Chapter 28
At this point, I’m so exhausted that it’s only my structured undergarments holding me upright.
Still, I nod at the appropriate times to look engaged as the young Swallow sitting in the carriage next to me finishes his stack of reports.
His name is Bernard, and it hurts every time I hear it, reminding me of another earnest young officer in another carriage in another city.
Bernard’s uniform buttons are fastidiously polished, his jacket and pants perfectly cleaned and pressed.
I wonder if his mother does it for him, or if he has a wife, or if he does it himself.
I wonder if I could have ever accepted a life of pleasant domesticity managing the household for a man.
I wonder how my mother did it. Why she did it.
I know she found joy in some of it—she bakes and cooks even when she doesn’t have to, and I don’t doubt she loved being my mother—but having seen how formidable she is at bending others to her will just through the power of putting a pen to paper, what could she have been had her freedom not been cut short first by marriage and then by trauma?
Then again, she had more freedom than most because she had money. Which is why I have it, too. I try not to take it for granted.
I also wonder about the young woman Bernard and I just visited. Covered in bruises, her lip split, her arm wrenched from its socket. She swore in the same lifeless voice over and over that it wasn’t her husband who did it, but rather a mysterious man whose face she can’t remember.
“It’s not the man we’re hunting,” I had said, my eyes on the husband looming behind the woman, keeping his hands clasped behind his back so we wouldn’t see the damage he did to himself while damaging her so extensively.
Before we left, I took the woman’s hands in my own, surreptitiously passing her a thick bundle of banknotes.
The carriage jolts. The pain in my head spikes; a headache is quickly building in my right temple. Will she leave him? Will she save herself? Her lifeless eyes haunt me.
We’re so terrible to each other already. Why do we need devils among us, too?
“What about missing persons?” I ask as soon as Bernard pauses.
They’ve alerted me to every domestic dispute, every act of violence, every brawl, every robbery that resulted in someone stabbed or broken or killed.
No suicides, though, and no murders without explanation and a suspect.
I’m glad of it—they’re taking my presence here seriously—but it also makes me worry.
So far we only know that our devil has visited the scene of a terrible accident, stolen equipment and left behind a suggestion of destruction for a theater manager, and requested both a painting and the end of an artist’s career.
I don’t doubt he’s adding to his nightmarish body count.
I just doubt that we’re seeing what we need to see.
Where is he?
“Missing persons,” Bernard repeats. “Like…anyone who is missing?”
“Yes. Anyone reported gone who shouldn’t be gone. Anyone who came to the fair and never got home. That sort of thing.”
Bernard frowns. “It’s a world’s fair. No one’s keeping track of who’s here.
People come from faraway places and no one expects them home for days or weeks or months, depending on their plans.
And not even our captain could keep track of where every visitor to the city is staying and whether or not they’ve failed to make it back to their rooms.”
“Right. Of course.” Thus the problem. In the organizational chaos of millions of visitors and tens of thousands of workers, the Watcher can target whomever he wants, confident that no one will be quickly missed.
“What about runaways?” he asks. “There’s a woman, Elisa De…De-something, I can’t remember. She walked out on her husband and three children. Her mother said she was prone to bouts of melancholy and hysteria. We have some flyers up at the station.”
“Yes. Runaways, too. All of it.” I can’t imagine the mountain of information we’re going to have to sift through, but it must be done.
The carriage stops in front of our house.
I don’t want to go inside and tell my friends about the bleak scene I just witnessed.
I also don’t want to lie awake all night again, knowing Diavola is somewhere beneath me, hard at work on her terrible task.
She conducts her experiments at night so that during the day she can welcome anyone inquiring about our fictional camera.
She knows instantly that any visitors are not who we want, turns them around, and sends them on their way.
Her contributions have freed up so much time for the rest of us—time I now spend seeing the worst Paris has to offer.
I bid Bernard good night, trudge to the door, and open it.
Inge and Maher turn toward me, frozen as though caught in some clandestine activity.
I gesture behind myself to encompass everything I saw today. “Nothing relevant. Now, what were you talking about that you don’t want me to hear?”
“You aren’t sleeping,” Inge says.
“You aren’t one to talk,” I say.
“You’re impatient when we’re out of the house, and twitchy and distracted when we’re in it,” Maher says.
“Are we not all hunting the same supernaturally indestructible mass murderer?” I glare at them, unsure where this is coming from. I shift closer to the door to the cellar, trying to hear what’s going on down there. To make certain nothing happened to Diavola while I was gone.
Inge throws her hands in the air, exasperated. “Just kiss her already and be done with it.”
I stagger to the side, Inge’s bluntness breaking down every single wall I’ve built within myself to ignore the way I feel about Diavola.
The way I felt the first moment I saw her.
The way I tried not to feel all the times I read her letters, even when I thought she was the mass murderer.
The way it’s increasingly impossible not to feel all day, every day, and all the long nights, too.
Maher won’t quite meet my eyes. “When you and Diavola are in the same room, it’s like an invisible line stretched taut between you. If you keep up this tension, it’ll snap. Or you will. Either way, Inge’s solution might be the simplest.”
My face burns with humiliation. Everything I’ve tried so hard to suppress, ignore, and change is so obvious it’s annoying my friends to the point of intervention.
“I can’t,” I say.
“Why not?” Inge doesn’t ask it like a challenge. She asks it like a genuine line of inquiry, as if this is one of our cases and we’re ruling out every possible theory.
“Because she killed my father! Because she’s not human! Because she’s down in the cellar right now trying to figure out a way to stop existing! Because there’s probably some sort of natural law against it!”
“What do you and I care for natural laws?” Maher’s tone is teasing, but then he gets serious. “Any god worth believing in would never hate something that put more love and tenderness into the world.”
Tears prick my eyes. “Don’t quote Dávid. Not on this.”
“Who better to quote than Dávid? Life is short. It’s always better to love where we can. Dávid and I agreed that it was sensible to stay just friends since we were working together. I regret it every single day.”
I put my hand on Maher’s arm. “He loved you, and he knew you loved him.”
Maher nods. “I know. And what we had was enough. But it could have been more, and we’ll never get the chance for that. I don’t wish the same on you.”
“The point about her killing your father is valid, though.” Inge taps her chin the way she always does when she’s deep in thought.
“But not insurmountable, I think, given what we know of your father’s activities.
Don’t look at me like that, you two. I’m not saying Abraham Van Helsing deserved to die, but Diavola warned your father what the Watcher was.
I rather think he got off easy, not living to see how much death his hubris caused.
” She frowns. “On second thought, I am saying he deserved to die.”
I laugh. I can’t help it. On the one hand I have Maher quoting Dávid to encourage me to love without fear or question, and on the other is Inge talking about how my father’s death was justified and I should get over it.
Maher puts an arm around me and pulls me close to his side.
“I want you to be happy. Though I can’t see what you like about Diavola, because I can’t really see her.
This morning I came down and panicked because there was a woman I assumed must be the landlady standing by the trapdoor.
I was halfway through an excuse for why we ruined her floor when Diavola smiled right at me and I remembered who she was. ”
“Why do you think you always recognize her?” Inge asks.
“Do you not?” I watch her closely for her reaction, because ever since Diavola said Inge has a secret, Inge makes excuses not to be in the same room on the few occasions they might be.
“We’re not talking about my love life,” Inge says, sniffing primly. “Don’t avoid the question.”
I narrow my eyes and smile at her to let her know I’m perfectly aware she’s the one avoiding the question.
But then I answer, because I’ve wondered the same thing.
“Diavola’s eyes. No one has eyes like her.
Or maybe her scent. Or maybe just that the moment of our first meeting struck me so deeply, it created a wound that never healed. ”
I know they assume I mean seeing her over my father’s dying body, but it was before that.
It was simply seeing her, and knowing I was forever changed without understanding why.
That was the true split into before and after.
Not my father’s death, but that first glimpse of Diavola and the floodgates of feeling it opened in me.
Maher squeezes me. “Whatever it is, you should allow room for a little hope and exploration. Then again, I can’t believe I’m advising my best friend to try out an affair with an actual revenant.
Are we certain Diavola hasn’t been tampering with our minds?
” He wraps me in a hug as I half-laugh, half-cry into his shoulder.
“I’m certain,” Inge says. “If Diavola was manipulating us, she would have made us talk Anneke into this years ago. Diavola’s always been in love with her.”
The door from the cellar opens. Diavola appears as if summoned by our conversation. If she notices the same awkward, instant cessation of speech that I clued in on when I arrived, she doesn’t acknowledge it.
“I’ve tried everything.” Even the wind Diavola carries with her everywhere seems lifeless and dejected, barely stirring her hair. “Nothing worked. Maybe we can find a more corrosive acid. One of them almost tickled, I think.”
“Maybe we could draw a wolf on the side of a church,” I say, infected with hopelessness.
“What?” Inge asks sharply.
“One of the stories from the island. A church had a wolf drawn on the wall. They’d take soil from beneath it and spread it on a grave.
Then the wolf would eat the vrykolakas. There are a lot of churches in Paris…
” I trail off. I know it’s beyond silly, but I found Diavola’s birthplace through stories.
Maybe we’ll find the way to kill the Watcher through them, too.
“Do you think a wolf could kill him?” Inge’s tone is serious, as though she doesn’t want to make me feel bad by mocking me.
“No. And we haven’t got any wolves, anyway.”
Inge nods slowly, still trying to feel out my mood. Then she nods more firmly. “Stronger acid. I’ll see what I can do. In the meantime, since we won’t have more visitors today, why don’t we put Diavola to use. You should wander the fair and see if you can sense him. Anneke will accompany you.”
I glare at Inge’s lack of subtlety. She ignores me while Diavola drifts to the door. I can never tell if it’s that her feet barely touch the floor or the motion of her dress, but it always looks as though she’s dancing along, swaying gracefully to a song we can’t hear.
My impulse is to loan her a hat and some shoes. It’s absurd that no one notices her free-flowing hair, her incongruous clothing, her bare feet. Her depthless eyes. Her full lips. The elegant line of her neck down to the collarbones spanning her broad, straight shoulders down to her—
“Yes,” I say, clearing my throat and cursing Inge for dragging my pathetic lust into the light. “Let’s go.”
Diavola keeps pace with me outside. It’s strange to have her beside me; I’ve felt for so many years as though she were just behind me, close but forever out of reach.
I’ve never been nervous around Diavola, but that’s ruined now. I talk to fill the silence. “This makes sense. You coming out with us, I mean. You should always do these sweeps with one of us. That way, if we see the Watcher, you’ll know.”
“You’d recognize him, too.”
I frown. “I’ve met him before?”
“No. But you’ll know him.”
Her confidence as she says it unnerves me in a way I don’t understand. “What do you—”
“Mommy?” a little girl ahead of us says, eyes wide. “Mama, look at her.” She tugs on her mother’s skirts with increasing alarm. “Mama, look! A monster!”
She points right at Diavola.