“We seek Anatole Fermin,” Vale said.
“You can check the morgue. Good day.”
The man cleared his throat and looked down at his clipboard. My eyes were drawn to the pin on his cravat: a gold sigil that I now knew well. So I did what any cabaret girl would do when confronted with an uppity fellow who had something she wanted. I simpered.
“Ooh, monsieur.” I moved up close, setting my chest practically on his clipboard and batting my eyelashes. “What a pretty pin. Trade it for a kiss?”
His lip quirked up in disgust, and he took a step back, dusting off his paperwork. “Mademoiselle, you’re embarrassing yourself. Please vacate the premises before I call the gendarmes.”
“Some fellows can’t get it up,” I whispered to Vale, elbowing him in the ribs and making him cough.
I couldn’t help it. I hated the snotty guy with the clipboard.
And he hated me, as he was turning such a bright shade of burgundy that he was beginning to resemble a daimon. Stepping so close I could smell the cloves and tobacco on his fetid breath, he whispered, “I could have you killed ten different ways by Sunday. Get out before I change my mind.”
Vale was between us in a heartbeat, his fist wound into the guy’s shirt. “How dare you insult the lady? You will not live to see Sunday, talking like that.”
The man jerked back and tried to straighten his shirt and jacket, failing utterly. “Consider yourself a dead man.” He spit on the floor, a quivering glob.
“Not yet.” Vale gave him a cocky grin. “But we’ll take our leave.” He all but dragged me out by my elbow.
Once we were out the door, he pulled me against the brick wall, out of sight of Ugly McClipboard and his beady little pig eyes. With an impish grin, Vale held out his hand to show me the gold pin he’d ripped from the man’s paisley cravat during their scuffle.
“That’s two,” he said.
I heard a gasp. One of the daimons loading crates close by watched us anxiously. When he saw me returning his stare, his eyes went wide, and he hurriedly walked in the other direction, darting down an alley.
“Come on,” I murmured, and Vale followed me.
The daimon was quick, but my nose was quicker, and I finally cornered him behind a sculptor’s studio, hiding behind a stone statue still covered in dust, shaking with fear.
“You know something,” I said.
“And we’ll pay you to tell us,” Vale added, holding out a shiny franc.
The face that peeked around the statue was the flaccid purple of near-death, one eye covered with a cheap silk patch and the other round and wide. Twisted scars cut across his face as if he’d been whipped with a metal-tipped lash. He gulped as he stepped into view, and I noted he had no tail. And that he was very young, barely a teenager.
“I have seen that before,” he said, nodding at Vale’s fist. Vale’s fingers uncurled, showing a glint of gold, and the daimon flinched as if he’d been struck. Putting sticky-padded hands to the wall, he scurried straight up the building, quick as a lizard, disappearing onto the roof.
The words were whispered from the sky, silky and foreboding.
“That’s the crest of the Malediction Club,” he said.
Vale tossed the coin straight up. It never landed.
26
I looked up and muttered, “Why do they always run?”
Vale rubbed his chin. “They are most likely still alive because they always run. It does not matter; we have what we needed.”
“We do?”
“We know the rumors about the Malediction Club are true. Considering Anatole Fermin was an artificer recently crushed, we must assume he is the same madman who tried to kidnap you while wearing one of these pins, yes? Perhaps to take you to the club?”
“I don’t know. This is your crazy city. No one’s ever tried to kidnap me in an elephant before.”
Vale shook his head and started walking. The sun was setting, the purple clouds streaked with blood red and blazing orange. Black columns of smoke rose from the artificers’ roofs, and I was glad enough to breathe the slightly fresher, cleaner air as we crossed the bridge.
We came to a major cross street, and Vale swung out his fist, hailing a rickshaw powered by half a clockwork horse and driven by a monkey of a man perched on its neck like a jockey. Handing me up into the carriage, Vale kissed my hand quickly.
“I have more questions to ask, bébé. Be careful tonight.”
“What? Where are you going? Vale!”
He handed the man a twist of coins and rapped on the buggy, shouting, “Paradis in Mortmartre. Vite vite!”
With a creak and a clatter, the driver began pedaling, and the rickshaw pulled into traffic. I sat up and looked behind me, hunting for a close-cropped head and the wink of bright green eyes.