would we live? Which continent? In a wagon? In a tent? What if I want to keep performing? I’m never going to settle down and be some grouchy old woman cooking stew I can’t eat around a campfire for a dozen good-looking, green-eyed children, you know. I’m never going to be tamed.”

  “I would never want you tamed.”

  “I don’t want a wagon or a house or a clockwork dog.”

  “Details.”

  “Kind of important ones. And what if we did have kids? They would be, let’s see, a quarter Abyssinian, a quarter human, and half Bludman. What do you even call that?”

  He chuckled to himself. “A dangerous little fiend, that’s what.”

  I almost growled but started walking instead. He wouldn’t let go of my hand, and enough of me wanted to let him keep holding it that I didn’t fight it. At least he walked with me this time, once he’d scooped up the lantern.

  With the flow of water dripping down the trough, we had to walk one in front of the other down the ledge, with my arm pulled behind me. It was strange to remember the last time we’d walked down here, me so uncertain and frightened, him steady and playing the clown, trying to keep my spirits up. Maybe I didn’t have all the answers I wanted from him, but I understood that in a short period of time, he’d come to be a solid part of my life in Paris, a wall I could always count on to hold me up. And this fight we were having now, if you could even call it a fight, was more like married people bickering than new lovers having a quarrel. And he knew it, which was why he let me tug him along.

  Truth was, he’d swooped in long ago, and I’d let him.

  “Tell me, then,” I said softly.

  As I kept my eyes trained o
n the lanterns up ahead, he murmured in a voice low enough for my ears only. “I want to marry you. I want to run away with you. I want to have children with you but not so many that you go crazy. I don’t want you to grow old by a campfire. I want to travel, see the world, pursue the sun. I don’t want to lead, but I don’t want to follow. I don’t ever want you to stop being wild, but I wouldn’t mind harnessing your ferocity. Perhaps we could start our own cabaret, treat the girls better. I don’t know. I have only been thinking about this most nights while I stare at the stars and wait for your light to go out so I know you’re alone when it does.”

  I tensed, fingers squeezing his tightly. “You’ve been spying on me?”

  “I’ve been protecting you, bébé. I knew that one of these days, no matter how strong and smart you are, the men of Mortmartre would find a way to put an end to your teasing and claim you once and for all, against your wishes and protestations. And I wasn’t going to let it happen.”

  “I don’t know whether to be grateful or furious.”

  “Both, probably.”

  “Jesus, Vale. How are you so goddamn blasé about this? You love me, you want to marry me and start a cabaret, you’ve been stalking me, but it’s for my own good. And we’re walking into the lion’s den right this moment, and you don’t seem to give a shit. Do you ever take anything seriously?”

  He laughed outright then. “I take everything seriously; I simply refuse to be serious about it. What is, is. What is done, is done. You don’t think much like a Bludman. And whoever said I loved you, bébé?”