Chapter 31
I don’t know what I expected when I saw “Infant Incubators” on the list Inge gave us for today’s checks, but it wasn’t this.
A temporary building holds several machines used to maintain an ideal environment for fragile, prematurely born infants.
Nurses stand at the ready, giving round-the-clock care, and fairgoers can pay a coin each to go in and look at the tiny humans.
According to the informative flyer, the cost of admission pays for the infants’ care, making it free for their desperate parents.
That softens me a little. I wouldn’t want the most anguishing waiting period of my life on display for everyone to see, but it’s the very act of display that makes it possible.
Diavola walks out of the exhibition alongside me. If she weren’t always stoic, I’d say she was stunned.
“It’s astonishing,” she says. “Those babies have a chance at surviving. Sometimes I think progress is always a lie, but this feels…this feels hopeful.”
“He wouldn’t hunt there, would he?” I glance back. Few things would be more horrifying than the Watcher influencing those nurses.
That gets Diavola’s attention. Her expression is suddenly intense, bordering on feral. Her hair raises around her, and I swear her feet aren’t touching the ground anymore. “Any trace of him?”
“No,” I say. “There’s no pain here to draw him, anyway. The infants are well cared for. He couldn’t bring his camera equipment inside to film, and I can’t imagine him carrying a baby all the way to wherever he’s tunneled in like a spider.”
Diavola nods and makes an effort to calm down, closing her eyes and wrapping her arms around herself. “He’d want the mothers for that, too. It would be too complicated, logistically.”
It’s a soberingly awful thought, but at least we can hope the infants are safe. We don’t have the numbers to set a watch on this building. Or any of them, really. All we’re doing is looking for wherever the Watcher has set up.
I check the infant incubators off our list, and we continue on to the next.
Though the exposition has thousands of visitors at any given time, I doubt anyone has explored it as thoroughly as we have. I’ve been through countless buildings, looked at an untold number of exhibits, and walked until I envied Diavola her casual relationship with gravity.
But it’s better when I’m here, because then I don’t have to be at our headquarters, earplugs in to greet whoever comes to view our fake camera. It’s never him. But I also hate leaving Maher and Inge behind.
No matter what I do here, I’m risking something vital and irreplaceable.
I scan down the list of places I’ve yet to visit.
“Palace of Electricity?” I suggest. It’s doubtful the Watcher managed to get a room there, but it sounds more interesting than yet another agricultural demonstration.
I can’t imagine the Watcher is concerned with new fertilizers, or that he would choose a base of operations near so many ripe animal scents.
Then again, he doesn’t have a sense of smell.
Diavola, as always, has very little opinion about where we go. Occasionally, like with the infant incubator or the Ferris wheel, she seems moved by what we see. But for the most part she fades into herself and drifts along. Maybe it’s why no one notices her.
I wonder what she’s like when she’s out with Maher. Inge, however, has refused to go out with Diavola and still avoids her as much as possible. This despite actively encouraging me to pursue a romance with a vrykolakas.
“Do you think Inge is frightened of you?” I ask as we cross the bridge between the Eiffel Tower and the Palace of Water, which leads to the Palace of Electricity. It’s too many palaces entirely, and I’d like to lodge a complaint with the organizers.
“No,” Diavola answers with zero hesitation.
“But she never—” A feeling like a sneeze, but sharper, hits the tip of my nose. I stop. “He’s been here.”
Diavola stills. Even her hair freezes, as though surrounded by ice instead of perpetual wind.
Then she blurs into movement. I can barely track her; it’s mere seconds before I lose her in the crowd.
I stay rooted to the spot, eyes roving frantically.
Around me is a sea of hats and jackets, skirts and sleeves.
Everyone moving in predictable ways, everyone behaving like humans.
Except me. An older woman slows and stops in front of me. “Are you all right, dear?” she asks.
I force a smile and nod.
“You look as if you’ve seen the devil himself,” she says with a laugh.
“That’s the goal,” I whisper.
With a scandalized frown, she bustles away.
Diavola is back at my side as suddenly as she was gone. “Nothing,” she says.
“It’s faint. He must have walked through here recently. At least we know he’s still in Paris, and somewhere around the fair.” I’m tempted to lift my nose and try to scent him like a bloodhound, but it won’t work. Already, I can only smell Diavola again.
Maybe that’s part of the problem. With the perfume of her so close, I’m distracted. I should be doing this alone.
Diavola scrutinizes me with her impossible black eyes and tilts her head. Now when she does that all I can think is what a perfect angle it makes for me to press my lips against hers.
Is this why people are so silly around me sometimes?
Oh, Berend. I’m overwhelmed with thoughts of how charmingly inept his crush made him.
And then I’m mortified. Does Diavola tolerate my crush because it’s amusing?
Inge insists Diavola’s been in love with me this whole time, but if that were true, why ask me to promise to kill her?
“Electricity.” I turn on my heel and march that direction.
The Palace of Water is ahead of us, rushing and gurgling and spurting, with sheets of water flowing nearly all the way to the bridge.
Children lean over, making faces at their warped reflections, and I recall the conversation Diavola and I shared in the Ferris wheel. What does she see reflected in my eyes?
We don’t linger at the fountains. Beautiful as they are, they serve no purpose for us.
It’s fascinating watching Diavola move through crowds, though.
They step aside for her without thinking, much like two people deep in conversation might shift apart to avoid a lamppost without ever registering the existence of the post itself.
The Palace of Electricity is designed to impress and more than meets the requirement.
The facade, elaborately complicated with swirling patterns and lace of glass and metal, seems more like fairy tale architecture than something real.
It’s studded with polished stones that glimmer in the sunlight.
Looking at it, one might suspect Parisians worship electricity.
Which makes as much sense to me as worshiping God.
Electricity is an incomprehensible miracle, capable of great blessings or terrible destruction.
I appreciate that atop the building isn’t a god at all, but rather a goddess.
She stands on the central arch, haloed by a crystal sun, driving a chariot harnessed to hippogriffs.
It’s even more impressive from a distance, with the Palace of Water in front so that the entrance to the Palace of Electricity appears to be nothing but fountains and sheets of cascading water.
Though I’ve questioned the temporary nature and inherent waste of this grandeur and beauty, the fair truly is a remarkable feat.
Maybe even because so little of this is meant to last. The impermanence adds to the sense of wonder.
But that same impermanence is a timer ticking down to when we’ve lost our opportunity to find the Watcher. All our preparation wasted, this last best opportunity to catch and kill him gone forever.
I pick up my pace. By the end of today, I want to cross this entire section of the fair off our list. It’s possible that the Watcher isn’t on the official grounds at all, but rather in one of the countless exhibits and shops that have cropped up just outside the borders to take advantage of traffic without paying the exorbitant fees.
Which means we have so, so much more searching to do.
“Where do we enter?” Diavola asks. Stairs lead up to the grand entrance beneath the goddess, but swinging out from the main building are two long corridor-like wings.
They have doors at the ends, too. The entire structure is enormous; I’m exhausted just looking at it.
Surely nowhere in this building is a room where our devil is committing atrocities.
But Inge would never forgive me if I wasn’t thorough. A young man in a suit is shouting in a pleasant, informative way nearby, so Diavola and I slip into the group gathered around him.
“—and at night, when you come back, you’ll see the building lit with thousands of glittering bulbs.
No longer are we controlled by the cycle of day and night.
We decide when it’s time for dark, and when…
” He pauses dramatically, then glances up, annoyed, until above him a dozen lights flicker on. “And when it’s day!”
Everyone claps politely. I’m sure it’s more impressive at night. In the afternoon light, it’s almost impossible to tell the bulbs are on.
We follow as he leads us into the building. I breathe deeply, then cough. Competing with Diavola’s scent is exhaust smoke so powerful that I feel lightheaded.
I work my way up to our guide. “What is the smoke from?”
“Ah!” he says. “I’m glad you asked! Behind the beautiful exterior of the palace is a factory with an army of boilers and chimneys. The heating chambers! Do you hear that?” He holds a hand to his ear. Beneath the general chatter and bustle of the people around us is a dull hum.
“Is that—is that electricity?” I ask, shocked. I wasn’t aware it made noise.
“It is!” His brown eyes glimmer with enthusiasm. “Thin metal wires spread it all around us.”
“But how are you generating it?”