Chapter 3 #2
A prickling sensation—dormant for months now—scraped at her collarbone. What started as a pin scratch turned into the spark of kindling embers, and it would only continue to blister until she answered.
I don’t call often. The words echoed, smooth as a song, in her head. A voice only she could hear. A voice she knew too well.
Elara ripped open the top buttons of her dress and pressed against the matchstick tattoo. A flame had devoured the top, flickering in tune with Fernand’s call.
And Elara was finally ready to answer.
Elara found herself in a tailor shop on the westernmost end of the Restes, an area that bled into the Fumée Quarter. The shelves were lined with coveralls, the lower racks filled with working boots. In the back, there were displays of ugly, bleached clothing for those not in a Société.
The tailor, a woman in an emerald-green pantsuit that might’ve been considered lavish if it weren’t for the stiff fabric, laced a tape measure around her neck.
Her brow ticked the moment she looked at Elara, the only break in her cheery demeanor.
“What can I do for you?” she asked.
“My Aunt Blanche needs her favorite dress hemmed,” Elara intoned.
“How soon does she need it?”
“Four weeks.”
The tailor waved. “Come to the back and let’s see what we can do.”
Elara followed into a room filled with bolts upon bolts of bland fabric.
“Thought you’d never be back,” the woman grunted as she shoved one of the walls just enough for Elara to wriggle behind and into a darkened space.
“Just a visit, Madame Landry.”
“That’s what they all say.”
The wall slid closed, blocking most of the light and concealing Elara in a noise-smothered hallway. It ran far back enough to cut into a new building, the wood of the tailor shop turning to the brick of the next. Stairs took her down to a familiar green door.
There, Elara inhaled deeply and stepped in.
Music overwhelmed the silence, swirling around her, lifting her hair and the folds of her brown skirts. It lightened her spirits, caused her to stagger out of the stairwell and into a world that had once been intoxicating to a rage-filled fourteen-year-old orphan.
The parties had been an escape, and the endless drinks and dark booths perfect for kissing to numb the pain. étoiles was where she’d tried to outrun her grief with Fernand.
A thick arm blocked her path, yanking her from the revelry and to the tall man in an ill-bleached gray suit.
“Invitation?” he asked.
Elara’s brow rose. “What?”
This was new. étoiles was a mediocre dance club conveniently hidden beneath a loyal and well-paid tailor. It was a place Fernand and his would-be rebels could gather and get drunk.
“Elara?” a sharp voice called from behind the man’s shoulders.
“Nicolette,” Elara muttered. “You’re still here?”
“Never left.” She was still as slender as a knife, with shining black hair cropped at a severe angle around her powdered cheeks.
She’d taken Fernand’s approach to dressing, however.
Her bleached trousers were sharply pressed and a too-large vest draped to her knees.
The blouse beneath gave her a romantically unkempt look that would’ve been disastrous on anyone else.
High fashion from what was supposed to be degrading.
Nicolette floated an arm around the guard to reveal a flash of wrist and a sparkling red tattoo. Something Elara would definitely not call jealousy flared in her chest at the sight of it.
“Here.” Elara tugged her lapel, and the man stepped aside immediately.
The tattoos had been an experiment from one of Fernand’s artist friends, who wanted to test a new type of magie that would remain dormant until the ink was activated.
In theory, all she or Fernand would have to do was think of the other and touch it, and it would send out a flare.
Elara had found the permanent connection romantic.
Then Nicolette got one. And Jacques. And another half dozen of Fernand’s cronies.
Electric lights dangled overhead like stars against a midnight canopy made of bleached fabrics. Dancers and patrons whirled around one another, laughing as they passed booze and cigarettes.
Onstage, the band thundered out a fevered tune while a singer belted about a drunken painter falling in love with his own creation. Their golden dress flickered like stardust in the light, the fabric elegantly bleached in stripes.
The newness spread to the wall opposite the lounge seats. There, more tents were set up, but they weren’t color coded as The Market above was. These were also bleached and dyed in swirling colors: purple and gold, red and green, beige and silver.
Elara passed by slowly, taking stock of the signs and wares.
In one, an old man hunkered over papers, glasses so low they looked near to falling off his gnarled nose. He swept a fountain pen delicately, etching out letters that re-formed into perfect swirls. Forgery magie.
“Fade and forget?” a woman asked to her right.
In her open palm rested dried flowers and leaves.
“What?” Elara asked.
“A quick tea to help you relax. To let the world slip away.” Beneath her canopy, people lounged on pillows, drawing invisible shapes in the air with their fingertips. They were high. Or drunk. Or both.
“No thank you.” Elara pulled away, shoving through the sweaty bodies to make as much distance between herself and the illegal market as possible.
It wasn’t the legality she cared about.
It was the nature of what could happen if this place was found.
Elara focused on the back booth where she and Fernand used to curl up together.
Tonight, it was full. The small crowd wore similar patchwork suits and bleached dresses, with smoke weaving intricate patterns in the air above their heads.
A smoldering light lit them from above, gilding their silhouettes.
Fernand sat in the center, and Elara hated the way her traitorous heart still flipped at the sight of him.
Gaetan was right. Fernand was trouble. The delicious kind, like a box of lemon madeleines or too much icing for too little cake.
He was exactly the sort of trouble Elara couldn’t keep herself away from no matter what she did.
Right now, he was leaning forward, tapping the table impatiently as he spoke, a cigarette smoldering between his fingers.
The golden light above made his warm brown skin molten, and his hair was haloed in the same light, the dark curls perfectly spiraled thanks to the sponge brush he used every morning.
He prided himself on his appearance, and pride did not belong to a Reste.
Tonight, he wore a soft suit the color of violets in summer, and the white, bleached splotches seemed to move, swirling and changing their patterns. Elara was used to his daring persona in the safety of étoiles, but he’d graduated in the year she’d been gone.
This was treason. He’d be arrested on sight.
Elara waited.
“You seem lost,” Fernand drawled, finally canting his chin in her direction. “Can I help you?”
Anger flared up her spine, but she pushed it down.
“Actually,” she called above the music, “I’m looking for someone. He’s hard to miss.”
“Go on,” he murmured.
“Tall,” Elara replied.
“Uh-huh.”
“A scoundrel.”
“Sounds promising.”
“Ideas of grandeur.”
He tapped the ashes of his cigarette into a tray. “Sounds like a stray. Might need a home.”
“I’d rather not get fleas.”
A boy to his left snorted, and Elara took in this new crew. There was something edgy about them all, a coldness she could understand but felt a little too nervous to be on the outside of.
“Why’d you call?” she asked.
“I have a little proposition. A business arrangement if you will.” He raised his palm to stop her. “Before you go storming off. Hear me out.”
He waved.
Without a word, his company stood, took their wine bottles, and left. From the dance floor, others followed, almost falling into regimented lines. Nicolette was last to disappear into a dark hallway Elara knew well.
She sank into the space opposite Fernand. As if a table between them would stop the urge to touch him, to remember exactly what it felt like to be loved by him.
“What happened to Colin?” she asked. “Jeanine is beside herself.”
“Fool got it in his head he could perform illegal magie in the open.” Fernand shrugged.
“Wonder where he got that idea.”
“Why can’t someone create art without a license?” He took a long drag and at least had the decency to exhale away from her. “If you ask me, he’s a hero.”
“Heroes die in stories, Fernand.”
“Sometimes that’s necessary.” He ran his fingers absently around the rim of his glass. “Speaking of heroes, I heard you almost burned down Gaetan’s today. One hell of a job interview.”
“How’d you know it was an interview?”
“If I said I was keeping tabs on you, would you find it sweet?”
“More like overbearing and obsessive.”
He laughed, and it was music. “I look out for my neighborhood. Especially anyone who’s fired over such a ridiculous reason as a contest to become Souverain.”
Elara rolled her eyes. “Everyone’s fired up about a contest we won’t even get to see.”
Because there was no record in the history of Anespérer that any round of the previous Objet d’Arts were held in the Restes Quarter. They were, and always would be, forgotten.
“But you were a threat.” He smirked.
“Now you’re just trying to butter me up.” It was working. Her cheeks felt hot and tight. “What’s the real reason you asked me here?”
“You could’ve ignored me; you always do. What changed?”
“Desperate times call for desperate measures.”
She watched a shimmer of mirth die in his brown eyes.
“Come with me.” He offered his hand.
Elara didn’t take it, choosing to follow behind as they threaded through bodies in the crowd. It was all too familiar, like a nightmare she couldn’t shake. Thundering music. Oppressive heat. The press of dancers and the smell of perfume as she found herself, once again, heading back to the hallway.