Chapter 24
TESSA
Peggy crosses a customer's name off Friday's collection list, then puts her pen down before the paper tears. “She wants the refund. She found something online.”
The woman needed a pair of costumes for a party last night. An apology can't go back and dress her. I pull a length of replacement velvet across the fitting-room table, covering the place where Peggy has written the amount beside her name.
Under the lights, the new fabric shines a deep wine red.
Bogdan paid for the rush delivery without asking what it cost. My palm sinks into the pile as I smooth it flat, and for a moment I can imagine the finished dress, somebody turning happily toward a mirror while Peggy tells her she looks indecent.
Then the edge catches on my thumb. I've been picking at the skin beside the nail since Friday.
“We'll use this for the vampire gowns,” I say. “The black lace from the workshop can go over it.”
Peggy touches the velvet, testing the weight before she reaches for her booking folder.
Her lipstick is bright pink, applied a little crookedly at one corner.
She arrived in the room beside mine at The Brass Camellia on Friday evening, with an escort and a bag big enough to suggest she intended to live there until Christmas.
This morning we came to work together under guard, leaving two breakfast trays outside our doors.
Two days after the fire, The Ninth Masque's fitting room is crowded with what we still have.
Rolls brought from Hem & Havoc stand beside the newly delivered boxes, and the dress form wears an unfinished bodice.
The screen is folded against the wall to leave room around the table.
In the mirror, Peggy and I look like women with a busy Sunday ahead of us.
I want to believe the mirror.
Matvei waits by the open doorway while we sort the materials.
Beyond him, the corridor leads past reserve storage toward the turn into the loading wing.
Our wheeled rack is parked against the wall, its wheels locked clear of the passage.
I've dragged too many capes along that route to think about it until I remember the last movement of Beatrice's wings in my video.
I turn back to the cloth.
Peggy lifts the lid from the pastry box we brought from the hotel. The smell of butter escapes, making me realize I've been hungry for half an hour. I tear off a corner of a croissant and eat it over the box, tasting butter beneath the browned crust.
“You can have the rest,” she says. “I stole the chocolate one before you knocked.”
“Without me?”
“You were taking forever. There are limits to my loyalty.”
Her smile lasts until her phone lights up beside the folder. She looks at it without touching it, then turns the screen toward me. Another customer asking about a collection.
Ethan's name doesn't have to appear to make her stop breathing for a second.
I brush the crumbs from my fingers. “You can answer after we've eaten.”
“I know.” She pulls the box closer, breaking off a piece for herself. “I keep expecting him to explain it properly. Even after that awful call. I'll be doing something normal, then I think he'll ring and make it all less horrible.”
My mouth feels full of dry pastry. On Thursday she ended the relationship herself, sitting beside me in Bogdan's office, and Ethan still managed to sound like she was the one behaving badly. I wish I could give her a clean disgust that would erase how much she'd liked him.
“You don't have to stop missing him all at once.”
Peggy swallows and closes her folder. “Do you miss Bogdan?”
The answer comes before I can decide whether I want to say it. “Yes.”
I miss his weight beside me in bed. I miss going upstairs with the knowledge that he'll be behind one of the doors, taking his jacket off or looking up when I come in. The hotel gives me a whole bed to myself, and I keep sleeping on one side of it.
When Peggy puts her hand on my back, I lean against her for a moment.
Matvei looks into the room. “Fern's here for the display appointment.”
Peggy lets go and opens the folder again. We'd agreed by email to show Fern what we could supply for her remaining clients. I can face that. Work has quantities and collection dates, and sometimes I can fix it by putting another pin in.
Fern comes in carrying a sample book against her cream coat. She slows at the sight of the piled boxes before setting it on the only uncovered corner of the table.
“I've kept the entrance display in the package,” she says. “If you have anything to replace the one at Gilt & Gallows, I can still use it. The client wants photographs.”
I remember the lace canopy folded over its frame in the event store. It would've taken us ten minutes to assemble. Looking at Fern's careful makeup, I feel a mean urge to make her describe the fire in front of Peggy before we discuss what her client wants.
But Peggy is already checking the reserve list.
“There's the coffin display,” she says. “For the thirty-first. We could use the frame and dress it differently.”
The unopened display would give us a full-height figure with its own backdrop, without building anything from scratch. Fern leans across to read the entry, then tucks her sample book under her arm as I put the velvet back on its roll.
Matvei comes with us to the store. Inside, the overhead light shows stacked plinths and paper ravens packed in shallow trays.
The coffin-shaped crate rests flat on a low wheeled platform, with enough space around it to work.
Black paint shines along its tapered sides.
A paper strip crosses the lid's join beneath a clear sleeve holding the delivery sheet.
Peggy bends to read it. “October fourteenth.”
That's Wednesday. The day before we learned about Ethan.
I stop beside the crate. Under the date, the sheet lists the display figure and names Ethan as the vendor who delivered it. There are check marks beside the contents and a note that it was opened for inspection, then closed again for storage.
Matvei takes out his phone to call Klim. Fern starts to say something, but he raises a hand while he listens. When the call ends, he keeps the phone ready. “The intake photographs are coming through. Klim's checking the entry record.”
He shows us the pictures as they arrive.
The first has the lid open, a dressed mannequin laid in the padded recess.
The next shows the recess beneath the figure.
The last shows the lid closed under the paper strip, with the date written across it.
An ordinary prop inspection, done before Ethan's pass was disabled.
I enlarge the first image on Matvei's screen without taking the phone.
Dark fabric covers the mannequin, its head partly lost in the glare from the light.
In the photograph it's another Halloween prop, wedged among the hundreds we've handled.
Beside me, Peggy keeps looking at Ethan's name on the sheet.
We need the display. Matvei is beside us, and the checked crate has been in this room since Wednesday. A message arrives from Klim confirming the delivery record. Matvei compares the dated strip to its photograph before I pick up the scissors from the shelf. The paper is intact across the join.
Peggy holds the delivery sleeve away while I cut the paper strip. I put the scissors down, undo the catches and help her raise the hinged lid until its support holds it upright.
For a moment, the packed figure looks like somebody sleeping in a terrible bed.
Charcoal fabric lies smooth over its body. Silver markings spread across folded wings, with cheap glitter replacing the beads I sewed on Beatrice's costume. The wings are made in the same long curve. One is tucked beside the mannequin's arm, the other flattened beneath it.
My fingers lift from the rim. I know what I'm looking at before I let myself say her name.
The mannequin has a pale molded face under a dark wig. A ribbon stretches across its nose, knotted above the mouth. On either side of its head, silver points stick out from beneath the hair.
The moth mask is on backward.
I take a step away from the crate, striking the wheel of a plinth with my boot. Its little rattle makes Peggy flinch. She has one hand over her mouth, staring at the wings.
“Don't move it,” I say.
Matvei comes between us and the open lid. I can still see past his shoulder, enough of the silver edge to know that the decorated front faces into the padding behind the mannequin's head. Its bare face points toward the ceiling.
Beatrice had watched me through silver mesh while I tightened her mask. The exposed edge of this one is solid plastic, with glitter stuck to it. I can see the difference without touching it. Somebody wanted the resemblance badly enough to make a cheaper version of her.
My tongue presses against the roof of my mouth. I swallow twice before I can take out my phone. “I'm calling Alison.”
Fern peers around Matvei. “It's a moth costume. The launch pictures were everywhere. Ethan could've used them for a publicity display.”
Peggy makes a sound that stops her. It comes out high and thin, with none of the force Peggy usually puts behind an insult. Her hand drops from her mouth. “In a coffin?”
Fern's lips stay parted. She looks from Peggy to the figure, then takes a step back until the sample book bumps against the doorframe.
I'd made Beatrice's wings so she could dance.
She'd checked them over each shoulder in the mirror before heading toward her friends, after arriving so worried about being seen.
Now I can't keep that living woman separate from the rigid hands lying on the charcoal cloth.
I hate whoever put this here for making me try.
Alison answers on the fourth ring. I tell her we're in The Ninth Masque's reserve store, that we've opened a display delivered by Ethan before his access was revoked. When I get to the costume, I have to start the sentence again.
“It's dressed like Beatrice. The mask's tied on the back of its head. We've stopped touching everything.”
“Stay out of the crate,” Alison says. “I'll come to you. Tell me who opened it and who's there now.”
I give her our names while Matvei motions us out of the store. Peggy lets me take her arm, moving with me into the corridor. Fern follows. Behind us, Matvei remains at the doorway, speaking into his radio.
Alison asks about the delivery date. I read it from the sleeve Peggy's still holding, then tell her about the intake pictures. She asks us to keep the records for her and leave the display as we found it. She offers no explanation of the mask.
I end the call with my back against the fitting-room wall. The brick feels hard through my cardigan. Across the corridor, the open store shows a corner of the raised coffin lid.
Peggy looks down at the delivery sleeve in her hands. Her thumb rests beneath Ethan's printed name.
“I was still with him on Wednesday.”
I take the sleeve before she can crumple it. We set it on the fitting-room table together, and she holds the edge of the table afterward. Her shoulders have risen almost to her ears.
“Do you think he laughed about it?” Peggy asks. “That I didn't know what he'd brought here? I don't even know what to be frightened of anymore.”
I wish I could answer her without making a guess about a man neither of us understands. When I move beside her, she catches my cardigan in her fingers and holds it, looking at me until I answer.
“We'll let Alison find out what it means. You don't have to call Ethan for an explanation.”
“I won't.” Her grip loosens, but she stays close. “I couldn't stand hearing his voice.”
Fern stands just inside the room. The sample book has slid low against her hip, pulling one side of her coat open. She looks at Peggy's hands before she speaks.
“I didn't ask him for that costume. The coffin frame was on the October order, but I didn't ask for her.”
“Tell Alison,” I say. “She's coming.”
Fern nods. The argument I expected from her never arrives. She puts the book beneath her chair and sits without opening it.
I want Bogdan with an urgency that makes me angry at the empty doorway. I want him to see Peggy trying to hold herself upright. I want his hand at my neck and his voice close to my ear, and I hate that wanting him hasn't become simpler since I left.
I call him, pressing the phone against my ear while it rings.
Bogdan answers quietly. “Tessa?”
Hearing him makes my next breath shake. I turn toward the folded screen, trying to give Peggy a little privacy while staying beside her.
“There's a display in the store. Ethan delivered it on Wednesday. It's made to look like Beatrice, lying in a coffin. Alison's on her way.”
He doesn't answer immediately. I hear movement, then his voice comes back closer. “Are you and Peggy away from it?”
“We're in the fitting room. Matvei's here.”
“I'll come to you. Stay together.”
I close my eyes. “Please hurry.”
After we hang up, I put my phone beside Peggy's folder. She takes my hand without looking at me. Through the open door, Matvei waits at the store, keeping everyone away from the display while another guard stands at the corridor turn.
Peggy rubs a finger over the edge of my thumbnail, stopping me from picking at it. The small pressure almost makes me cry. We were supposed to be helping people look lovely for Halloween. She was supposed to get her pictures back from a man who liked her.
On the table, the delivery sheet has slipped partly out of its sleeve. Beneath Ethan's name is the intended display date.
October thirty-first.
Without the fire, we would've left the coffin shut until Halloween.